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FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

E ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA
NDIANS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

SSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS
OF ARTS, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

(DEPj

DAVID PRESCOTT BARROWS

CHICAGO

Cbe TUntvetsttB of Gbtcaao press

1900

Gbe tanlversttE of GbfcaQO

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

THE ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA
INDIANS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS

OF ARTS, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

(DEPARTMENT OF anthropology)

BY

DAVID PRESCOTT BARROWS

CHICAGO

Gbe TnmversttE of Cbicaao ipress

1900

/<m

THI | fBR/SRY

THIS MONOGRAPH

IS INSCRIBED AS A MEMORIAL OF MY FATHER,

THOMAS BARROWS

(OBIIT JANUARY 12, 1898),
AND OF MY MOTHER,

ELLA COLE BARROWS

(OBIIT SEPTEMBER 18, 1898) .

FOREWORD

This monograph was accepted in candidacy for the degree of doctor
of philosophy at the University of Chicago in June, 1897.

Further field-research immediately following made necessary a revi-
sion before publication, and this latter work has been long, but una-
voidably, delayed.

I wish to acknowledge my great obligations to Dr. W. L. Jepson, of
the University of California, for his services in identifying my botanical
specimens. Many of my collections were hastily gathered, and, with-
out flowers or sufficient foliage, could be determined only by one espe-
cially trained in the desert flora of California.

It would be a great pleasure to mention by name the many Coa-
huilla friends whose interest and assistance have made this study pos-
sible. One of them, my friend and inmate of my home, Martin Costo,
has read nearly the entire manuscript and made numerous corrections.
The proofs have been read by Dr. Merton L. Miller, of the University
of Chicago, and the entire essay has received the benefit of his atten-
tion.

It is fitting, also, that I should acknowledge the large part that has
been taken in the preparation of this essay by my wife, Anna Spencer
Nichols Barrows. Mrs. Barrows accompanied me when much of this
material was secured, and her cooperation has been invaluable at every
point of preparation.

D. P. B.

Manila, P. I., December, 1900.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGB

Introduction 7

i. Recent Studies in Ethno-Botany 7

2. Plan of this Monograph 7

3. Orthography of Coahuilla Words 8

Chapter I. Linguistic and Tribal Affinities of the Coahuilla

Indians 9

4. Past Study of the California Tribes 9

5. The Franciscan Missions 9

6. Tribes of Southern California 10

7. Review of the Linguistic Material Available for Classifying these Indians 1 1

8. Conclusions as to Former Distribution, Migrations, and Linguistic Con-

nections of the Coahuillas 21

9. Affiliation of the Coahuillas with the Desert Tribes 23

Chapter II. The Habitat of the Coahuillas 25

10. Geography of the American Desert 25

11. The Cabeson Valley and Surrounding Ranges 26

12. Peculiarities of Desert Life 28

13. The Desert of the Colorado 29

14. The Flora of the Colorado Desert 31

15. Homes on the Desert and Mountain 32

16. The Coyote Canon and Coahuilla Valley 34

Chapter III. Houses and House-Building 35

17. The Coahuilla Rancheria 35

18. The Typical Jacal 36

19. Materials Utilized for Houses in Various Villages 38

20. Evolution of the Jacal 38

21. Feast Booths 39

22. Furnishings of a Home 4°

Chapter IV. Baskets and Basket-Making 40

23. Character and Description of Coahuilla Baskets 4°

24. Materials Used in Basket Manufacture 41

25. Method of Weaving 43

26. Different Shapes and Uses of Baskets 44

5

6 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

PAGE

Chapter V. Plant Materials Used in Manufactures and Arts 45

27. The Question of Pottery 45

28. Woven Articles 47

29. Gums and Glues 48

30. Soap Plants 48

31. Tattooing 49

32. Baby-Boards and Hammocks 49

33. Bow, Arrow, and Throwing Stick 49

Chapter VI. The Gathering, Preparation, and Storing of Foods 50

34. The Discovery of Food Plants 50

35. Harvesting Implements 51

36. The Leaching Basket 52

37. Granaries 52

38. Milling 53

39. Cooking 54

Chapter VII. Food Plants of the Coahuilla Indians .... 54

40. Variety of Food Products 54

41. Staples of the Desert Plain 55

42. Food Plants of the Desert Hills 57

43. Food- Yielding Trees of the Desert Mountains 60

44. Acorns and Pinones 61

45. Fruits and Berries 63

46. Seeds Used for Food 64

47. Edible Flowers and Buds. 65

48. The Cacti . 67

49. Abundance of the Coahuilla Food Supply 69

50. Cultivated Plants. Grain Threshing 70

51. Source of the Knowledge of Agriculture 71

Chapter VIII. Drinks, Narcotics, and Medicines 73

52. Beverages and Teas 73

53. Tobacco and Intoxicants 74

54. The Coahuilla Shaman 75

55. The Temescal 76

56. Plant Remedies 77

57. Remedies for Live Stock 79

58. A Final Estimate of the Culture of the Coahuillas 80

INTRODUCTION.

i. The study of the ethno-botany of the American Indians has lately
been receiving considerable attention at the hands of the American
scientists. In March, 1890, Dr. J. W. Harshberger published a short
paper on the "Purposes of Ethno-botany,"1 suggested by the study of
the Wetherill collection of plant products from the Mancos canon.

In 1892 Mr. Frederick V. Coville published valuable notes on the
botany of the Panamint Indians of California, collected while he was
a member of the Death Valley Exploring Expedition of 1891.2

Two very valuable articles have quite recently appeared, by Dr. V.
Havard, U. S. A.: "The Food Plants of the North American Indians,"3
and "Drink Plants of the North American Indians."4

In 1895 an article, "The Beginnings of Agriculture," by Mr. W
J McGee, being a study of the Papago country, suggesting the influ-
ences exerted upon life in a desert environment, appeared in the
American Anthropologist.

Still more recently Mr. J. W. Fewkes published a preliminary study
of the " Foods and Food Resources of the Hopi Indians,"5 having then
in preparation a more systematic memoir upon Tusayan botany. A
supplementary article, "The Hopi in Relation to their Plant Environ-
ment," by Mr. Walter Hough, was printed in February, 1897.6

As a guide to researches of this character the National Museum has
recently issued a bulletin by Mr. Coville, Directions for Collecting
Specimens and Information Illustrating the Aboriginal Uses of Plants.

These few notices will show the attention that the subject is likely
to command in the near future.

Much valuable work was, however, done many years ago, particu-
larly by Mr. Edward Palmer,7 and by Mr. Stephen Powers,8 which
should have aroused a more general interest in this important subject.

2. The present study is an attempt to describe some of the native
plant rer »*rces known and used by the Coahuilla Indians of southern
California The articles already published show how such a work may
be conducted. There are few plants in an Indian country that have not
been experimented with by its native inhabitants. A thorough study

1 Botanical Gazette, Vol. XXI, No. 3. » American Anthropologist, Vol. V, p. 351.

3 Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. XXII, No. 3, March, 1895.

A Ibid., Vol. XXIII, No. 2, February, 1896.

$ American Anthropologist, Vol. IX, No. 1, January, 1896.

6 A merican A nthr otologist, Vol. XX, No. 2, February, 1897. 7 American Naturalist, 1878.

8 "Aboriginal Botany," Proceedings California Academical Society, Vol. V.

7

8 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

of the ethno-botany of any such region should properly include, of
course, all plants used for foods or medicines, or which have been
found useful in the arts, but also all such as have a religious signifi-
cance, or that figure in the folklore of the Indians, or even such as are
admired or worn for ornament, or that supply food for animals. What
we wish to know is, how has the Indian satisfied all his needs out of
the flora of his home. Ethno-botany properly touches every side of
his life. We might go even farther than this and say that even those
plants which he knows to be poisonous, or noxious, or mere nuisances, or
which have proved absolutely useless to the Indian, so far as he recog-
nizes these plants in his language, that is, has named them and under-
stands them, are worthy of our notice. Such plants often show how
diligent and acute, even though unrewarded, the investigation for
useful things has been.

The present paper is an attempt to study, from this point of view,
the native culture of one of the Indian tribes inhabiting the arid plains
and mountains of the California desert.

The question that instantly arises in the mind of the visitor to the
habitat of the Coahuillas is, how can any people find here the satisfac-
tion of their wants. This question has guided these investigations,
and the answer is attempted in this monograph and has determined
its limits. At the same time, I have included considerable matter
relating to the tribal relations of these Indians and their past history,
for the reason that the Coahuillas are almost unknown outside of their
own portion of the state, and the information heretofore published
concerning them has been somewhat confused and mistaken.

3. The orthography used in writing Indian words is, in general,
that used by the collectors of the Bureau of Ethnology. Vowels have
the Italian values, etc. I have not followed, however, the plan of
using c for the sound s/i, as I consider this spelling too misleading to
those unacquainted with the system.

A word should be said also as to the pronunciation and spelling of
the tribal name, Coahuilla. The word is Indian, and the tribesmen's
own designation for themselves, and means "master" or " ruling
people." There is some slight variation in its pronunciation, but the
most usual is, probably, Kow-wee-yah, accent on the second syllable.
The spelling has been various. The spelling adopted by the early
writers, and correct, according to the value accorded to 11 in Spanish-
America, is that adopted here, Coa-hui-lla. I have preferred this,
although advised by Mr. C. F. Lummis to spell the name " Coahuia,"
the spelling demanded by the precise Castillian rule.

CHAPTER I.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS.

4. A systematic account of the Indians of southern California has
never yet been published. The work of Mr. Stephen Powers, The
Indians of California? considered no tribes south of the Santa Inez
mountains on the coast, or the San Joaquin valley in the interior. The
Indian tribes of California, south of these limits, fall into three
divisions : those of the Santa Barbara channel and islands, covering
the whole coast of Ventura county ; and two more groups occupying
the lower portions of the state.

Any study of the first group must now be confined to the written
accounts concerning them and to the numerous archaeological remains,
since these Indians are either wholly extinct or mingled with the
present mestizo population. Of the latter two groups, however, sev-
eral thousand2 are still living in some thirty different villages or small
reservations in San Bernadino, Riverside, and San Diego counties, and
are open to ethnographic investigations.

5. The habitable portion of southern California is divided geo-
graphically by low mountain ranges into a number of spacious valleys.
In these fertile tracts, at that time well populated by Indians, the
Franciscan friars, under the direction of the Spanish government, a
century ago established their missions. Furthermost south, and the
first to be established, was the mission of San Diego (1769). It formed
a center for reaching the numerous bands of Indians about the bay
and scattered southward into Lower California, eastward to the desert,
and for thirty or forty miles northward on the hills and mesas of the
Coast Range. Forty miles north of San Diego, at the foot of the
beautiful valley of the San Luis Rey river, was established, in 1798, the
mission of San Luis Rey de Francia. Twenty-five miles up the stream,
near its headwaters, was the substation of Pala, in a narrow, hill-
surrounded valley. This branch was to reach better the Indians living
back from the coast in the fastnesses of inner canons and valleys.

Near the coast, twenty-five miles north of San Luis Rey, was San
Juan Capistrano, commanding the populous valley of the Santa Ana.

1" Contributions to North American Ethnology," Vol. Ill, Washington, 1877.
2 According to a recent government report, 3,481. {Report of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, for 1894.)

9

io ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

Established in 1776, it became one of the wealthiest and most pros-
perous of the missions. Twelve miles east of the present site of Los
Angeles was San Gabriel (17 71), and thirty miles northward at the
upper end of the wide plain was San Fernando Rey de Espana (1797).

6. The Indians attached to the mission of San Diego, whose name
for themselves seems to have been Quemaya (Comeya, Comoyei), are a
branch of the great Yuma linguistic family of the Colorado and Gila
rivers, which thus extends from the Colorado across the desert to the
Pacific ocean. From their attachment to the mission, those about San
Diego bay and along the coast have become known as Diegefios, even
among themselves. Within the domain of the United States they
still number about six hundred souls and have several small reserva-
tions in San Diego county, San Pasqual, Santa Ysabel, Mesa Grande,
and others, while many more of the same family are scattered through
the rough country of Baja California, just below the line, a well-known
reservation being in the Jacumba pass, near the road from San Diego
to Yuma. The Indians about San Luis Rey mission and up the river
into the mountains are known as the "Luisefios." They number at
present about 850, and their villages are principally in the Pala valley,
Pauma, La Jolla, and Rincon. With these should also be included
the Temeculas at Pechanga, eight miles north of Pala.

The Indians, once neophytes at San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel,
and San Fernando, are gone. A few grizzled descendants may be
still lingering in the shadow of the crumbling walls of the mission
ruins, but the former tribes have disappeared ; their survivors have
either mixed with the mestizo population or joined the Indians further
removed from civilization.

The two Indian tribes still to be mentioned are the Serranos and
Coahuillas. The former live at a small reservation near San Berna-
dino ("Manuel's village") and on the Morongo reservation in the San
Gorgonio Pass, where they have intermarried with the Coahuillas.
The Coahuillas, the only tribe still designated by its Indian name, live
in the Colorado desert and the San Jacinto range of mountains.

As was said above, there is no general account of these Indians that
offers a suitable basis for further research, either into the history of
those that have disappeared or the ethnography of those that are still
in existence.

About twenty pages of Mr. Bancroft's first volume are devoted to the
"Southern Californians."1 The account is of value for its references,

1 Native Races. Vol. I, pp. 402-22.

w

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES II

indicating the written material that exists for this study. What is per-
haps most needed at present is a bibliographical and critical study of
these sources, historical, linguistic, ethnographic, and archaeological,
as a basis for the early and aboriginal history of southern California.
It seems to be considerable in amount, but no sifted or critical pre-
sentation has yet appeared. This fact is my excuse for the considerable
digression that follows, dealing with the linguistic relations of these
Indian tribes.

7. For establishing the relations of the southern California Indians
with one another and with other linguistic stocks of North America,
the linguistic material seems fairly sufficient.

Scientific classification of the Indians of North America on the
basis of language began with Albert Gallatin's " Synopsis of the Indian
Tribes," which appeared in 1836.1 His material for tribes west of the
Rocky Mountains was small in amount, and the Indians of California
are not included in his classification.

The first linguistic material from Indians of California to be placed
within the reach of scientists, of which I am aware, were vocabularies
from severaldifferent Indian tongues collected by an Englishman, Dr.
Coulter, during a residence of several years in southern California,
and which were published in 1841, by Dr. John Scouler, in the Royal
Geographical Journal for that year, in an article entitled " Observa-
tions on the Indigenous Tribes of the North West Coast of America."2

These vocabularies include the languages spoken at the Franciscan
missions of San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel, Santa
Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and San Antonio. They contain some-
thing less than fifty words each.

In 1840 the French government, during the excitement incident
to the disputed possession of Oregon, sent to the Pacific coast an
expedition under Duflot de Mofras, who sailed the entire length of the
California coast, visiting at many places, and who collected from the
Franciscan friars their translations at the various missions, of the
Paternoster into the Indian tongues. These are twenty-one in number
and are to be found in De Mofras' account of his travels.3 They have
also been reprinted in Bancroft's volume on the Native Races of Cali-
fornia. This voyage of De Mofras' is of interest as the last expe-
ditionary undertaking ever sent by the French into North America.

1 Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society {Archceoltgica Americana), Vol. II,
Cambridge, 1836.

2 Royal Geographical Journal, Vol. XI, pp. 215-49, 1841.

3 Expedition de V Oregon, etc.

12 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

My own examination of this collection has been pretty fruitless of any
results, but Mr. Gatchet professes to have found them useful in deter-
mining the distribution of Indian languages at the beginning of this
century. These prayers may also be found printed in the sixth vol-
ume of the Proceedings of the Philological Society of London,1- where they
are discussed in an inconclusive manner.

