Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

CHAPTER XXIEDIBLE PLANTS OF THE WILDERNESSThere is a popular notion that our Indians inolden times varied their meat diet with nothing butwild roots and herbs. This, in fact, was the caseonly among those tribes that pursued a roving lifeand had no settled abodes, such as the "horse Indians"and "diggers" of the Far West—and not allof them. The "forest Indians" east of the Mississippiand south of the Great Lakes, particularlysuch nations as the Iroquois and Cherokees, lived invillages and cultivated corn, beans, squashes, pumpkins,and tobacco. Still, wild plants and roots oftenwere used by these semi-agricultural peoples, in thesame way that garden vegetables are used by us, and,in time of famine, or invasion, they were sometimesalmost the sole means of sustenance.To-day, although our wild lands, such as areleft, produce all the native plants that were knownto the redmen, there is probably not one white huntteror forester in a thousand who can* pick out halfof the edible plants of the wilderness, nor who wouldknow how to cook them if such were given to him.Nor are many of our botanists better informed.Now it is quite as important, in many cases, taknow how to cook a w^ild plant as it is to be able tofind it, for, otherwise, one might make as serious amistake as If he ate the vine of a potato Instead ofits tuber, or a tomato vine instead of the fruit.Take, for example, the cassava or manioc, which isstill the staple food of most of the inhabitants oftropical America and is largely used elsewhere. Theroot of the bitter manioc, which is used with thesame impunity as other species, contains a milky sap367