170 VEGETABLE PRODUCTS USED BY NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
in Humboldt Valley this season, and its prospective value as a cheap substitute 
for cultivated hemp, is suggested to our cordage and cotton factories. We may 
add to this interesting statement a fact within our own observation, that a 
native hemp is found in many parts of California, especially in the moist bottom 
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The early Spanish colonists men¬ 
tion that it grew about the Tulare lakes, and was used by the Indians to make 
their fishing-nets. Its use for this purpose has always been common to the 
Indians of every part of the State. Some years ago, it was quite abundant 
along the Upper Sacramento. The fibre was long and fine, and easily stripped 
from the stalk, as it dried on the earth, and very light coloured. We have seen 
the Indians twist it into very fine and strong thread, with which they made 
not only small fish-nets, but nets twenty, thirty, and forty feet long, and nearly 
as wide, with which they caught wild geese, while feeding on the plains. Set¬ 
ting their stuffed geese as decoys, the nets are arranged flat, behind them, with 
wooden springs, and are sprung over the live geese when they alight, by con¬ 
cealed Indians. As many as twenty geese were sometimes caught in this way 
by a single haul. As they struggled to get loose, the Indians rushed forward 
with sticks and knocked them senseless when they poked their heads through 
the meshes. The nets required for this use were of course very strong. When 
a large net was made a number of Indians assembled to assist in its completion, 
the women being excluded from the sacred circle, though allowed to sit and 
gossip on the outside. It was enough for them that they were permitted to 
strip and dress the fibre, sometimes to pound the pinola (pine seeds) and 
acorns, and to carry in conical baskets, steadied on their backs, bound about their 
brows, the burdens imposed by their lords and masters. All the work of thread- 
and net-making was done with the fingers, assisted by sticks, something like 
modern crochet-needles; and this does not seem at all strange when it is re¬ 
membered that the exquisite cotton fibres of the Hindoos are all made by manual 
appliances. In the same manner the Indians made from the native hemp some 
very fine, small nets, in which they bound their thick massy hair behind, in a 
like manner and with much the same effect as the fashionable chignon of our 
own day. These hair-nets were variously coloured, ornamented with beads, and 
pierced with feathers or long sticks, covered with snake skin. The despised 
Digger Indian of California may therefore claim to be the inventor of that 
most astonishing article of head-gear nowin use among civilized women. We do 
not know if it is to be found anywhere in its old abundance; perhaps not, since 
so large a portion of the bottom lands, where it flourished so luxuriantly, but 
not exclusively, has been occupied for cultivation. If it can still be obtained 
in sufficient quantities, it would certainly be valuable for maufacturing pur¬ 
poses. The excellence of its fibre, for many inferior purposes at least, entitles, 
this suggestion to consideration ; and the fact that we have a native hemp of 
such fair quality warrants the inference, that the cultivated staple could be 
grown here to advantage. Possibly Indian labour on the valley reservations 
could be turned to profitable account in gathering and preparing the native 
production.”* 
3. Medicine and Superstitious Hites .—All medicine with the Indian is 
superstition, and all superstitions have a bearing more or less on medicine. 
Medicine is with them a mere piece of pagan empiricism. It is emphatically 
Napoleon’s axiom, more trite than true,—putting what they know little about into 
a body about which they know still less. I would have you to guard, however, 
* The writer of this extract, though styling this fibre-plant “ hemp,” apparently, for the 
most part, refers to Linum perenne, L., while curiously enough, both Pursh (FI. Am. 
Sept. i. p. 210) and Douglas (Hooker, FI. Bor. Am. i. p. 106) expressly state, though erro¬ 
neously, that it is never used by the Indians of North-west America for economical purposes. 