Mr. Horatio Hale, while a member of the United States Exploring
Expedition, under command of Captain Charles Wilkes, in the years
1838-42, collected several vocabularies from Indians at the California
missions, among them the "Netela," spoken at Mission San Juan
Capistrano, and " Kizh," spoken at Mission San Gabriel. These vocab-
ularies contain approximately ninety words each and constitute very
important records. Mr. Hale's commentary upon them is significant,
although he hesitated to take decidedly the position, assumed some
years later by Professors Turner and Buschmann, of classifying the
Indians speaking these languages with the Indians of the great Rocky
Mountain basin. Mr. Hale's words are as follows :

The similarity which exists between many words in these two languages
and in the Shoshone is evident enough from a comparison of the vocabularies.
The resemblance is too great to be attributed to mere casual intercourse :
but it is doubtful whether the evidence it affords will justify us in classing
them together as branches of the same family. The fact that the Comanches
of Texas speak a language closely allied to, if not identical with, that of the
Shoshones, is supported by testimony from so many sources that it can hardly
be doubted.2

In 1846 there was published a very interesting little book by an
American, to which all those interested in the early life of Spanish
California, as well as in the Indian inhabitants, can well be referred.
This book is entitled : Life in California :■ During a Residence of Several
Years in that Territory, etc. By an American. To which is annexed a
Historical Account of the Origin, Customs, and Traditions of the Lndians
of Alta California. Translated from the original Spanish Manuscript.3
The author of this volume was a Mr. Alfred Robinson. His account
of his own travels in California is interesting reading, but possibly no
more valuable than that of several other early visitors to the state,

1 Latham, " On the Languages of New California," Proceedings, 1852-53, Vol. VI.

2 Horatio Hale, " United States Exploring Expedition," Ethnology and Philology, pp. 566,
567. Philadelphia, 1846.

3 The publishers of the first edition were Wiley & Putnam, New York, 1846. The edition is scarce,
and a copy sells from $8 to $10. The Life in California has been reprinted by Mr. William R. Doxey,
San Francisco, but without the Account . ... of the Indians by Father Boscana. The Chinig-
chinich is reprinted entire in the California Farmer, Vol. XIII.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 13

whose books are more accessible. The account of the Indians is the
unique and valuable work, and the Life in California was really
written to serve as an introduction to this translation. This part
bears the following separate title : Chinigchinich : a Historical Account
of the Origin, Customs, and Traditions at the Missionary Establishment
of St. Juan Capistrano, Alta California: called the Acagchemem Nation,
collected with the greatest care from the most intelligent and best instructed
in the matter. By the Reverend Father Friar Geronimo Boscana, of the
order of Saint Francisco, Apostolic Missionary of said Mission. Trans-
lated from the original Spanish manuscript by one who was many years
a resident of Alta California. In his introduction Mr. Robinson says :

The manuscript ends rather abruptly ; and it is uncertain if the holy
father ever intended it for publication. After his death, in 1831, it was found
among his effects, with other writings which came into the possession of the
syndic of the missions, who kindly presented it to me.

Father Boscana's account is cast in the naive and pious language
of a Franciscan missionary, but he certainly gives us a very reliable
account of the Indians of the section in which his labors were cast, and
the dances, feasts, and customs as he describes them have been aston-
ishingly well preserved to the present day. His display of Indian
words is, however, meager. The words he gives us, for the most part,
relate to the ceremonies and social order of these Indians, so that they
are not especially helpful for our immediate purpose. The great value
of Chinigchinich is ethnographical and not philological.1

In 1852 a series of valuable papers on the " Indians of Los Angeles
County " were published in the Los Angeles Star, by Dr. Hugo Reid,
a liberally educated gentleman of Scottish birth, who resided at San
Gabriel for twenty years previous to his death in 1853, and whose
observations, recorded in the above papers, constitute undoubtedly one
of the most authentic accounts of the Indians of southern California.
Bartlett, in his Personal Narrative, writing of his visit to Los Angeles
in 1853, says :

After dinner I called at the office of the Los Angeles Star to obtain a file
of the paper, which contains a series of articles on the California Indians.
.... These gentlemen informed roe that Mr. Reid was better acquainted
with the Indians of that portion of the state than any other person.2

1 The words in Boscana's narrative were most patiently examined by Buschmann.

2 Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California,
Sonora, and Chihuahua, connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission,
during the years 1850, 51,52, and 53, by John Russell Bartlett, United States Commissioner during
that period; two volumes, illustrated, and maps. N. Y. : D. Appleton & Co., 1854.

14 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

Already, in 1861, Mr. Alexander Taylor wrote of these letters of
Mr. Reid that they formed the " only account of the Indians of that
country of any value," " now out of print," and that " this history of Mr.
Reid's is accounted of great value among the ethnologists of Europe
and America, who have repeatedly sent to this country for it without
avail, as no complete copies of it are now to be had in the state."1 In
these letters is contained a vocabulary of the Indians about San Gabriel,
containing, including twenty-four numerals, about fifty words. Other
words and expressions scattered through these letters bring up the
linguistic material afforded by this writer to about seventy words.

In 1857, Lieutenant Whipple, in charge of the surveying party for
a United States Pacific railroad, collected some Indian vocabularies,
which had much to do with settling the linguistic affiliations of the
Indians of southern California, and which are still among the best col-
lections ever published from these localities. While still in Arizona,
at the junction of Bill Williams fork with the Colorado river, Lieu-
tenant Whipple's party encountered the Chemehuevi Indians, whose
place in the treatment of the Coahuilla nation will be noted later.
These Indians Whipple considered " a band of the great Pai Ute

nation At night the chief furnished us with a vocabulary of his

language. He drew also a sketch of this country, giving the Pai Ute
names of tribes and the rivers where they dwell."2 This vocabulary
contains about 175 words, and is presumably the first ever published
of the Chemehuevi Indians. After crossing the Mojave desert and
entering the inhabited part of southern California, Mr. Whipple's party
stopped for a day at the Cucomonga ranch, about forty-five miles east
of Los Angeles. Here there was a rancheria of Coahuilla Indians,
apparently peons of the ranch. " With them," says the narrative, " is
an old Indian, dressed in an entirely new suit, in the style of a Cali-
fornia ranchero, and he professes to have come from Jose Antonio, the

general-in-chief of the tribe As he spoke Spanish we were

enabled to obtain a vocabulary of his native tongue." This vocabulary
of the Coahuilla language, comprising about 150 words, is much the
best that has ever been published. The words and the pronunciations,
so far a*s I can judge, are in almost every case identical with the speech
of the Coahuillas at the present time. The words for parts of the body
in Mr. Whipple's collection have all the first-person possessive pro-
noun, tie, affixed, a thing that almost invariably happens in getting

1 California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 146.

2 Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, Report of Explorations for a Railway Route near to the
Thirty-fifth parallel of North Latitude from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Washing-
ton, 1853-54. Part I, " Itinerary," p. in.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 15

these words from an Indian, but this error is easily rectified. Mr.
Whipple's linguistic material collected on this expedition was analyzed
by Professor William W. Turner and printed in the Expedition's report
upon the Indian tribes.1 In this report the Comanche, Chemehuevi,
and "Cahuillo" vocabularies are printed in comparative columns under
the title "Shoshonee." A comparative vocabulary was also published,
embracing twenty-eight " Cahuillo " words, together with an equal
number from Mr. Hale's "Kizh" and " Netela," and from a manu-
script vocabulary of the Indians at San Luis Rey mission, procured by
Hon. John R. Bartlett, while engaged upon the Mexican Boundary
Survey, and called by him the "Kechi.'" Professor Turner's conclusion
in regard to the Comanche, Chemehuevi, and Cahuillo, was that
the natives who speak these languages belong to the great Shoshone or Snake
family : which comprehends the Shoshones proper of southern Oregon, the
Utahs in the region around the Great Salt Lake and then extending south and
west the Pah-Utahs, west of the Colorado and the Indians of the missions of
southern California, the Kizh (of San Gabriel), the Netela (of San Juan Capis-
trano), and the Kechi (of San Luis Rey), and on the south and east the
Comanches of the prairies.3

To these collections of Lieutenant Whipple and the analysis of Pro-
fessor Turner is due also the establishment of the Yuma linguistic
family, including the Mojaves, Cuchans, Maricopas, and Diegeno
Indians, and the connection of the Diegeno Indians therewith.4 A
vocabulary of the Diegenos, furnished by Dr. Coulter, had already been,
as we have seen,s published in the eleventh volume of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society's Journal, and the paper of Mr. Latham " On the
Languages of New California"6 attempted to classify the Indians of
southern California on the basis of De Mofras' Paternosters ; but that
the Diegenos were close kin to the tribes of the Gila and Colorado
rivers seems not to have been suspected previous to Mr. Turner's dis-
covery of the relation.

From 1 853 to 1 859 the linguistic connections of these Indians excited
the interest of Dr. Johann Buschmann. This learned philologist,
searching for traces of Aztec speech among the Indian languages of

1 Ibid., chap. 5, " Vocabularies of North American Language," pp. 7i"77«

2 In his Personal Narrative, Vol. II, p. 92, Mr. Bartlett speaks of his visit to the San Luis
Rey mission and of " an old chief" who was quite communicative of information and furnished a " vocab-
ulary He called his tribe the Kechi." This vocabulary contains twenty-eight words.

3 Hid., p. 76.

4 The vocabularies for this analysis were collected by Lieutenant Emory in 1854, while engaged on
the Mexican Boundary Survey, and are printed in the reports of that expedition.

5 Supra, p. n. 6 Supra, p. 12.

1 6 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

northern Mexico, found such existing in four widely used Mexican
tongues — the Cora, the Tepehuana, the Tarahumari, and the Cahita.
These comprise what Buschmann calls his " Sonoran linguistc family"
{sonorische Sprachstamme). The connection of these languages in the
past with the Aztec is now, I believe, generally accepted. Continuing
his investigations into the languages of the southwest United States,
Buschmann discovered similar traces, arguing for an earlier common
speech from which all could be descended, in all members of the
Shoshone linguistic family.1 The results of these labors are stated by
Dr. Brinton as follows :

The relationship of these numerous bands is unquestionable, although
many of them have freely adopted words from other stocks. The principal
members of this stock are the Utes, Shoshones, and Comanches in the north;
various tribes in Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Durango in the center ;
and the Nahuas, or Aztecs, in the south. It is not to be understood that any
one of these derived its idioms from the other, but rather that at some remote
epoch all three were offshoots from one ancestral stem.2

Buschmann's first essay on the languages of southern California
was a study of the two vocabularies furnished by Horatio Hale, the
Kizh (of San Gabriel), and the Netela (of San Juan Capistrano), and
was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences of
Berlin for the year 1855.3 In these two vocabularies from the Pacific
coast Buschmann recognized evidences of the widespread aztekischen
Sprache, which he was so zealously tracing from the Mexican highland
northward through Mexico to the great American desert of the south-
western United States.

Bei der genugsam von mir aufgezeigten Gemeinschaft der zwei califor-
nischen Idiome, so lautet mein Urtheil, hofft man auch hier vergebens auf
ein genaues, gliickliches Zutreffen eigenthumlichen Formen dieser Sprachen
mit dem Comanche und Shoshonischen oder mit dem sudlichenen sonorische
Hauptsprachen, ein Zusammentreffen mit etwas recht Besonderen einer
Sprache mit einer anderen ; so nahe liegen die Sprachen sich nie, die sind
alle fremd genug gegen einander/

Buschmann's final work is the remarkable essay published four
years after the above in the Royal Academy's Proceedings : "Traces of

1 Major Powell does not seem to consider this evidence sufficient to support either Buschmann's or
Brinton's conclusions as to an earlier common stock.

*The American Race, p. 118. New York, 1891.

3 Die Sprachen Kizh und Netela von Neu California. Abhandlungen der Koniglichen Aka-
demie der Wissensehaften zu Berlin, 1855.

4 Ibid., p. 318.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 17

Aztec Speech in Northern Mexico and Upper North America, etc."1
The work shows immense labor and brilliant powers of analysis, and is
a model and standard for all such undertakings. The first part deals
with the Mexican linguistic stocks {der vier sonorischen Haupt sprachen)
above noted. The second part traces the common tongue northward
into Arizona, with examinations of the Pimas and Coco Maricopas of
the Gila, the Yumas of the Colorado; the Moqui, Navajos, and
Apaches; and eastward the language of the Comanches of Texas.
This brings him to a consideration of the Indian tongues of southern
California. For determining the relationship of these tribes Busch-
mann had no sources of information beyond those we have already
noticed. Beside the vocabularies of Horatio Hale, Buschmann used
Dr. Coulter's work, published by Scouler, a vocabulary of the Diegefios
collected by Lieutenant Whipple,2 the words derived from Father Bos-
cana's account of the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, Bartlett's
vocabulary collected at San Luis Rey, the " Kechi," De Mofras'
* Paternosters," and, most important of all, the critical studies of Pro-
fessor Turner based on the vocabularies published in the Pacific Rail-
way reports ; Buschmann's discoveries from this last source are worth
quoting in his own language :

Als ich das Obige vor einigen Jahren schrieb, habe ich nicht geahnet, dass
ich in der Kechi-Sprache ein Glied des sonorischen Sprachstammes erkennen
sollte : es war an dem von Duflot mitgetheilten Sprachstoffe auch nicht zu
sehn. Als ich in Juni des Jahres 1857 durch die Gute des Hon. Professor
Turner die, von ihm redigirten Wortverzeichnisse der Whippleschen Expe-
dition der Jahre 1853-54 {Report, etc.) erhielt, endeckte ich darin zwei neue
sonorischen Sprachen angehorig dem sudlichen Neu-Californien : die der
Chemehuevis (Humboldt's Chemeguabas am unteren Colorado), der Cahuillos
(zwischen den Quellen des S. Ana und S. Gabriel), und das Kechi, oder die
Sprache der Mission San Luis Rey. Von den beiden ersten hat Whipple ein
grosses Wortverzeichniss gesammelt, das Turner mit einen Comanche-Wort,
(pp. 71-6) zu einer Worttafel zusammengestellt hat, die sein allgemeine
Shoshonee-Idiom vorstellen soil. Urn die bedeutende Verwandschaft des
Cahuillo mit dem Kechi, Netela, und auch Kizh zu zeigen, hat er (p. 77) eine
Tafel, etc3 *

He repeats here his former conclusions about the Kizh and
Netela :

*Die Spuren der aztekischen Sprache im nordlichen Mexico und hoheren amerikanischen
Norden. Zugleich eine Musterung der Volker und Sprachen des nordlichen Mexicas und der
Westseite Nordamerikas von Guadalaxara au bis zum Eismeer, von Joh. Carl Ed. Buschmann.
Berlin, 1859.

2 Published in Schoolcraft, Vol. II, pp. 103, 104. 3 Spuren, etc., p. 550.

1 8 ETHN0-B07ANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

Zwei Sprachen im siidlichen Neu-Californien, gelegen nordlich iiber San
Diego, am Canal de S. Barbara, habe ich von hoher Wichtigkeit gefunden :
ich habe in dem Kizh oder der Sprache der Mission San Gabriel, in
etwa 340 N. B., und in der Netela oder Mission San Juan Capistrano, in
33j£°, zwei Glieder meines sonorischen Sprachstammes ausgestaltet mit
aztekischen Sprachstoff, endeckt.1

Foremost among the enthusiastic workers in California ethnology
was Mr. Alexander O. Taylor. In February, i860, Mr. Taylor began to
edit, in a weekly paper published in San Francisco, The California
Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences, of which Colonel Warren was the
editor and publisher, a department entitled the "Indianology of Cali-
fornia," and for over three years in these columns, with nearly every
number of the paper, was published a large amount of very valuable
material on the California Indians and early California history, the
result of Mr. Taylor's persistent gleanings and his own excellent obser-
vations. In this series were published the very valuable works noted
above, Mr. Hugo Reid's "Indians of Los Angeles County" and Robin-
son's " Boscana's Chinigchinich" Mr. Taylor published here a num-
ber of excellent vocabularies, gathered by himself at the different mis-
sions, two of which we must notice. No. 9 is a vocabulary of about
130 words, besides a few numerals and phrases taken from an old
Christian Indian about sixty years old at the mission San Gabriel.8
No. 10 was taken at San Luis Rey mission in April, 1856, but it is not
the vocabulary of a Luiseno Indian at all but of some visiting Diegefio
Indian from farther south. Following it is one secured from an
Indian from San Miguel mission of Lower California. The frequent
references in this essay to these publications of Mr. Taylor will suggest
to what an extent we are indebted to him as a gatherer and preserver
of what would otherwise have been well-nigh inaccessible material.

