256 
SELECTED ARTICLES. 
ART. XLH. — FECULA OF THE SAW-PALMETTO, USED BY 
THE INDIANS AS FOOD. 
{From the American Medical Intelligencer,) 
We are indebted to the gentleman to whom it is addressed, 
for the following letter from General Smith. Mr. Roberts 
has also favored us with specimens of the flour, the color of 
which sufficiently indicates its impurity, and will doubtless 
account for the unwholesome effects it is said to induce. 
It is an impure starch prepared after the method described 
in the following letter. — Ed. 
Philadelphia, July 14th, 1338. 
Charles Roberts, Esq. 
Dear Sir, — I beg you to accept a quantity of a flour used 
by the Seminole Indians of Florida as food. 
This flour is made from the root of the saw-palmetto,* and 
has been used by the Indians since its discovery, within about 
eight years, as a substitute for a much better article of food 
made from the arrow-root. The latter is only found on the 
eastern coast; the saw-palmetto covers nearly all the territory 
south of latitude 2S°, where it is not under water. The flour 
made from the arrow-root is called coontie; this and another 
substitute, made from the root of the India brier, usually bear 
the same name. 
The root of the saw-palmetto lies generally on the surface 
of the ground, shooting down its fibres from the under side, 
and one end into the earth; the other end turns upwards, and 
from it proceed the dentated stems of its leaves; these gene- 
rally shoot quite close to the ground, but often, in the older 
plants, a stem from two to eight feet long, apparently of the 
same nature of the root, and a continuation of it, intervenes 
between the earth and the leaves. This stem is the part cho- 
sen for their food, and is generally from four to ten inches in 
diameter. 
The outer part, which is always found scorched by fire, is 
cut off, and the remainder chipped up as logwood is for the 
* Chamazrops serrulata. 