In 1875 there were collected by Dr. Oscar Loew vocabularies from
various Shoshonian tribes ; from the Pah-Uta and Chemehuevi in
Nevada and California, and from the few surviving Indians at San
Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, as well as from the Coahuilla and
Serrano Indians near San Bernadino. In 1878 Dr. Eric Bergland
secured a vocabulary from the Luiseno Indians about San Luis Rey.
This new material, together with much more from the southwest tribes,
was studied by Mr. Albert S. Gatchet and printed in an appendix to
Vol. VII of Archceology, of the Reports of the U. S. Geological Survey
(Washington, 1879), "Classification of Western Indian Dialects."

1 Spuren, etc., p. 546. 2 California Farmer, Vol. XIII, p. 90.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 19

Mr. Gatchet's classification includes seven linguistic stocks. For
the one with which we are here concerned, the Shoshone, he substi-
tutes a new term "Numa," a word which he states is found in most of
his Shoshone vocabularies meaning "man," "Indian," or "people."

"The Numa race of aborigines," he says, "is an inland race extending
over a large portion of the great interior basin from middle Idaho southward
to the Colorado, the Colorado Chiquito and the Rio San Juan ; one of its sub-
divisions, the Comanche tribe, has overrun the vast plains extending between
the Arkansas and the Rio Grande, while another branch has in early days
occupied portions in eastern and southern California. This is the only Numa
offshoot which, as far as we know, has settled on the shore of the Pacific
ocean." *

This "Numa race" is composed, according to Mr. Gatchet, of eight
linguistic families — the Shoshone, Snake, Pa-Uta (in which family are
placed the Chemehuevi), Pa-Uta of California, Uta, Moqui, Kauvuyah,
and Comanche. "Kauvuyah" is the designation he adopts for our
group of California Indians. Mr. Gatchet says that it is "the orthog-
raphy adopted by Oscar Loew for the name of one of the Serrano or
mountain tribes," and again, "Kauvuyah, on the oases in Cahuilla val-
ley, at the San Gorgonia pass, at Temecula, and in the San Jacinto
mountains, written also Cahuillo and (incorrectly) Coahuila." It
thus seems that Kauvuyah is the way in which Mr. Loew conceived
that Coahuilla should be written. As commonly pronounced the word
might be written Kau-wee-yah. Invariably, however, in all the Coa-
huilla words which Mr. Loew collected, v and w are interchanged, an
error due possibly to his nationality. Kauvuyah is thus probably meant
to be pronounced Kauwiiyah. This is not very far off from the correct
pronunciation, but it is certainly an unrecognizable spelling, and it has
unfortunately been followed both in the works of Major Powell and
Dr. Brinton. Mr. Loew also invented new tribal designations for the
dialects he collected at San Juan Capistrano and San Gabriel. The
former he called " Gaitchim," the word in his vocabulary for "houses,"
and the latter "Tobikhar," and the Serranos he renamed "Takhtam,"
the word in his vocabulary of their language meaning " men."2 -

The Serrano word for men is more nearly "takhtem" than "tahk-
tam." The Serranos' own designation for themselves isC6w-ang-a-chem.

It is difficult to understand what value these names can have as

1 Op. cit., P408.

2 In recounting the creation myth of the San Gabriel Indians Mr. Hugo Reid states that the first
man was named " To-bo-har." The word for man in his vocabulary is " woroyt." (See " Indians of Los
Angeles County," California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 146.)

20 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

tribal designations, or why the Kizh and Netela of Mr. Hale should be
removed to make way for them. Gaitchim, Tobikhar, and Takhtam
are pure inventions, unheard of as tribal designations by anyone in
southern California, yet all these terms have been adopted by Mr.
Gatchet, Major Powell, and Dr. Brinton and can serve only to confuse
anyone who tries to study and collect vocabularies of these Indians on
the ground. Mr. Loew's vocabularies contain about 150 words each,
taken according to Mr. Gibb's Indian vocabulary. Besides confusing
the v and w, in the Coahuilla vocabulary at least, b often takes the
place of/, g of k, and vice versa \ in many words the personal pronoun
tie is affixed in its several modifications. These defects prevent the
vocabularies from being trustworthy.

In an article, "Indian Languages of the Pacific States and Terri-
tories," * Mr. Gatchet had the following paragraph :

Kauvuya (Cawio; Spanish, Cahuillo). This branch of the Shoshoni
stock prevails from the Cabeson mountains and the San Bernadino valley,
California, down to the Pacific coast, and is at present known to us in four
dialects : Serrano, or mountain dialect, spoken by Indians who call themselves
Takhtam, which means "men," "people;" Kauvuya, in and around San Ber-
nadino valley, Gaitchim or Kechi, a coast dialect, in use near the missions of
San Juan Capistrano, and San Luis Rey de Francia — Netela is another
name for it ; Kizh, spoken in the vicinity of the mission of San Gabriel by a
tribe calling itself Tobikhar, or " settlers," and of San Fernando mission,
almost extinct. The two last-mentioned dialects considerably differ among
themselves and from the mountain dialects of the Takhtam and Kauvuya.

Mr. Gatchet is in error when he speaks of the Serrano and San Gabriel
Indians " calling themselves " Takhtam and Tobikhar, respectively. The
words are unknown as tribal designations among these Indians them-
selves, and precisely this point constitutes the objection to them.

The interest in Indian languages awakened by Major Powell's
study and the collections made for his report by the Bureau of Eth-
nology do not appear to have added anything to our knowledge of
these Indian languages. No mention of vocabularies appears in the
account of the results of this work.2

Major Powell speaks in his Linguistic Families only of the " Tobikhar,
about twenty-two hundred under the Mission Agency, California,"3 seem-
ing thus to include the entire Coahuilla family under this designation.

1 Magazine of American History ', March, 1877.

2 J. C. Pilling, Catalogue of Linguistic Manuscripts in the Library of the Bureau of Eth-
nology, First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, pp. 545 ff.

3 Indian Linguistic Families of America, north of Mexico, in Seventh Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1891), p. no.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 2 1

Dr. Brinton enumerates under the Shoshonean branch of his Uto-
Aztecan linguistic stock the "Cahuillos in southern California,"
" Chemehuevis, branch of the Pi-Utes on Cottonwood island ;" " Kau-
vuyas, southern California, near the Pacific ;" " Kechis, in southern
California, branch of Kauvuyas ;" " Kizh, in southern California,
branch of Kauvuyas;" " Netelas, in southern California."1

8. The above material is sufficient to enable us by its analysis to
form a number of conclusions.

From the outset philologists have been almost unanimous in
separating these Indians from the California tribes to the north and
connecting them with the great Shoshonean family of the deserts to
the east. As the early migrations of these tribes spread they not only
overran the whole of the vast arid expanse east of the Sierras, but in the
south they crossed by the passes that pierced these mountain ranges
from the desert into the fertile valleys and coast lands of southern
Calfornia. From the Mojave, they appear to have entered the south-
ern end of the San Joaquin valley and to have secured a foothold
there, leaving their name to the locality there, spelled in anglicized
form Kaweah, as Coahuilla is the Spanish orthography. Bancroft2,
quotes from a manuscript furnished by Mr. Hayes that the "Tularefios
(of the San Joaquin valley) live in the mountain wilderness of the
Four Creeks, Porsiuncula or Kern or Current river, and the Tejon ;
and wander thence toward the headwaters of the Mojave and the neigh-
borhood of the Coahuillas." A vocabulary of the "Four Creek
Indians " was published under the name of " Ka-we-yah " in the Wide
West Magazine, July, 1856, San Francisco, and is reprinted entire in
the California Farmer, Vol. XIII, p. 106. In this vocabulary, which
consists of about 125 words and phrases, there are few traces of Sho-
shonean speech. The Coahuillan tribes entering the San Joaquin must
have lost their own speech in favor of that of the previous inhabitants,
while retaining their original tribal name. One or two words are, how-
ever, suggestive of Coahuillan origin. The phrase " hang-ah ka-woo-
wah" is said to mean "powerful man," the word "kawoowah" signifying
"power, strength, ability," just as farther south the word "kawoowah"
or "kaweah" or "coahuilla" means "master" or "ruling one." The
word " mee-wah " is given as meaning " friendly," an expression still
used among the desert Coahuillas far to the south with apparently
much the same significance as a hail on approaching a strange camp-
fire. These linguistic evidences, though slight, support the evidence

"D, G. Brinton, The American Race (New York, 1891), p. 133.
2 Native Races, Vol. I, p. 457.

2 2 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

of this being an early Coahuillan migration from the Mojave into the
San Joaquin valley.

Southward from the Mojave they passed through the Cajon pass
into the region around San Bernadino, and thence spread to the coast
through the valleys of the San Luis Rey, Santa Ana, and San Gabriel
rivers. Those who settled farther north about San Fernando may have
gone there from the San Gabriel valley or entered this region directly
from the Mojave, by way of Antelope valley.

Mr. Alexander Taylor, writing in 1862, says of the Saticoy valley,
west of San Fernando :

This valley at the upper end communicates with the Tejon and Los
Angeles roads, and for the last forty years has been a gate for the entrance
of Utahs, Paiutes, Yutes, Mojaves, and other desert and mountain Indians
who possess horses. Their visits were always made to run off the mules and
horses of the Padres and latterly the rancheros up to 1850. In this way
probably the Shoshone affiles entered these parts of California.1

An examination and comparison of all the vocabularies above noted
proves without question the linguistic affinity of the tribes who formerly
occupied southern California from San Fernando and contiguous terri-
tory south to the country of the Diegefios or the Quemaya, below
Palomar mountain, and the San Luis Rey valley. It is impossible,
within the limits of this paper, to print the evidences of this relation-
ship. It must suffice to say that I have examined carefully all of these
vocabularies mentioned, and find that of the languages spoken at San
Fernando, San Gabriel, and about Los Angeles, San Juan Capistrano,and
San Luis Rey, all possess a general similarity to the present speech of
the Luiseiios and of the Coahuillas. Many words are identical, or very
nearly so, in all ; and a great many others show slight or recognizable
variations. The similarity between the languages spoken at San Juan
Capistrano and San Luis Rey and the languages of the Luisenos and
Coahuillas is much greater than the resemblance that connects these
with the tongues of San Gabriel and San Fernando. The Coahuillas
hunted and settled almost up the San Gabriel river, and yet the lin-
guistic differences, as well as the relations between themselves and the
Gabrielefios are decided, but a sufficient similarity exists to connect
them all in one family.

I suggest for the designation of this great group of Shoshonean
Indians and tongues the term "Coahuillan linguistic family," following
Major Powell's method of adding an or ian to the name of the most

1 California Farmer, Vol. XVI, No. 15.

LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 23

prominent tribe to form the title for the family. The Coahuillas were
and are the most powerful and best known of all these tribes. They
are the only one that preserved in common use their own designation
of themselves, and they are the only people of this family, except the
Luisefios, who have survived as a nation to the present time. For
all these reasons I consider the designation a good one.

In announcing this widespread linguistic relationship I am simply
reiterating, after the most general study possible, a fact previously
understood and stated, as has already appeared.

Major McKinstry, writing in the San Francisco Herald under date
of June, 1853, spoke of the immense area of San Diego county as con-
taining

about 3,000 Indians, divided into three distinct nations or tribes : Yumas,
500 ; Coahuillas, 2,000 ; Dieguinas, 500. The two last-named tribes are

again subdivided into mission or Christianized Indians and gentiles

The Dieguinas reside in the southern part of the county, and claim the land
from a point on the Pacific to the eastern foot of the mountains impinging on
the desert. The Coahuillas reside in the northern half of the county and
southern part of Los Angeles ; they claim a strip of country commencing on
the coast and extending to within fifty miles of the Colorado river, following
the eastern base of the mountains. The division of territory is well known
to, and recognized by, the Indians.

About 500 of the Coahuilla nation originally belonged to the mission of
San Luis Rey, and are now residing at Pala, Temecula, Ahuanga, Agua
Caliente, San Jacinto, and some few at and about the missions. A portion of
the Coahuillas never acknowledged allegiance to the missions, and, of course,
were not subservient to the will of the friars. Yet no villages of theirs, not
excepting those on the desert east of the mountains, fail to send forth repre-
sentatives during the harvest in the southern counties of the state.1

9. It is important to understand the peculiar connection of the Coa-
huillas with the Pah Ute and Chemehuevi branches ; because, this being
true, we shall expect to find their mode of life, their foods, and their
ethno-botany in general influenced by these desert tribes, and we shall
not be surprised to discover among the Coahuillas many ethnographic
details that suggest the life of Indians living far to the east of them.
It is important to notice that the Coahuillas have remained in close
and constant connection with their Shoshone kinsmen. In spite of
Buschmann's conclusion that the " Chemehuevi and the Cahuillo lan-
guages are so foreign to one another that they possess for nearly all ideas
wholly different words," it is true that the relations of the Coahuillas with

1 Quoted in the California Farmer, February 15, 1861.

24 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

the Chemehuevi have always been and still are most intimate. There
seems to be more friendly feeling and more intimacy between these
two tribes belonging to different linguistic families than between the
Coahuillas and any of the other Indians of their own family, who speak
an almost identical dialect, as the Luisefios, for example. The Cheme-
huevi, from their reservation on the Colorado river, are still frequent
guests in the jacales of the Coahuillas, and come annually to the San
Bernadino mountains, north of the Cabeson, to hunt. Coahuilla
Indians have even told me that the two tribes formerly constituted one
nation and that their languages are still but little different. This seems
at variance with the linguistic evidence that has so far been presented.
But the vocabularies that we have of the Chemehuevi are very scanty.
A fuller study of these two languages may reveal a closer similarity
than has before this been discovered, and that is, I believe, in accord-
ance with the historical relations of these two tribes.

The reports of the Indian agents in southern California speak often
of this connection. For instance, as late as 1871 Mr. Stevens reported
that "the Coahuillas are far less civilized (than the mission Indians)
and affiliate more with the wild Indians of the plains and the Colorado
river."1 A plan being proposed about this time to establish a common
reservation for all the Indians of southern California, Don Juan Foster,
of Los Angeles, stated that the Coahuillas would not affiliate with the
other "mission tribes."2 On the other hand, it was frequently pro-
posed by government representatives among these Indians that the
Coahuillas be removed to the Colorado and established on a reservation
with the Chemehuevi. During all these years the Chemehuevi were
troublesome Indians. The reports frequently complain of their depre-
dations. They seem to have been involved for years in difficulties
with the Mojaves, and these latter, being much the stronger nation,
would drive them from their villages on the Colorado. They would then
cross the desert with numbers doubtless augmented by renegade Coa-
huillas and run off stock from the San Bernadino valley. Mr. J. Q. A.
Stanley, special Indian agent, wrote from Los Angeles in 1866 :

The Chimchinvis on the Colorado river and the Pah Utes of the desert
have been quite troublesome during the last year. Several persons have been
killed by them and many animals stolen. These Indians are composed of
roving bands, having no fixed habitation, but changing from one watering
place in the desert to another, in order to pick up a precarious living.3

iReportofthe Indian Commissioner, 1871, p. 691.

z/oid., p. 161.

zRept. Ind. Com., 1866, p. 102.

HABITAT OF THE COAHUILLAS 25

A year later Mr. Stanley, having made a visit to the desert villages
of the Coahuillas, wrote :

At Agua Caliente (a Coahuilla rancheria in Palm Valley, east of San Ber-
nadino) I found the principal chief of the Chemehuevis, a tribe that has been
living on the west side of the Colorado river above La Paz. These Indians,
having engaged in a war with the Mojaves, were beaten, and after the loss of
many of their number were obliged to flee for protection to the Coahuillas of
Cabeson valley, and were living on the mescal plant and such other food as
they could pick up.

The route traveled between these two tribes is an almost direct trail
running eastward from the Cabeson valley to the Colorado. In places
this path has been worn deep in the ridges of rock over which it passes.
The Indians take about two days to make the trip.

CHAPTER II.

THE HABITAT OF THE COAHUILLAS.

10. The eastern half of southern California is everywhere a desert,
separated from the coast by the lofty elevations of the Sierras and the
Coast Range. Northward in Inyo county is the sterile and dangerous
depression famous as Death Valley. Southward, stretching from the
Colorado to the Sierras, is the Mojave, the most elevated and least
barren of these plains. Although its appearance is desolate, owing to
the volcanic character of its rocks and its drifting beds of sand, the
southern portion, now traversed by the Santa Fe Railway route, bears
a valuable growth of bushes, contains many water holes, and has
always proved a safe and direct route of travel. It was crossed by the
old Mormon road from Salt Lake City to San Bernadino, as well as
the overland trail from Santa Fe, both roads meeting near the western
side of the desert on the Mojave river. The San Bernadino range
and a low spur running southeastward to the Colorado river, where it
is known as the Chocolate mountains, separate the Mojave from the
Colorado desert. This great depressed area occupies almost the whole
southern part of the state and the northeastern part of Lower Cali-
fornia, clear to the Gulf. The northwestern portion, enclosed by the
San Bernadino range and the San Jacinto mountains, is the Coahuilla
or Cabeson valley, the present home of the desert Coahuilla Indians.
This valley is reached from the coast by the San Gorgonio pass. From
Colton eastward, there is a long and continuous ascent for thirty miles,

26 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

or nearly to Banning, where the divide is reached. From this point
there is a descent through the pass into the Cabeson valley. Immedi-
ately from here onward one recognizes that the country and life have
changed. Dry, gravelly stretches take the place of the red, alluvial
soil on the other side of the summit. Stunted creosote bushes dot
the plain, but there is an absence of trees and less hardy kinds of
vegetation. Where the pass widens out into the valley the road
crosses the White Water river. This considerable and refreshing
stream, flowing from the snow peak of Mount San Gorgonio on the
north side of the pass, pours itself across the rocky canon, and then
turning east onto the sands disappears before it has gone a mile. The
descent is still very rapid. Vast deposits of wind-drifted sand impede
one's progress and desolate the upper end of the valley. Gradually,
however, these disappear, and the soil becomes a fine dark silt, the
alluvial floor of an ancient fresh-water lake of wide extent, over which
are dotted "montes " or clumps of mesquite, amidst which the Coa-
huillas have for generations dug their wells and built their homes.

ii. Underneath the soft deposits of soil that cover the Cabeson
valley there is a constant seepage of the waters that, falling upon the
desert faces of the mountains, sink into the hot sand of the desert as
soon as they emerge from the canons and gorges of the hills. The
depth of this subsurface flow varies in different parts of the valley,
being greatest at the upper end. Indian Wells, west of Indio, is
twenty-five to thirty feet deep, but in the lower parts of the Cabeson,
toward the Salton Sink, water is reached at from twelve to sixteen
feet below the level of the sand. In his most delightful work, the
Discovery of America, Mr. John Fiske, in reviewing the culture of the
southwest tribes of the United States, speaks of their irrigating as
" mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump or well, which seem to have
been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal Americans of whatever
grade."1 The statement is in part disproved by the Coahuillas. For
generations they have been well-diggers. Their very occupation of
this desert was dependent on their discovery of this art. The whole
valley of the Cabeson is dotted with wells, most of them marking sites
of homes long ago abandoned, the wells themselves being now only
wide pits partly filled with sand, but many dug in the old way still
remain, supporting life and giving refreshment miles and miles away
from the rocky walls where the streams of the mountains disappear in
the sands. These wells are usually great pits with terraced sides

i Fiske, The Discovery of America, Vol. I, p. 84.

HABITA7 OF THE COAHUILLAS 27

leading down to the narrow hole at the bottom where the water
sparkles, built in such a way that a woman with an olla on her head
can walk to the very water's edge and dip her painted vessel full. The
deeper it is down to the water, the larger, of course, is the excavation
and the greater the diameter across its upper terrace. The Coahuillas
call these wells tema-kd-wo-mal-em, a pretty figure. Kd-wo-mal is the
word for a tinaja or water olla, and temal is the word for the earth or
the ground. There is no question but that the Coahuillas learned of
themselves to dig these wells, and this practice cannot perhaps be
paralleled elsewhere among American Indians.

The low San Bernadinos to the north of the Cabeson valley are
called by the Coahuillas Kd-wish-Po-po-ku-ut, or the "mountains of
mesquite and tules," a name which their desolate, sandy appearance
belies. The splendid San Jacinto range on the south is called the
Kdwish-wa-wat-dcha, or the "lofty mountains." Across the San Ber-
nadino hills is the way to the Chemehuevi country, and behind these
peaks these Indians annually make their camps when they come to
this region to hunt mountain sheep. Up the San Jacinto ridges, dark
and gloomy with shadows, run the ancient trails by which the
Coahuillas entered the mountains and became hillsmen, as well as men
of the desert. These trails — or " pit-em," as the Indians call them —
are almost unmarked paths. They ordinarily climb out of the desert
across some great alluvial fan of canon detritus and then follow up
some deep gorge until the roughness of its torrent-swept bottom com-
pels one to pull his scrambling pony up onto the great black
ridges, that look like the giant vertabrae of fossil monsters. Water is
terribly scarce in these mountains, and most of these trails converge
at a little valley north of a peak of the range, Torres mountain. This
valley is known to hunters as " Pifion Flats," from its forest of juniper,
and here water can always be found. Long ago there was a small
village here, and the site is still known to the Indians by its old
name, Kwdle-ki. High up on the northern side of Torres was
another called Pd-nach-sa. These villages seem to have been halfway
camps between the desert and the mountain rancherias farther on, and
probably never more than a few families occupied them at a time.
The elevation is five or six thousand feet higher than the desert, and
the air bracing and fine. And from these eyries one can gain a wide
view of the Coahuillas' home.

These mountains, arid as they are, and scantily supplied with vegeta-
tion as they seem to be, are nevertheless rich in botanical species, and

28 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

the region is one of wondrous interest to the collector and of great
value to the Indian, for it is from here that there come many of his
most valued plant products.

12. The peculiarities of desert life have been often remarked. The
physical and social effects upon the plant and animal species inhabit-
ing the desert have been suggestively stated by Mr. W J McGee from
observations on the Papago country.1 The conditions of the desert
are such as to produce remarkable adaptations and many aberrant
forms. In the hot air and long drought, a rapidly transpiring plant
would soon wither and die, hence on the desert flora there is a marked
absence of foliage. Leaves are small and tightly curled or else greatly
modified, as in the yucca, agave, and cactus families. Verdure per-
vades the permanent body of the plant, giving a uniform green tinge
to trunks and stems. Many adaptive devices for storing water are to
be noticed : the pulpy, robust trunk of the great " saguaro " or the
" pitahaya," the broad, flat-jointed stalk of the " nopal," the hollow
stem of the " opuntia " are all reservoirs, containing large amounts of
hoarded moisture. Protective modifications are universal. All the
typical plants bristle with spines and thorns, a prickly armature guard-
ing every leaf and stem. Other forms exude a hardening lacquer, which
frequently covers seeds as well as bark. Others cover themselves with
a sticky gum or are furnished with a stiff pilage or are roughly furred
to catch every drop of the scant rainfall or dew. The more tender
plants shrink and hide away beneath their formidable congeners.

On the other hand, all species of fauna assume protective coloring.
The gray body of the coyote slips away from view and quickly loses
form against the parallel shades of volcanic rock and sand dune ; the
mottled backs of the small lizards are hardly to be distinguished from
the gravels on which they lie. Beautiful examples of coloring and
protective mimicry are to be noted in the beetles and other insects of
the desert. Another class of desert fauna, the deer, the antelope, the
jack-rabbit and the coyote, as well as the various hawks that balance
over the arid plain, have developed great speed and marvelous stay-
ing power. The sluggish creatures, from the rattlesnake and the helo-
derma to the ant and centipede, have a defensive venom. The little
horned lizard, like the plants among which it darts, has an armature
of short spines.

Such in general are the characteristics of life everywhere on the
southern parts of the American desert. The Colorado desert, the

* American Anthropologist, Vol. VIII, pp. 350 ff.

HABITAT OF THE COAHUILLAS 29

particular home at present of the Coahuilla Indians, has, however,
bizarre features peculiarly its own.

13. This arm of the desert was in very recent geologic time an arm
of the Gulf of California. More than 1,600 square miles is still below
the level of the sea, the most depressed portion being 275 feet lower
than the ocean.

The Colorado river in its course south to the ocean built up a flood plain
on a higher level that finally shut off the western part from a direct com-
munication with the sea, and evaporation, with a gradual uplifting of the
whole section, finally laid it bare, although leaving a great part of it below
the present sea level.1

The waters of the Colorado, 275 feet above sea level at Yuma, break
through their banks at the summer season of high water and flow south-
westward and then northward and inland forming a widely inundated
area with many sloughs, the best known being the New river. This
formerly took place in sufficient volume to form in the center of the
valley a huge inland lake, a vestige of which still remains in the Saline
lagoon at Salton.

There are three principal soil levels noticed in crossing the desert :
an upper, made of great " alluvial fans," which skirt the western mountain
ranges and are formed of great masses of rock, gravel, and detritus,
washed by cloud-bursts from the hillsides and swept far out over the
sands; mingled with this layer are bits of silicified wood and oyster
shells ; second, a sandy middle layer, representing the former bed of
the sea ; and, third, a lower layer of clay or fine silt, laid down in still
water and extending for many miles", representing the bed of the
former fresh-water lake and subsequent lagoons, that are even now
occasionally filled by water from the New river overflows. Over the
surface of this latter level are scattered great quantities of fresh-water
shells, mostly small univalves Amnicola protea and A. longinqua and the
Physa humorosa, and a single bivalve, a species of Anodon now found
in the Colorado river {A. Californiensis Led). The physa is also some-
times found, still inhabiting springs on the New river.2

The great horror of the desert is, of course, its heat and the absence
of water. To venture upon it without a guide, to miss ones way, or to
find an expected water hole dry or obliterated by a shifting drift of

*E. B. Preston, California State Mining Bureau, Fourth Report of the State Mineralogist, 1893.

2 The desert was first carefully studied and its physiographic characters learned and beautifully

described by Mr. William P. Blake, of the Pacific Railroad Survey, 1853. His report on the Colorado

still remains the only complete study of this most attractive region. Exploration and Surveys for

Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, Vol. V. Washington, D. C, 1857.

3© EIHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

sand, means almost certain death. Madness relieves the sufferer of
sensibility long before the end comes, and nearly every year lives are
thus lost within this fatal area. Springs occasionally peep out from
beneath an overhanging boulder or cliff along the mountain side or rise
in small pools along the elsewhere dry bed of a stream. These twinkling
lakelets are called by the (ZodfavXXXds pal-he-push-em or " eyes of water."
Down on the desert, along the dry washes of the Colorado river over-
flow, are numerous lagoons which hold water for many months at a
time, and in certain regions underground seepage is present and may
be reached by digging. Such springs are the " Indian Wells," a
former station on the Yuma road above Indio, and farther south
" Coyote Wells." At Salton, in the most depressed portion of the
desert, a lake forty miles long and several wide, rose suddenly in the
summer of 1892, causing considerable consternation and many strange
rumors. Investigation showed that there was taking place an unusu-
ally large overflow from the Colorado. The excessive saltiness of the
water, however, occasioned at the time theories of subterranean com-
munication with the Gulf. It might be stated here that the lagoon at
Salton is excessively saline, and having of old been a source of salt
supply for the Indians, even from the coast, is now worked by the New
Liverpool Salt Co.

The evidence of volcanic action is everywhere present. Volcanic
rock and pieces of pumice abound. Black lava buttes and extinct
craters, notably the beautiful and perfect crater, below the line, known as
the Cerro Prieto, rise from the plain, and thermal springs are common.

But perhaps the most striking phenomena of any part of the
American desert are the "mud volcanoes." These "volcanoes" are
found in two regions on the Colorado, one near the south end of
Salton sink, the other near Volcano lake in the Cocopah country of
Lower California. They first attracted attention and perhaps date
from the heavy earthquakes that occurred on the desert in 1 85 2 soon
after the establishment of the military post of Fort Yuma. Those
near Volcano lake were noticeable for the heavy cloud of steam they
threw off, and were at once visited by Lieutenant Heintzleman, com-
manding officer of the post.1 Later these were visited by Dr. John L.
Le Conte,2 while those near the Salton sink were well described a
little later by Dr. Veatch.3 They are rather boiling springs of mud or

1 Emory, Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. I, p. 105; Pac. R. R. Reports, Vol. V, p. 115.

2 " An Account of Some Volcanic Springs in the Desert of the Colorado, in Southern California,"
American Journal of Science and Arts, Second Series, Vol. XIX, May, 1855.

3 " Notes of a Visit to the Mud Volcanoes in the Colorado Desert in the Month of July, 1857," Pro-
ceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 1857, p. 104; republished in American Journal of
Sciences and Arts, Second Series, 1858, Vol. XXVI, p. 286.

HABITAT OF THE COAHUILLAS 31

"salses" that have thrown up mud cones three to fifteen feet high about
their orifices. Masses of mud with jets of hot water are thrown up,
sometimes to a height of many feet, and vapors of water, sulphur, and
sal ammoniac are thrown off with eruptive explosions audible for
many miles. One of these bubbling mud springs occupies a crater-
like depression twenty-five feet deep near the station called Volcano
on the Southern Pacific railroad.1

The atmospheric conditions are fully in keeping with the other
features of the desert. A temperature in summer during the day-
time of ii5°-i2o° is not uncommon in the coolest and shadiest spot
attainable. Owing to the exceeding dryness of the air, however, moisture
from the body evaporates very rapidly, and even this extreme heat is
not very hard to endure. A large supply of water is, however, for the
white man an essential. Through the whole course of the desert,
from Yuma to San Gorgonio there rages much of the time a furious
storm of wind and sand. Its effects are most curious. The moun-
tains on the northern side of the pass are piled almost to their summits
with drifted sand. Enormous dunes collect at this side of the
valley and vast stretches of the desert are left as smooth and clean of
vegetation as a plowed and harrowed field. The wagons of parties
crossing the desert along this one hundred and fifty mile sand-swept
line are buried to their boxes every night by the drifted sand piles.
The effects of this silica-laden wind are as terrific as a sand-blast.
Telegraph poles are rapidly worn away and have to be frequently
renewed. The windows of the section houses or pieces of broken
bottles left on the sand are soon converted into ground glass.

Rain seldom falls on this desert in a natural manner. When it
comes it is in terrific water-spouts or cloud-bursts that flood the
country briefly like a lake and cut great gullies, twenty-five feet deep,
in the sand. For miles the railroad track is little but a succession of
culverts bridging these steep barrancas.

14. Some portions of the desert, as we have noticed, support
quantities of the mesquite as well as the agave ; others are absolutely
destitute of any vegetation whatever. Among characteristic plants
are the Larrea Mexicana or " creosote bush," so called because of its
peculiar odor. Its leaves are small and sticky, and it bears a yellow
flower. The "palo verde" {Parkensonia Torreyana) is so named by
the Mexicans because of the pale green color of its branches. Its

1 For a more extended account of these mud volcanoes, as well as of the Colorado overflow, see the
present writer's article, " The Colorado Desert," in the National Geographic Magazine for September,
1900.

32 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

bright yellow blossoms hang in long clusters all over the tree and are
much visited by bees. The leaves are small, awlshaped bodies, almost
invisible ; the branches probably contain the stomata as do the trunks of
the cacti. The "ochotilla" (Fouquiera spinosd) is one of the most
remarkable of desert plants. The trunk is very short and branches
into a number of long, whip-like shoots covered with curved spines,
an inch or so long. The flowers are bright red, forming clusters at
the end of the shoots, and succeeded by oblong capsules filled with
minute seeds.1 These plants, with stunted greasewood and sage
bushes, as well as the different varieties of opuntia and echinocactus,
are among the very common and most striking plants of the desert.
In the spring a few pretty annuals appear, some bearing beautiful
flowers. The dry mountain sides and the canons above the desert
enrich the Indians' ethno-botany with many species of plants which
we will notice later.

But the most striking botanical feature of the desert is its canons of
palms. The best known of these are at the southern end of Palm
Valley. Here two long rocky canons are filled for miles with these
beautiful trees. Many of them rise forty feet high covered with the
persistent bases and sheathes of dead leaves, while at the top they are
crowned with long, graceful fronds. These tops droop closely together,
filling the narrow canon from side to side and affording a grateful
shade. The approach to these spots is sudden and the sight most
unexpected and amazing. Such luxuriant, tropical vegetation would
never be looked for in the midst of such sterile surroundings. The
pools of water impounded in the bottoms of the canons explain their
presence. Many strange theories have been evoked to account for the
existence here of these stately trees. It has even been stated that they
have sprung from seed dropped by the thoughtful Franciscan friars,
who were supposed to have journeyed through here, but the plant is
an indigenous one, the Washingtonia filifera, and the same species, as
well as another, are to be found in the Cocopah and Sierra Madre
mountains of Lower California, Guadaloupe island, and the Mexican
mainland.

15. The villages or rancherias of the Coahuillas, at the present
time, are as follows. Their last villages in the San Bernadino and San
Jose valleys were broken up thirty years or so ago, and, although they
still come to the vicinity of Redlands and Riverside in search of work,
their camps in these places are no longer permanent homes. They

1 J. F. James, "The Colorado Desert," Popular Science Monthly, 1881, Vol. XX, p. 384.

HABITAT OF THE COAHUILLAS 33

were driven from the San Timoteo canon in the forties by the ravages
of small-pox, and the first reservation to be met now, as one rides east-
ward through the pass where they once held sway, is below Banning,
at Potrero, a fertile spot, irrigated by the water from a canon of Mount
San Gorgonio. Here live several hundred Coahuillas and Serranos
who have considerably intermarried — the ancient antipathy having
broken down. A few miles into the desert from the White Water,
sheltered on the west by the lofty summit of the San Jacinto and on
the east by a friendly spur of the same range, is Palm Valley. About
a famous thermal spring there is a little oasis in the sand where has
long been located a rancheria of the Coahuillas, known as Agua Caliente.
Pushing around the spur that forms the eastern wall of this nook and
following the line of the mountains along the old stage road through
Indio to Yuma, one comes to "Indian Wells." Fifty years ago, when
the Pacific Railroad Survey passed through this valley, this site was a
notable village. Mr. Blake in his report comments especially on the
wells and the villages here, where the expedition camped.1 Now the
site has long been abandoned. The burned stumps of the framework
of houses stick up above the sand in the openings between the mesquite
clumps. Everywhere there are quantities of broken bits of pottery, as
tough as when first baked. There are many flat grinding stones for
milling seeds and an occasional fine stone pestle, seventeen or eighteen
inches long, that was used for pounding mesquite beans. But the
Indian occupants have fled.

There is a small village at Indio and a few miles east, the very
interesting rancheria of Cabeson, furtherest of any across the valley
and not far from the slopes of the San Bernadino mountains, into which
the women of this village range for the plants they need. Southward
and in the very center of the plain is La Mesa, hidden in the mesquite
and with splendid, typically dug, wells. Further on and close under
the shadows of the eastern ranges of San Jacinto are Torres and
Martinez, while still further on are Alamo and Agua Dulce. These
names, it will be noticed, are Spanish and have obtained universal
currency among Indians and whites, but the old Coahuilla place-names
are still treasured by some of the Indians. Potrero is Mal-ki; Agua
Caliente, Se-chi; Indio, Pal te-wat ("water and pine tree") ; Cabeson,
Pal se-ta (" alkali water ") ; La Mesa, Temal-wa-hish (" the dry ground "
a name often used by the mountain Indians for the desert in general) ;
Martinez, So-kut Men-yil (" deer, moon" so-called, as explained to me

^■Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. V.

34 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

by a very old Indian, because it was once a famous place in which to
hunt the deer in the moonlight) ; Alamo, La-wil-van or Si-vel (" cotton-
wood trees"); Agua Dulce, To-va; Indian Wells, Kd-vi-nish.

Returning to the mountains once more, among the rocks and pines
on the south side of the isolated summit of Torres is a rough little valley,
traversed by a small, rapid stream, to which the Indians long ago
penetrated. Here is the interesting village of Santa Rosa, We-wut-now-hu
("pines"). These Indians make their homes during the winter months
in the Coyote canon, a wide, sandy arm of the desert, thrust in south
of Torres. Across this valley is the Coyote range of mountains. Up
the "sides of these mountains the Coahuillas found their way and
established themselves in a beautiful and remote little glade, now known
as the San Ignacio (Pd-cha-wat). Cut off on all sides by the desert
and high ridges, rarely visited by whites, this village, as might be
expected, presents the greatest appearance of Indian comfort and
prosperity. The valley is only a mile or two in length, but a stream
of water flows through its center, leaving meadows and garden plots on
each side ; oaks crowd the canon at its lower end and, although the
surrounding mountains are unwooded except with low, impenetrable
chaparral and from every point of vantage one sees nothing but the
burning sands of the desert, the glade itself is charming ; a kind of
Indian's Happy Valley.

From San Ignacio there is a steep wagon road leading southward
out of the mountains to Warner's ranch. Half-way down the mountain
is another pretty valley, San Isidro {Ho-la-kat), where live a few
families of Coahuillas. Warner's ranch is perhaps the dividing terri-
tory between the Diegefios and Coahuillas. The two great waves of
Indian emigration across the desert, Yuman and Shoshonean, appear
to touch here. Agua Caliente, the famous hot springs of Warner's
ranch, seems to have a mixed population of Diegefios and Coahuillas.
The Coahuillas call the village Ko-pa.1

1 6. The Coyote canon, which we noticed above, in spite of its
sandy appearance, is exceedingly fertile. It receives the small streams
from the mountains on both sides of it and these waters, spreading out
and sinking into the sand, occasion subsurface moisture. The agave
grows here abundantly and grass springs up luxuriantly after every
freshet. It is a veritable harvest field for the Indians. Westward from
the Coyote rise the ridges of the San Jacinto mountains — rough, barren

i " At Agua Calienta," says Taylor, "was a very populous rancheria, called Ha-koo-pin."
(" Indianalogy of California," California Farmer, Vol. XIII, p. 90.)

HO USES AND HO USE-B UILDING 3 5

hills, piled with huge granite boulders of exfoliation, covered below
with thickets of chaparral and higher up dotted with juniper trees and
other conifers. After twenty-five miles of tortuous climbing a narrow
canon leads one out into the mountain Coahuilla valley (usually writ-
ten Cahuilla), where is a reservation eight miles in length, the home of
the majority of the mountain Indians. The elevation is about 4,000
feet above the sea level or the plain of the desert ; frost occurs at night
almost every month in the year and the cold climate is in marked con-
trast to the heat of the desert. There is little wooded vegetation, the
valley being below the pine level. Great boulders are piled every-
where over the surface of the ridges that divide the whole valley into
little retreats. There are, however, numerous springs, and the valley is
rich with grass. It is in easy communication with the valleys and towns
to the eastward, and Pechanga, the nearest village of the Luiserios, is
distant perhaps forty miles, but only the rough and dim trails connect
this valley with the Coyote, San Ignacio, Santa Rosa, Torres, and Palm
Valley, routes almost unknown to the whites.

CHAPTER III.

HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING.

17. The houses of a Coahuilla mountain rancheria are not grouped
in a village, but are scattered about as widely as the habitable portions
of the reservation allow. Each family occupies a cluster of little
dwellings by itself and near it are usually some attempts at cultivation
of the soil. The sites chosen are small eminences or gentle slopes
bordering the valley; water is, of course, a consideration, but the
spring may be at some distance, from which the needed supply will be
brought daily in an olla by a woman. There is a strange quietness
surrounding these homes, a quietness frequently saddened by the
absence of little children. No loud voices are heard ; the ordinary
work of the household goes forward awaking but little sound. There is
little social intercourse except at times of the feasts, and a strange and
sombre loneliness hangs over an Indian village, especially at nightfall.
Yet these primitive Indian homes have a charm and picturesqueness
all their own. In the desert villages, where the inhabitants are drawn
more closely together about the most available source of water, the
homes are clustered within a narrower area with a corresponding gain
in social advantages.

36 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

1 8. The Coahuilla house, or rather houses, for there are several types,
is a rather interesting ethnographical study. The most typical habita-
tion is the jacal. Jacal is a Mexican word in wide use, derived from
the Aztec xa-calli, meaning a "house of straw." The Coahuilla word
for "house" is kish, but an jacal is commonly called samat, a word
meaning also the brush and grass from which it is constructed. The
most typical jacal is perhaps to be found in the mountain villages.
The work of building is done by the men. A quantity of stout poles
six to ten feet long and from four to five inches in diameter are cut
from the " greasewood," Coahuilla o-ot {Adenostoma fasiculatd), which
in these mountains attains the dimensions of a small tree. Sometimes
for the heavier pieces branches and trunks of the great manzanita
(Arcostaphylos glauca), which grows sometimes twenty feet high and
has a most beautiful bark of a reddish brown or mahogany color, are
used. At other times various species of mountain oak. The site for
the home is marked off in a rectangle, perhaps twelve by eighteen feet,
or smaller, according to the size desired. The trunks are trimmed so
as to leave a crotch at the smaller end. One is then sunk at each
corner of the proposed dwelling, leaving about four feet above ground.
Midway between each two end-posts is planted a larger, stouter trunk,
also crotched at the top and rising eight or nine feet above ground.
These six posts form the perpendicular framework of the building,
though a seventh may be set up about thirty inches to the side of
the central post at the front end, and with it form the sides of the
door. Three long poles are then cut and laid horizontally between the
corners and central posts, resting in the crotches and forming the
ridgepoles and sidebeams. Other poles are put on for rafters, and
across these and parallel to the ridgepole are laid many other lighter
pieces at intervals of six or eight inches. Ridgepole, sidebeams,
rafters, and every piece is bound tightly in its place with green, pliant
leaves or fronds of the Yucca Mohavensis. Stakes are driven in along
the sides and at the end, then brush of the salix (the willow is called
by the Coahuillas sak-hat) is wattled in very close to form the walls,
which may then be chinked or roughly plastered with mud — if pos-
sible, adobe. For the thatching, the "tule" or bulrush is used. The
tule is of well-known importance to the Indians of California. Sev-
eral species of the scripus are carefully distinguished by the Coa-
huillas, according to the form of the rush or stalk, by the names
pa-ul-em, pang-at-em, ku-ut-em, etc. These varieties grow about springs
or small cienegas, and are all of them of value for thatching. They

HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING 37

are spread out in flat bundles and poles are laid laterally across
them to hold them in place. Strips of yucca fronds are here also used
in binding on this thatching. Other materials used for thatching are
various grasses and reeds ; in the Coahuilla mountains the Elymus
condensatus or pd-han-kis, and the reed Phragmites communis. The
walls of the home are called kish-ga-ow ; there are no windows in
the jacal ; the door is ki-mil, and is made four and a half to five feet
in height and two to three in width. A stout po,le fastened across the
end of the house above the door makes a lintel for the opening. The
aperture may be closed at night by hanging "up a rawhide or setting
up before it a rude framework of poles, held in place by a brace or a
stone or two. For the sake of security many of the jacales are now
closed with a board door swung on raw-hide or iron hinges and secured
by padlock and chain. The ground inside the jacal is usually excavated
a few inches lower than the surrounding level, and is trodden hard so
as to form a smooth, clean floor. In the center, beneath the smoke-
hole, which is left in the thatching at one side of the ridgepole, a
slight depression, with three or four fire-stones to support the fuel,
makes the hearth. The jacal is often banked up with earth a foot or
two on the outside.

To accommodate the usual family two or three such buildings are
needed. These usually face each other about a little patio or court,
but one may be joined to the rear end of another, and in such cases is
used for the most part as a store-room. The patio, which the Coahuil-
las call wa-yi-ios, is, except in cold or stormy weather, the meeting
place of all the family. It is surrounded by a low brush fence or wall,
which wards off the wind and also serves as a clothes line, utensil rack,
etc. In summer time the patio is roofed over and partially inclosed
by an airy booth, known everywhere throughout southern California
by the Spanish word ramada, from ramas, "boughs" or "branches."
The Coahuillas call it t&ish-kish-la. It is the most comfortable of
summer houses. The breeze draws through it, keeping it cool and
pleasant, when outside of this leafy retreat the sun may be beating
with scorching heat upon the valley. It is made square with flat top.
The frame work is of light poles, tied with yucca spines, and the roof
and walls are of willow boughs.

The admirable features of the jacal can be instantly appreciated.
It is easily kept clean and is always well aired. Its only drawback is
that it is smoky, especially in wet weather. The rafters and thatching
are black and shiny from the soot of many fires. Not the least of its

38 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

hygienic features is the fact that, being easily built, it does not outlast
its freshness. As soon as dilapidation appears and the dirt collects in
the corners, down it comes and a new one takes its place on a fresh
site a few yards away. It is seldom that all the houses of a family are
left the same for two successive years.

In the hot months the family usually moves into summer quarters.
The patches of maize, melons, and vegetables ripening at this time are
likely to be at some little distance from the permanent home. So on
the edge of the garden a ramada is built, and here are moved the
metates, pots, water jars, and other needful plunder, and a picnic
begins which ends only when the supply of garden truck is exhausted.

19. The above description of an jacal is such a one as appears,
for instance, in the mountain Coahuilla valley. Form, and especially
materials, will vary greatly elsewhere. At Santa Rosa, the houses are
made of slabs of cedar from the trees among which the village lies.
These slabs are planted upright in the ground to form the sides, the
chinks are filled with mud, and the flat or slightly pitched roof is
made of poles covered with cedar bark.

In Palm Valley are perhaps the most beautiful jacales to be seen
anywhere, for here are utilized the large palm leaves of the Washing-
tonia fililera. The pole framework is made as usual, but the thatching
and sides are made of these beautiful fronds.

In the Cabeson villages the houses are built higher at the sides
with roofs sloping much more gently from the ridgepole. A favorite
material here is a tall thrifty plant, hang-al (the Artemisia Ludoviciana,
Nutt.), which is piled upon the roof and wattled in closely to form the
walls. Dirt is then piled on the roof and mud daubed thickly on the
sides. Some of these latter contain several rooms built on to one
another and are high, roomy, and really comfortable. On the desert
the posts, rafters, etc. are, of course, cut from the hard imperishable
mesquite (Prosopis ju li flora).

20. The evolution of the typical jacal is a little doubtful. Tem-
porary quarters, often erected for a few weeks' sojourn, many summer
booths and an occasional structure put together in an out-of-the-way
place by some old Indian, suggest that the primitive Coahuilla home
was quite different. Such as those just mentioned are generally nearly
circular or oblong in ground-plan, and are built by simply setting
up two or three crotched poles near together and connected with
poles, and leaning around these long limbs and branches. Over this
rude framework is piled grass or tule thatching. This is much like the

HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING 39

"wick-i-up" of Apache or Have-su-pai, and suggests those described
in Fray Crespi's Viage, seen on the Los Angeles coast, round and dome-
shaped like half an orange with a smoke hole in the center of the roof.1

The possible outlines of the old dwellings at Indian Wells are still
preserved by the short stumps of posts sticking above the sand. These
houses seem to have been made by setting half a dozen posts close
together in a rectangle or square and leaning against these all around
side-poles and brush, making a circular "hogan."

These facts might suggest that the round structures still in use
among the Coahuillas are the only abodes of native origin ; the jacal
being due to white influence and suggestion. This would be, however,
a very hasty generalization. The principles of ridgepole, sloping roof,
and upright sides were, with little doubt, derived from the housebuild-
ing of the Colorado River Indians, the Mojaves, Yumas, and Coco-
pahs. The patterns in the Cabeson and on the Colorado are very
similar. The lower sides and more sloping roofs of the mountains
were probably developed under the necessity of shedding the rain and
snow.

The houses of the Coahuillan tribes on the coast valleys, unaffected
by the Colorado tribes, seem to have been of a possibly wholly differ-
ent type. Mr. Reid says: "Their huts were made of sticks, covered
in around with flag mats worked or plaited, and each village contained
from 500 to 1,500 huts." 2

21. The feast booths or ramadas constructed in every village merit
a word of description. When intended for local purposes only they
are simply large, square, flat-topped ramadas, usually enclosed on only
three sides. Such booths exist in many villages for dances by the
inhabitants of the rancherias at all times of the year. They will be
used also for tribal councils, for celebrations of mass at the rare visita-
tions of the priest, and for other public purposes. When, however, a
great annual feast takes place, like that of the Fiesta of San Luis in
the Coahuilla mountains, every August, to which are invited not only
Coahuillas from every village, but also Indians of other tribes, espe-
cially the Diegefios, the ramada is quite another affair. Here a line of
connected booths,- two rooms deep, is built about the sides of a great
court, 200 by 300 feet in area, a structure capable of lodging sev-
eral hundred persons. It is built of poles and willow boughs and

* " La rancheria se compone de viente casas hechas de zacate de forma esferica a modo de uno media
naranja con su respiradero en lo alto por donde les entra la luz y tiene salida el humo." (In Doc. His.
Mex., series iv, torn, vi, p. 314; quoted by Bancroft, Vol. I, p. 404, note.)

2" The Indians of Los Angeles County," California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 146.

4° ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

affords ample protection from the sun and suitable seclusion. Accom-
modations in such a ramada are vastly superior to any tent, being com-
modious,, airy, and cool. The construction of the ramada occupies
the resident Indians several weeks, but it is usually torn to pieces for
firewood during the winter, and a new one is made on a fresh site each
recurring season. Nearby are built corrals and feeding racks for the
horses.

The Coahuillas seldom build barns of any description, their rough
little ponies running loose in all sorts of weather, but pigpens and
chicken-houses are made of poles, brush, and earth, and sometimes a
circular coop, made of sticks and tules, is perched on a high platform
where the fowls will be safe from the coyotes.

Of other forms of houses the adobe is in wide favor : its use hav-
ing been learned from the Mexicans. As in the jacal, the walls are low
and the roof is thatched with the scirpus. Some of the Indians are
building rough frame shanties of one or two rooms, in the securing of
which they are unfortunately encouraged.

22. The furnishing of an Indian home is simple. At one side of
the door within lies the woman's broad metate and her mortar for
crushing seeds, both kept covered with a mat or cloth. At the other
side of the door stands the brown tinaja or water jar (Coahuilla kow-
wo-mat) brought full each morning from the spring. In the center of
the floor is the hearth with its few blackened cooking pots ; perhaps a
beautifully woven baby hammock swings from the ceiling, and in one
corner are the saddle and reata of the man. Bunks of poles are
sometimes built against the wall, but in the more primitive homes the
usual bed is simply an untanned rawhide and a blanket spread on the
floor. Supplies of food are kept in earthen ollas or beautiful grass
baskets, and pieces of jerked meat and bundles of herbs, together with
innumerable household articles, are tucked into the sides of the thatch-
ing. There is little to become disarranged, and the interior of an
jacal is usually tidy and clean. In the summer the furniture is moved
into the patio.

CHAPTER IV.

BASKETS AND BASKET-MAKING.

23. No single manufactured article is of the same importance as
the basket, and for this reason it is considered separately. It is made
in a variety of shapes and sizes and supplies many purposes. While

BASKETS AND BASKET-MAKING 41

the manufacture of many Indian articles has now almost ceased, the
production of baskets continues uninterrupted.

The Coahuilla basketry is of one type throughout, a type peculiar
to the Indians of southern California, Diegefios as well as Luisefios
and Coahuillas, a variety of narrow coiled ware. Some fragments of
similar weaving have been found in the graves of the Santa Barbara
Channel.1 But the ordinary basket of these Indians was made of
reeds and lined with bitumen. Von Humboldt speaks of the Indians
around Santa Barbara presenting the Spaniards "with vases very curi-
ously wrought of stalks of rushes " and " covered within with a very thin
layer of asphaltum that renders them impenetrable to water."2 Such
baskets have been rare finds, owing to their destructibility, and of
course their manufacture by the coast Indians ceased many years ago.
The story of the unfortunate woman abandoned on the island of San
Nicolas when the Indians were transferred to the mainland by the
Spaniards and of her rescue fifteen years later by Captain Nidever has
been often told. When found she was making such baskets, distribut-
ing the pitch over the inside of the receptacle by placing lumps of
asphaltum in the basket with hot stones and shaking the whole with a
rotary motion, causing the melting asphaltum to be distributed evenly
over the surface. The daubing of wicker baskets with bitumen or
gum is very common among the Shoshone Indians. Water bottles
with small necks and well coated are made by the Chemehuevi, the
Tehachipi Indians, and others. Such water baskets were once made
by the Coahuillas, and are called ka-put-il. Mr. Hugo Reid speaks of
the water baskets made by the Coahuillan tribes about San Gabriel.

Their baskets, made out of split rushes, are too well known to require
description ; but, though water-proof, they were used only for dry purposes.
The vessels in use for liquid were roughly made of rushes and plastered
outside and in with bitumen or pitch, called by them san-ot.3

Such receptacles may still be made at some of the desert villages,
but I have never seen any. The Coahuillas make pottery for use
about the house, and their need of a water canteen ceased when they
stopped their roving and marauding.

24. The making of baskets by Coahuilla Indians at Palm Valley
was studied by Mr. Schummacher twenty years ago, and his description

1 Described and figured in Vol. VII, Archceology of the United States Geological Survey West
of the 100th Meridian.

2 Essay on New Spain, Vol. II, p. 297.

3 California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 154.

San-ot is still the Coahuilla word for gum or pitch.

42 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

and drawings are published in the volume on archaeology before cited,1
but the process can still be witnessed by any visitor to a village of
Coahuillas or Diegeiios.

The Coahuilla basketry is a coiled ware, the foundation of the coil
being composed of a narrow bunch of grass, around which is wrapped
closely a narrow splint. A small awl is used to punch a hole in the
coil next below and the wrap is passed over the upper coil, through
the under one, and drawn taut, binding the whole tightly together.
The coils are narrow, making five to seven to an inch, and there are
in an ordinary basket eight to eleven wraps of the splint in the same
distance, although the number varies greatly according to the charac-
ter and use of the basket and the skill of the maker.

The materials used are several. The grass forming the body of the
coil is the Cinna macroura, Kunth {Vilfa rigens of Bolander's distri-
bution).2 This grass is called by the Coahuillas su-ul. It is found
everywhere in their homes, dried and tied into bundles, but I have
found it growing only once, in a torrent-swept gorge in the mountains
a few miles above the desert. The materials forming the wrap vary
according to the color desired. Wooden splints carefully split from
the aromatic sumac {Rhus trilobata, Nutt) are much used. These
give a light straw color and are largely employed, not only by the
Coahuillas, but by other tribes throughout the southwest. They are
also dyed a very deep black by soaking them for a week or so in a
wash made from the berry stems of the elder {Sambucus, Spanish sauco,
Coahuilla hun-kwat for both bush and berry). The other material is
a small bulrush or reed grass {/uncus Lesenerii, Bolander). Dr.
Palmer calls it Juncus robustus, Watson. It grows abundantly in
cienegas or in damp soil. The scape and leaves are two to four feet
high, or more, stout and pungent. A supply of these tough scapes is
gathered by the basket maker and cut off at a suitable length. She
then takes a rush by one end and with her teeth splits it into three
equal portions, carefully separated the entire length of the piece.
Each scape thus furnishes three withes. This reed is, near its base, of
a deep red, lightening in color upwards, passing through several
shades of light brown, and ending at the top in a brownish yellow.
Thus this bulrush, in its natural state, furnishes a variety of colors.

On the desert, instead of the sambucus a little green or purplish
plant (the Sueda suffructescens, Watson, according to Mr. Jepson's

^-United States Geographical Survey West of the iooth Meridian, Vol. VII, pp. 242-48.
2 This is according to Dr. Palmer's identification of the plant.

BASKETS AND BASKET-MAKING 43

identification) called ngai-al is used for dyeing black. Dr. Palmer
identified this plant as the Sueda diffusa. He says :

The Coahuilla Indians of southern California make a fine black dye by
steeping a quantity of this plant in water. For coloring their baskets black
they take some mature rushes and steep them for several hours in this dye,
which is very penetrating, and the color is durable, but it has a fetid, disa-
greeable smell.1

Dr. Palmer also notes a use of the dahlia which I have never myself
observed.

Dalea Emoryi ; D. polyadenia. Branches of this plant, steeped in water,
form a bright yellowish brown dye and emit a strong odor. The Coahuilla
Indians, to ornament their baskets, steep the rushes in a dye prepared from
these daleas.2

25. Basket-making is one of the chief employments of the old
women. One will sit down flat on the ground on the shady side of an
jacal with her limbs thrust out straight in front of her. She holds her
unfinished basket in her lap ; at her right lies the pile of grass for the
body of the coil and on her left side, soaking in a little pot of water,
to keep them pliable, are her variously colored withes. Her only
implement is her awl or wish. This was formerly made of a bone or
even of a long spine from the opuntia set in a piece of asphaltum
for a handle, but now it is made of a nail, rubbed down to a slender
point, and the handle is of manzanita wood. The wrapping mate-
rials are named according to color. The scapes of the Juncus are
called se-il and their red portions i-i-ul. When dyed black they are
called se-il-tul-iksh or black se-il. The splints from the sumac are
called se-lit and the body grass su-ul. With these materials the good
old lady will work cheerily away hour after hour, while perhaps a
little grandchild plays softly near at hand and a mess of food simmers
in an olla over the low fire. No model or pattern is ever used ; the
basket takes ready shape under her skilful fingers, and is always sym-
metrical and shapely, and the intricate regularity of pattern carefully
preserved. The ends of the withes are pushed back and underneath,
and cut off on the inside.

The patterns are varied and always tasteful. A great variety of
formal decorative figures are used : sometimes rather conventionalized
representations of men, women, and children, horses, deer, etc., are
woven into it. I have a curious basket with figures of the human hand

*Dr. Edward Palmer, "Plants used by the Indians of the United States," American Natu-
ralist, 1878, Vol. XII, p. 653.

* Ibid., p. 654.

44 EIHNO-BOTANY OE THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

in black. The inspection and collection of these baskets is fascinating
employment. The eye is constantly delighted with graceful forms and
harmoniously arranged colors.

26. Baskets are made in different forms for different purposes, and
are given different names. The most comon is the se-7uhal-lal. It
has a flat bottom and gently flaring sides, a depth of from four to
seven inches and a width of from thirteen to twenty. These are exceed-
ingly useful. They are filled with all kinds of things : foods, includ-
ing seeds, grains, and fruits ; household utensils and basket materials.
The second class are globular in shape, with bulging sides and rather
wide mouths. They are quite small, the greatest diameter varying
from five to ten inches. These are called te-vin-ge-mal, and are per-
haps the prettiest and most carefully ornamented of any. They are
used for holding the costura (Sp.) or sewing materials of the women,
and also the various small treasures of the family, ornaments, pictures,
papers.

The great deep packing baskets are called se-kwd-vel-em. They
are beautiful objects, with a usual depth of about eighteen inches.
Their use is principally for packing, and they are carried on the back.
Sometimes a pair of rawhide strings, kd-wi-ve, are tied to opposite
edges to pass around the forehead and sustain it below the shoulders,
but usually it is borne in a "carrying net." Such a basket accom-
panies the woman in all her quests for food. They are also used on
the threshing floor and for storing quantities of seeds, grains, and
other foods. The chi-pat-mal is a round, almost flat basket, with a
diameter of sixteen or eighteen inches, and a depth of an inch or so.
Its uses are several. In the first place, it is the proper basket for
gathering. The woman beats it full of grass seeds or fills it with elder
berries or cactus fruit, and then transfers the contents to the packing
basket on her back. It makes also a useful tray, a good platter, a fruit
dish, and is of great service in grinding at the mill to receive the meal.
It is also exclusively the basket used in winnowing. Finally, there is
the basket hat or yu-mu-wal, an object with a very wide use. It is
shaped like a truncated cone, and is made to fit the head. It may be
worn by a woman at any time, but especially when a burden is to be
carried, when it protects the head from the carrying band which passes
around the forehead. It also does constant duty as a dipper, as it is
nearly water tight, and as a small mixing pan.

The Coahuillas also make an open basket, woven in loose meshes,
like a net, of the unsplit flattened scapes of the Juncus, se-il. These

PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES 45

are often provided with a bail and so hung up in the house or ramada,
and used to contain fruits or vegetables. One will hold about two
quarts. They are called chi-pd-cha-kish.

All these baskets have flat bottoms, and will sit upright on the
ground. The large baskets running to a point at the bottom, made
by the northern California Indians and some Shoshone tribes, are
never made by the Coahuillas. The style of weaving that fashions
these long cone-shaped baskets is very different from the Coahuilla
methods. All these baskets are exceedingly strong and durable.
They will last for many years, and frayed portions can be easily
replaced.

CHAPTER V.

PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES.

27. After so many years of contact with white men, and so general
an appropriation of modern implements and utensils on the part of
many, it is surprising how much Indian ethnographic material remains
in use. This would naturally be the case with objects of a ceremonial
and religious character, but it is true also that in many Indian homes,
especially those of the old people, there is almost nothing, if we except
clothing, that is not of native manufacture. These articles are not
germane to this paper, of course, except as they illustrate the Indian
uses of plants.

An exception should be made in the case of pottery which, although
it forms no part of the Coahuilla ethno-botany, has an important place
here, since it has probably superseded an earlier use of water-tight
baskets. The coast Indians do not seem to have made much pottery,
the very rare fragments or potsherds that are discovered being usually
attributed to the date when these Indians could have acquired the use
or knowledge of its manufacture from the Spaniards. Neither do the
Utes and Pah Utes manufacture vessels, and Mr. Coville states that
the Panamints do not. All the Indians of southern California of the
Coahuilla and Diegefio tribes today make earthen ware in abundance.
It has been often inferred that they were taught its manufacture at the
Spanish missions. Even Mr. Hugo Reid states that the Indians of
San Gabriel learned to make their pots from the friars.1 Nevertheless
this is, I think, a mistake. While the Shoshone tribes are not usually
or perhaps naturally potters, all the Colorado tribes, except perhaps

1 California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 154.

46 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE C0AHU1LLA INDIANS

the Chemehuevi, are ; and the manufacture of earthen ware was most
probably introduced into southern California by the tribes of Yuman
stock settling about San Diego or by contact with the Indians of the
Colorado. The Coahuillas most likely learned the art from the latter,
if they had not already acquired it before settling in this territory.
The pottery of the Cabeson valley, in its shape and decorations, is
identical with that of the Mojaves or the Cocopahs. Everything, how-
ever, points to the conclusion that the pottery now made by the
Indians of southern California is a native ware and not introduced by
the Spaniards. Its method of manufacture is distinctly aboriginal.
The clay commonly available for the Coahuilla potter is a poor,
gravelly stuff. It makes only a rough jar. Down on the desert a
much finer quality is obtainable. The maker provides herself with a
basket of this earth (tes-nit), a basin of water, a board a few feet long,
and two little implements used in shaping the jar. One of these is a
wooden paddle called &pak-pish; the other a molder and smoother,
usually a round pebble with one side well polished, called a pai-whal*
The pot is built up in coils rolled out on the board and added to
the edge of the growing vessel. The coil is flattened and worked into
the body of the jar by holding the molder on the inside and slapping
the exterior with the paddle. This coil method of making was, on its
face, borrowed from the basket manufacture and is evidence enough
that the art was a native discovery. These ollas, in spite of their
rough finish, are perfectly symmetrical. They are polished somewhat
on the outside with the smooth "pai-whal." After drying for a day
in the sun, they are baked in a shallow pit with a quantity of cow
manure. The fire is kept up until a red color is obtained. The fire
is allowed to touch the pots in baking, a thing so carefully guarded
against in Pueblo pottery-making, and gives the olla various spots of
black and brown, which make rather a pleasing decoration in the
absence of any other. In the Cabeson valley, however, the pottery is
generally ornamented with patterns of dots and lines, marked on with
a black mineral earth before burning. These, as noted above, are pre-
cisely similar in material, form, and ornamentation to the pots of the
Cocopahs of the Colorado desert. Ollas are used for the cooking and
storing of foods and large ones for holding water. The soft nature
of the pottery allows moisture to exude through the sides, which,
evaporating, keeps the water cool. Ollas are called kow-a-mal-em.

i As an evidence that the art of pot -making is a native discovery, the old rancheria sites from the
vicinity of Pasadena eastward abound in these smoothing stones.

PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES 47

Little ones are often made as toys for children. A shallow dish for
serving food is called a wa-yi-mal.

28. The Yucca Mohavensis (Coahuilla nin-yil) furnishes a valuable fiber
for weaving. The pliant, fibrous leaves are soaked and basted until the
pulpy part and the epidermal sheath are gone. The fibers are buried
in mud to whiten them and are then combed out. From these are
made a thick foot-pad or sandal, almost identical with the sort described
by Mr. Otis T. Mason.1 They are provided with two tie-strings in
front, one passing between the great and second toes and meeting
over the instep, and a loop behind. Such sandals are called wak-ut-em
and are still in constant use among the old people. The Coahuillas,
to a limited extent only, manufacture the "cocas" or yucca fiber saddle
mats, once so much sought after in California by horsemen, but they
are still made in large quantities by the Diegenos at Warner's ranch.
Dr. Palmer has described the weaving of one on a small primitive
loom and with a shuttle.2 They are commonly about two and a half
by three feet in size, very strongly and durably made, and ornamented
tastefully with patterns in brown, yellow, and red. I do not know the
plants used in preparing the dyes. A rawhide sandal is also made
called push-wow and its strings tack-a-chil. The fibers of the leaves of
the "mescal," amul (Agave deserti), make the best cordage and ropes.
These fibers are prepared in the same way as the yucca. An old
woman will then take a handful, comb them straight between her
fingers, wet the end with saliva and twist them into a beautiful cord on
her bare thigh. Such cordage is of the strongest. Bowstrings are
made of it that last for years. Little brooms and even hair brushes
are made from these fibers.

A beautiful cordage is furnished also by the Phragmites communis
(Coahuilla wish), a reed with a straight- jointed stalk. These stems are
soaked in water and then the bark is easily removed, a layer of soft,
silky, yellowish brown fibers. It is twisted into a beautiful and very
strong cordage. Carrying nets for supporting a burden on the back
are woven from strings twisted from this material, and also, and per-
haps more commonly, from the fibers of the agave. The loop is the
regular diamond-shaped hammock loop and knot, and is about two
inches in length. The head band of the carrying net which passes
across the forehead is wound and thickened so as to form a pad. In
such a net an old woman will carry a stone mortar, weighing 150

1" Sandals of the Cliff Dwellers," in Popular Science Monthly, March, 1897, the one figured as
No. 4.

2 American Naturalist, Vol. XII.

48 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

pounds. These carrying nets are used everywhere by Shoshonean
tribes, and identical ones are taken from the Cliff Dwellers of Utah and
Colorado.

Cord made from the phragmites is called i-kut, the carrying net is
to-ko, and the head pad nach-wow.

Splints for coarse weaving and plaiting are made from the fronds
of the Washingtonia filifera (Coahuilla ma-wul), the stems of which
furnish also a variety of small stirring sticks for mush and flails for
beating out seeds.

29. The Prosopis juliflora furnishes a very valuable wood. It is hard
and durable and is adapted for various articles. Stools are carved
from blocks of it and wooden mortars hollowed from its trunk in which
the mesquite beans are pounded to a flour with long stone pestles. The
branches of this plant exude also a valuable gum akin to gum arabic.
Glue, san-ot, is also obtained from the "creosote bush " {Larrea Mexi-
cana), on the bark of which an amber colored gum is deposited by a
small scale-insect. Gum for adhesive purposes is obtained from the
white sap of the milkweed (Asclepias fascicular is), and from the Pinus
monophylla. Native bitumen is of similar economic importance for
pitching and caulking. This mineral product abounds in California
under the eastern name " asphaltum " or the Mexican name "abrea."
The Coahuilla name is rather a pretty metonymy. Vegetable gum
being called san-ot, bitumen is pa-san-ot, or the gum that resembles
water. Anyone who has seen the streams of molten asphaltum that
issue as bitumic springs from many hillsides in southern California
and in hot weather flow like black sluggish currents for considerable
distances would not fail to recognize the figure.

30. The root of the Yucca Mohavensis is grated and these scrapings
(called hu nu-wut) are used for soap. The roots of both Y. baccata
and Y. agrifolia are, according to Mr. Hough, thus used by the Moki
people.1 Another soap-plant is of much more frequent use by the
Coahuillas, the Chenopodium Californicum. This plant has a long
carrot-like root of hard texture. It is grated on a rock and makes a
good soap. It is called ke-ha-wut. The valuable soap-root of the
coast, the plant usually meant by "amole" (Chlorogalum pomeridia-
num), which has a large, very saponine bulb, surrounded by a coarse
husk of fibers, does not occur in the present territory of the Coahuillas,
although in days past, when their ordinary range was wider, they knew
its use, and occasionally, now, they obtain it from the San Jacinto plains.

1 American Anthropologist, Vol. X, p. 2, 1897.

PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES 49

31. Like many other Indian women of this section, especially the
Mojaves and Yumas, the Coahuilla women tattoo, and for this purpose
use charcoal burned from the agave, and prick in the pattern with the
thorn of the opuntia. The pattern is always on the lower lip and chin
and consists of rows of dots or wavy lines running downward from the
mouth. The color is a bluish black. Such ornamentation is called
tesh-inum. It is really very pretty but it is not frequently seen any
longer among the mountain women. The practice is almost identical
throughout this region. According to Father Boscana, who was long
stationed at the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, "girls are tattooed in
infancy on the face, breast, and arms." The most usual method was to
prick the flesh with the thorn of the cactus plant, charcoal produced
from the maguey was then rubbed into the wounds, and an ineffaceable
blue was the result.1 Of the Yuma women Mr. Michler wrote: "A
very few are tattooed ; this operation is performed by pricking the
skin with the sharp point of a flint and sprinkling in the wound the
dust of charcoal." 3

32. Beautiful baby hammocks, Coahuilla i-kut, are woven from the
cord twisted from the phragmites or agave. They are about six feet
long and are swung from the ceiling or from opposite corners of the
ramada. Frequently the same net is used as a carrying net and a
cradle. Baby boards are still used somewhat, though the hammock is
preferred. The baby board, st-ul, is made of two upright pieces
pierced with holes at regular intervals and in these are set cross pieces,
chd-wa-wa. A little mattress, in-i-vel, is made now of cloth but
formerly of rushes, and laid on this frame. On this the little child is
placed and bound securely thereto with a band, su-ti-ve, passed several
times across the body and looped at the sides beneath the projecting
ends of the cross pieces. The little bodies are very comfortable and
happy in this position. The mother can set the board up beside a
boulder while she washes at the spring, or lay it in the shade of the
jacal while she grinds at the mill. There is quite a noticeable flatten-
ing of the occiput in children that is probably due to the baby board.

33. The Coahuilla bow, dju-ki-nups, is a poor affair nowadays,
generally but rudely shaped. The best bows are made from a seasoned
limb of the screw bean, kwin-yal (Prosopis pubescens). Others are
shaped from wood of the willow tree, or aliso, awa-sil (Salix nigra,
Marsh). They are fitted only for killing small game and are produced

1 Robinson, Life in California, "Boscana," p. 740.

2 Emory, Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. I, p. no.

5© ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

with an apology and an explanation of the noble weapon made by " los
antiquos" (their ancestors). The string is either sinew or cord twisted
from the fibers of the agave. Two sorts of arrows, whi-al-em, are used.
One is made of two pieces ; the shaft of the jointed hollow reed, pa-
kal {Phragmites communis), which has a strong culm, five to ten feet
high. It grows in wet places and along stream banks and is closely
related to the " pampas grass". The end or point of the arrow is
made of mesquite wood hardened in the fire, or of the greasewood,
sanka (Adenostoma spar sifo Hum), and is inserted into the hollow end
of the shaft and fastened there with glue and sometimes by sinews wrap-
ped around it. Two feathers are attached to the shaft. This two-piece
arrow is identical with that made by the Yumas, Cocopahs, Chemehuevi,
Mojaves, Yampais, and Panamints. The Coahuillas also make an
arrow from the shoot of a species of wormwood, which grows abun-
dantly throughout the Cabeson valley and surrounding mountains,
hang-al (Artemesia Ludoviciana, Nutt.). These shoots are peeled,
notched and pointed, and straightened with the teeth. This arrow is
unfeathered.

The southern California Indians use a rabbit stick, suggestive of
those in use among the Pueblos. Among some valley Indians these
are flat, curved, and carefully made. The Sabobas, at the foot of the
San Jacinto mountains, hunt rabbits with them on horseback. The
ordinary Coahuilla rabbit stick, however, is rather a small throwing
club made of the root and branch of the " chamiso " (Adenostoma
sparsifolid). They are thrown with accuracy up to fifty yards. They
are called na-hat-em. The Coahuillas once used a war club like those
of the Yumas.1

CHAPTER VI.

THE GATHERING, PREPARATION, AND STORING OF FOODS.

34. The study of those plants which yield sustenance forms one
of the most instructive chapters in savage life. The record of starva-
tion and want lies behind the discovery of almost every plant food.
The thoroughness with which every grass, stalk, fruit, tuber, and seed,
available to the savage, has been examined, treated by fire, by leaching,
and by every form of analysis that can be devised, affords us a grim
picture of the figure of hunger that is not far from every man.

1 Yuma Club, described by Lieutenant Michler in Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. I, p. 108.

GATHERING, PREPARATION, AND STORING OF FOODS • 51

In this work the woman has naturally been the important factor.
They have been her explorations, her revolutionary discoveries, the
tests made by her teeth and stomach that have advanced the race in its
quest for subsistence.

Among the Coahuillas, as among all Indians, the woman is the
getter of vegetable foods, the ethno-botanist of her community.
Now that the man's hunting has been interrupted forever by the set-
tlements of the whites and the disappearance of the game, the support
of the family falls principally on the woman.

The problem of securing food for a tribe within the territory of
the Coahuillas at first sight seems an impossible one. It is the ugly
barrenness of the mountains and the arid sterility of the plains that
impresses one. It is probably true that an untutored white man lost
here would be likely to find hardly a single plant to yield him a mess
of palatable food. Beauty of flower and foliage and splendor of frui-
tion are alike sacrificed here to the necessities of the desert. There
are no luscious fruits with juicy pulps awaiting the thirsty traveler, but
at most only shriveled bags of rind filled with seeds, dangling from
a dry and ghostly stalk, or small, bitter plums that are nothing but
exaggerated pits, surrounded by a puckery skin. In all these moun-
tains there is not an edible root that a white man's efforts would be
likely to discover; there are no palatable nuts, except the pinofies,
high in the summits. The absence of food is, however, apparent
rather than real. The desert is a kindlier mother than would be
expected. Nature is less niggardly here than in some more verdant
countries. The flora of American deserts, as pointed out by others,
is really quite rich in species. Given the knowledge and patience of
the Indian woman, the problem is far simpler than would be supposed.
Probably the food supply of the Coahuillas contains a greater variety
and abundance than that of most Indian tribes. As we have seen,
their habitat occupies the dividing line between the desert and the
coast valleys. The mountain Coahuillas can turn westward and meet
the flora of the valleys reaching to the Pacific, or descend eastward
into the desert and bring back its nourishing and remarkable supplies
of food.

35. We have already noticed the se-kwd-vel, or great packing
basket. Such a receptacle is the property of every Coahuilla woman.
For supporting this upon her back, she has the strong, beautiful carry-
ing net whose manufacture has been described. To protect her head
against the weight of her load, she presses down over her forehead a

52 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

yu-mu-wal, or basket hat, and having slung her net and basket over
her shoulder is ready to set out on her quest for food. She has also
two other implements, a chi-pat-mal, or flat gathering basket, and her
seed fan, yi-kow-a-pish. In the Southwest and among many Shoshone
Indians, Utes, and Panamints, this seed fan takes the place of the
pointed, fire-hardened digging stick of the North. It is shaped like
a light tennis racket and is made of willow wands and rawhide. In
gathering seeds from the low grass or bushes, the woman holds the
chi-pat-mal nearly flat against the ground and beats the seeds from the
grass stems with the seed fan.

36. Many of the foods furnished by this country, including several
nuts and pits, are bitter and astringent. To remove these principles,
the meal ground from these products is leached with water. Some-
times a sandy spot on the creek bottom suffices, but more often a
large, shallow basket, perhaps three feet in diameter, is woven of
osiers. This basket is set on a low pole platform and filled with care-
fully selected sand. The basket is called pd-cha-ka-vel and the sand
nd-chish. A depression is smoothed in the sand and the meal piled
thereon and water poured slowly through. Contrary to what might
be expected, the meal mingles but little with the sand and is daintily
scooped out when the leaching is accomplished. A hard, smoothly
brushed floor is always to be seen near a home, where various fruits,
nuts, and berries are spread out to dry.

37. Of receptacles for storing food, the most striking is the basket
granary. These are made of osiers. The withes with the leaves left
on are first twisted loosely into a thick rope as big as a man's arm and
from this the basket is coiled. The shape is circular, rounding toward
the top with a tolerably flat bottom. There is a short, narrow neck.
The size is about thirty inches for height and a somewhat greater
diameter. The neck and mouth are narrow — ten inches or so across.
It will hold many bushels of grain or seeds. Over the mouth is laid
a flat sandstone slab, or a wicker cover weighted with a stone or two.
In the Cabeson these granaries are made almost exclusively out of the
hdng-al, the species of wormwood so abundant there {Artemisia Ludo-
viciana, Nutt.), and having been filled with mesquite beans they are
covered over and sealed with an armful of the shoots and a daub of
mud. These granaries are perched either on platforms of poles, or, in
the mountains, on the flat tops of high boulders, out of the reach of
field mouse or kangaroo rat.

This great basket, or, as the Coahuillas call it, mal-a-not, is the

GATHERING, PREPARATION, AND STORING OF FOODS 53

characteristic storehouse of these Indians, and is by no means con-
fined to them. The Cocopahs make them in great numbers, filling
them each summer with dried mesquite pods and placing them out of
reach on the roofs of their houses. Very similar ones are made by
the Mojaves.1 Seeds are often stored in old ollas and set away in the
corners of the house ; many kinds of dried fruit are kept in baskets ;
often herbs as well as small quantities of dried food are wrapped in
pieces of cloth and tucked away in the thatching or sides of the dwel-
ling. This is the regular manner of keeping dried meats or " jerky,"
strips of which are also hung up uncovered. Hoarding of foods is,
however, unfortunately, not a strong instinct with the Indian. For
the Coahuillas, as we shall see later, there was not great need of keep-
ing a large supply of food ahead for any part of the year.

38. For preparing the foods for eating, the two most important
implements are the primitive mills, the metate and the mortar. The
latter is used mainly for crushing seeds, the former for grains. The
Coahuilla mortar is a large, nearly round, stone. It is roughly shaped
from a hard boulder with a slightly flattened surface for the bottom.
In the top is cut a narrow, shallow cavity, perhaps not over three
inches in depth. About this hole is fastened with gum a shallow,
flaring basket without a bottom, so that the smaller opening just fits
over the hole in the rock. This basket-work, thus rising from the
edge of the mortar cavity, keeps the grain and meal from falling to
the ground, and makes unnecessary any further excavation of the
rock. The pestle is a thick, heavy stone, perhaps ten inches long, each
end being bluntly rounded. In using a mortar the woman sits with a
leg on each side of it, takes the pestle in both hands and drops it
heavily into the mortar. About a full double handful of grain or
seed is crushed at once. To reduce this very fine a few spoonfuls of
iron pyrites are tossed into the mortar to assist the milling. This is a
practice of which I have seen no notice among other Indians. The
pyrites is sifted from the meal when the necessary fineness has been
attained. The Coahuilla word for the mortar is kd-wa-val and for
the pestle pd-u-ul. The wooden mortars for the mesquite beans have
been already noticed.

The Coahuilla metate, called tndl-al or ik-ni-vel, is not a particu-
larly well-shaped article. It usually measures about thirty inches in
length by twenty in width ; the upper end is fully twice the height of

1 " Near the houses were a great number of cylindrical structures with conical roofs, quite skillfully
made of osier twigs. They were the granaries referred to above, for their surplus stores of corn and the
mesquite fruit." {Pacific Railroad Survey, " Itinerary," p. 115.)

54 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE C0AHU1LLA INDIANS

the lower, giving considerable slope to the slightly concave grinding
surface, which is increased by resting the upper end on several flat
stones. The "mano" or rubbing stone, called tdk-ish, is long, wide, and
rather thin ; the rubbing surface is nearly flat, the upper side convex.
It is held in both hands. In grinding, the woman kneels at the upper
end of the metate, puts a little pile of wheat in the middle of the stone
and, beginning with the lower edge of the heap, quickly reduces it to
a reasonably fine meal. A flat basket, chi-pat-mal, is placed under the
lower edge of the metate to receive the flour. Both the metates and
the mortars are furnished with neat little brooms made of a handful
of mescal fibers (Agave deserti) and called si-yu-vish, with which the
meal is brushed from the stone. The grinding is done a little at a
time, enough for each day, and forms a regular employment for the
women.

A rather curious sifter is used for separating the finer parts of the
meal from the coarser, and for removing the iron pyrites grains after
milling. The rim is the upper portion of a basket, the bottom removed.
Across the smaller opening is stretched a piece of fine woven-wire
cloth, obtained from the whites, held in place by abrea. In early
times, before the wire cloth was obtainable, I suppose they must have
used the fibers of the yucca or agave, or the fibrous covering of the
soap-root or "amole" (Chlorogalum pomerdianum), which is used by
the Moki Indians for sifting.1 The Tulare Indians wove a beautiful
basket particularly for a sifter.

39. In methods of cooking the Coahuilla woman is rather limited.
Some things are boiled in an olla, a few are roasted among the coals,
but almost everything is dried, crushed into meal, and boiled into a
mush or "atole." Atole (atolli) is the Aztec word for porridge. The
boiled mush served daily to the Indians under the missions went by
this name, and thus it was adopted into the various Indian vocabu-
laries. " Pozzoli " is a somewhat richer mush containing beans or
perhaps a little pulverized dried meat. The Coahuillas call atole
wi - wish - wi- wish .

CHAPTER VII.

THE FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS.

40. As already suggested, to the unsophisticated it would seem
that the dry and rocky slopes of the desert's sides, with their curious

1 James Stevenson, Second Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1879, p. 335.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 55

and repellant plant forms, could yield nothing possible for food, but
in reality the severe competition and struggle with aridity have operated
to invest desert plants with remarkable nutritive elements. The very
hoarding of strength and moisture that goes on in many plants is a
promise of hidden nutrition. And, while many plants protect their
growth against destruction by animals through the secretion of poison-
ous or noxious elements, the cunning of the savage woman has taught
her how to remove these. Beside every Coahuilla home there stands
ever ready the wide pd-cha-ka-vel, or leaching basket. The results
prove far more than the expectation would warrant.

I cannot pretend to have exhausted the food supply of these
Indians, but I have discovered not less than sixty distinct products for
nutrition, and at least twenty-eight more utilized for narcotics, stimu-
lants, or medicines, all derived from desert or semi-desert localities, in
use among these Indians. To my regret I cannot in all cases announce
the botanical name of the plant from which these are derived. A
number of these plants, which were seen by me but once, were pointed
out and the Indian name and uses described, on a trip through the
desert to the Cabeson valley, with a single Indian, Celestin Torte,
of Torres mountain, in the summer of 1897. Some, by their very
nature, could not be carried along in the saddle, as we were ; a few
others, gathered and preserved, could not be identified, owing to
damaged condition and absence of flower or fruit. This indetermin-
ateness particularly applies to the numerous species of the cactus fam-
ily, which grow forest-like over many of the rocky canon sides of the
descent to the desert.

The staples of the Coahuillas are fortunately all determined, some
of them having a very wide use among the Indian tribes of the South-
west. It is with a description of some of these staples that we will begin.

41. On the desert the main reliance of the Coahuilla Indians is the
algaroba or mesquite. This remarkable tree is well known to anyone
who has traversed the sandy Southwest. Its range is wide, from the
desert slopes of the California mountains, eastward in southern lati-
tudes to Texas. Of the Colorado basin it is the characteristic tree. It
grows to a height of from thirty to forty feet. Its wood is close-grained
and hard j its leaves small but abundant, and its branches well armored
with spines. On the Colorado river and its affluents and overflow
streams, the New, and Hardy rivers, it grows abundantly along every
slough and about each lagoon. Looking down upon the Colorado
desert from the heights below Jacumba pass, the desert appears banded

56 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

with long stripes of splendid green. In the Cabeson valley, far above
the level of the overflow, these trees grow in clumps or monies, strik-
ing their roots down through the sand to the subirrigation below.
Frequently the wind has lodged the sand among these monies, until
dunes fifteen to twenty feet high have been built up, covering acres in
extent and burying all but the upper limbs of the trees — a curious phe-
nomenon.

The fruit of the algaroba or honey mesquite [Prosopis juliflora)
is a beautiful legumen, four to seven inches long, which hangs in
splendid clusters. A good crop will bend each branch almost to the
ground, and as the fruit falls, pile the ground beneath the tree with a
thick carpet of straw-colored pods. These are pulpy, sweet, and nutri-
tious, affording food to stock as well as to man.

Everywhere in the Colorado country, to the Mojave, Yuma, and
Cocopah, as well as to the Coahuilla, they are the staple of life. The
Coahuillas gather them in July and August in great quantities, drying
them thoroughly and then packing them away in the basket granaries.
The beans are never husked, but pod and all are pounded up into an
imperfect meal in the wooden mortar. This meal is then placed in
earthen dishes and thoroughly soaked. It is then ready to be eaten,
and is called by the Coahuillas, pe-chi-ta, or men-yi-kish, according as
it is, or is not, sifted. A light fermentation, which shortly results,
improves it. The mass itself, while requiring vigorous mastication, is
sweet and wholesome. It is sometimes rolled into compact balls and
carried for food on a journey.1

According to Mr. Havard, this pulp contains "more than half its
weight of assimilative principles, of which the most important is sugar,
in the proportion of 25 to 30 per cent."

The "screwbean" or tornillo [Prosopis pubescens, Benth.) is less
abundant than the algaroba. Its fruit is a cluster of little yellow spirals
united at one point. It contains even more saccharine matter than
the algaroba, and may be eaten with relish as plucked from the tree.
A fermented beverage can be made from this meal and was once much
drunk by the Indians of the Colorado river. Major Heinzleman
described its use among the Yumas : "The pod mesquite begins to
ripen in June, the screwbean a little later. Both contain a great deal
of saccharine matter ; the latter is so full it furnishes by boiling a pal-
atable molasses, and from the former, by boiling and fermentation, a
tolerably good drink may be made.'"

1 Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. V, p. 98.

2 Emory, Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. I, p. 112.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 57

Along the overflowed banks of the New river, and elsewhere about
the desert's edge, where cloudbursts or freshets send their sudden
streams of muddy water out over the sand, there grows up luxuriantly an
enormous species of Chenopodium. In the New river country I have
seen the growth higher than a man's head as he sat on horseback.
The stalks are sometimes six inches in diameter. The leaves are eaten
readily by horses, and the plant is of much value to parties crossing
the desert and to stockmen. Its local name is " careless weed." The
seeds are eaten by the Indians and the leaves used for greens. North-
ward, in the Cabeson and Coyote, a smaller and probably distinct
species, identified by Mr. Jepson as Chenopodium Fremontii, flourishes
after freshets. Its dry branches are covered with seeds which are gath-
ered by the Indians in large quantities, and ground into flour which is
baked into little cakes. The Coahuillas call the plant kit or ke-et.
After a good harvest of this Chenopodium the edge of the Coyote
canon will be fringed with granaries holding stores of this food.

Another queer little plant that starts up after storm, irrigation is
the Salicornia subterminalia. Its structure is pulpy and almost leafless.
I once found it growing abundantly about Indian Wells. The Coa-
huillas call this plant ho-at, and formerly used its seeds for food. These
seeds were crushed finely into meal on a metate.

42. The most varied stores of food, however, do not come from
the fluviatile plain of the Colorado, but from the forbidding moun-
tains that rise high and abruptly on the westward. The character of
these ranges has already been partially noted. Their sides are very
steep. There are no ranges of foothills or graduated ascents. From
the level of the sea at Palm Springs, San Jacinto rises almost sheer
upward to a height of 1,100 feet. Only by certain canons can these
mountains be ascended, even by foot climbers. The Ta-quitch canon
that enters Palm Valley is said to be insurmountable. Partly because
of this precipitancy and partly because grass and protective foliage are
wholly absent, there is little opportunity for soil formation on the
desert side. The fragments of rock and soil are swept away and depos-
ited in the great alluvial fans that clog for miles the foot of the canons.

Nevertheless, the mountains support a bewildering variety of plant
life. Nowhere could the relationship of plants to their surroundings
be more copiously illustrated. While numbers are few and growth is
sparse, the species are very numerous. Most of these plants grow in
clumps or communities, and afford illustration of the cooperation and
mutual support compelled by the desert. From the lower levels of

58 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

the canons, by which one begins an ascent, to the summits, where the
character of living things suddenly changes, plants and shrubs are met
everywhere, growing amid the broken rocks. Curious cacti cover a
hillside with an armament of spines, and small annuals dot the sandy
levels along the bottoms of the gorges. So it is to these arid but
fruitful slopes that the women of the desert plain and the mountain
valley both go for food.

Most remarkable of all the plants that flourish in these wastes is
the agave, perhaps the most unique and interesting plant of all Amer-
ica. It ranges widely throughout southwestern United States and
Mexico with a large number of species, perhaps one hundred in all ;
and outside of Mexico, where it furnishes "pulque" and "vino mescal,"
it is used for food by Apaches, the Pah Ute family, and desert tribes
in general. By all these Indians it is prepared for food in much the
same way. Several species have become familiar, as the " century
plants" of California gardens, but they are not handsome plants,
except when in bloom, though they give themselves most beautifully
to the wants of the Indian.

The life history of all these species is much the same. They come
up in little round heads or cabbages. For years this head enlarges,
throwing out fibrous leaves armed with a spine at the point. Even in
the hot air of the desert it is twelve to fifteen years before the period
of flowering is reached. Then from the center of the plant there starts
up a stalk, growing with great rapidity. In the larger species this
stalk may be twenty to thirty feet high and eighteen inches through at
the base. From this stalk clusters of pale yellow blossoms, thousands
in number, open in the hot, quivering sunshine. This supreme act
ends the life of the plant.

Within the territory of the Coahuillas there is but a single species,
the Agave deserti, Engelm., which grows abundantly along the eastern
base of the coast ranges in San Diego county, and southward into Baja
California. It was first discovered by Lieutenant W. H. Emory, of the
Mexican Boundary Survey, in 1846.1 It is a small species with leaves
densely clustered, thick and deeply concave, only six to twelve inches
long. The scape or stalk is from ten to twelve feet high and slender.
The flowers are a bright yellow. From April on, the cabbages and
stalks are full of sap and are then roasted. Parties go down from the
mountain villages into Coyote canon for the purpose. Great fire pits
or ovens, called na-chish-em, are dug in the sands and lined with

1 Geological Survey of California, Botany, Vol. II, p. 142.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 59

stones. Fire is kept up in the pit until the stones are thoroughly
heated ; the mescal heads are then placed in the hole and covered over
with grass and earth and left to roast for a day or two. Mescal heads
thus cooked consist of fibrous, molasses-colored layers, sweet and deli-
cious to the taste and wonderfully nutritious. Pieces will keep for
many years. The agave is called a-mul, the sections of the stalk,
u-a-sil, which are also roasted and, though fibrous, are sweet and
good,1 and the short leaves about the head, ya-mil. The yellow blos-
soms, amu-sal-em, are boiled and dried for preservation, and then
boiled anew when ready to be eaten. The fibers from the leaves of
the agave, amu-pa-la, are exceedingly important in manufactures and
their uses have been noticed above.

The Yucca Mohavensis (Coahuilla hu-nu-vuf) grows abundantly on
various hillsides and sandy canons of the southern exposure of the
San Jacinto range, as well as near the summits of the canons on the
desert slopes. The species is quite different in appearance from the
Yucca Whipplei, Torr., which grows so abundantly nearer the coast and
in the vicinity of Pasadena, and is known as the "Spanish bayonet" or
quijotes. In the Yucca Mohavensis the clusters of spines are very
dense about its foot, and its short, thick stump or caudex rises to a
height sometimes of six feet from the ground. Its flower stalk or
scape is short and thick, but clustered with the delicate waxy flowers
of the yucca kind. The fruit, nin-yil, appears as plump, sticky, green
pods, three to five inches long with big, black seeds filling the center
in four rows. These are picked when green and roasted among the
coals. They have a sweet, not unpleasant taste, slightly suggestive of
roasted green apples. When ripe, the pods are eaten uncooked and
are sweet and pleasant, though slightly puckering to the taste.

The Yucca Whipplei grows but sparsely in the territory ranged by
the Coahuillas. Its stalk, called pa-nu-ul, is cut before flowering when
full of sap, and roasted in sections in a fire pit for one night. The
dates or seed bags, wa-wal, are also eaten, as well as the flowers, which
when in bloom are picked and cooked in water in an olla. Growing
with a clump of agave and yuccas, on the north slope of Torres moun-
tain, I had once pointed out to me a different variety of yucca,
probably an unnamed species, which the Coahuillas call ku-ku-ul. It
is small with slender spines. The head and stalk are roasted and
eaten.

1 Mr. C. F. Lummis has described roasted mescal stalk as tasting like " jute strings and molasses."
" The Apache Warrior," in the Land of Poco Tiempo.)

60 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

43. The variety of trees and shrubs of peculiarly desert character-
istics, which grow over the desert side of the mountains from bases to
summits and whose products are made by the Indian to yield food,
follow next in our description.

The "ochotilla," or Fouquiera spinosa or splendens, has already been
described.1 It is a splendid example of desert modification, but its
anomalies make it difficult of classification. It grows in clumps on
the rocky ridge slopes near the base of the San Jacinto mountains.
The Coahuillas, who call it o-tos, eat its splendid crimson blossoms,
which cluster at the extreme end of its long, drooping branches, as well
as its small fruit, which consists of oblong capsules filled with minute
seeds. These branches, loaded as they are with thorns, are ingeniously
used by the Cocopah Indians far south in the Colorado desert of Baja
California in making fences. Two or three of these branches tied
above one another between posts makes a barrier through which the
most persistent burro will not pass. In this way the Indians inclose
many acres of soil, annually inundated by the overflow of Hardy's
Colorado river, and subsequently planted to maize, beans, and
melons.

In the canon bottoms as they open out into the desert, grows quite
abundantly the "palo verde" [Parkinsonia Torreyana), which the
Coahuillas call o-o-wit. Its bright green bark and abundant, though
deciduous foliage, make it a handsome tree in the midst of its sur-
roundings. Its fruit is a slender bean, two to three inches long, which
the Coahuillas grind and cook into an atole.

The Zizyphus Parryi, Torr., is a very spiny and intricately-
branched shrub, from five to fifteen feet high. It grows about the
springs in the higher parts of the canons, and bears a small yellowish
red berry or fruit, which is dry and almost hard. The Coahuillas call
this plant o-ot and use the fruit by pounding it into meal for atole.

Besides the legumens already described there is a third, whose pod
furnishes food, though in somewhat sparse quantities. This is the
Acacia Greggii, Gray. In the San Felipe valley, below Warner's Ranch,
there is a great deal of it, and a considerable harvest of pods can be
gathered by the Indians of the valley. But it does not grow abun-
dantly in the territory of the Coahuillas and is only occasionally used.
It is called si-ching-al.

Higher up on the mountains grow two species of wild plum or
cherry. One, the Prunus ilicifolia, Walp., has an extensive range

1 Supra, p. 3a.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 6 1

along the California coast and had a wide use among the California
Indians. It is called by the Mexicans "yslay" and by the Coahuillas
chd-mish. It grows abundantly in all the canons of the San Jacinto
mountains, its dark, handsome foliage crowding many a pass and hill-
side. Its fruit is of a reddish-yellow color, and resembles very small
gage plums. The pulp is, however, very thin and puckery and the
pit preposterously large. It is the kernel of the latter and not the
pulp that is mostly utilized. These plums are gathered in very large
quantities in August and are spread in the sun until the pulp is
thoroughly shrunken and dried. The thin shells of the pits are then
easily broken open and the kernels extracted. These are crushed in
the mortar, leached in the sand basket, and boiled into the usual atole.
The other plum tree has with some question been identified by Mr.
Jepson as the Prunus Andersonii, Gray. I found it growing along the
eastern summits of the San Jacinto range. Its fruit somewhat resem-
bles the Zizyphus and was formerly eaten by the Coahuillas, who called
it cha-wa-kal.

The Prunus demissa, a shrub with a wide green leaf, grows about
the springs and moist canons of Coahuilla valley. Its fruit is a small
red berry called a-tut.

A small grayish-green shrub, doubtfully identified by Mr. Jepson
as Halodiscus discolor, Maxim, is called by the Coahuillas tit-nut. I
have never seen the fruit, but the Indians say that though small it is
good food.

Before dismissing the truly desert plants that yield food, a word
is merited by the palms. These have been referred to above. They
grow in long, waving lines along the gorges leading into the desert
wherever water stands in pools or seeps through the sandy bottoms.
Beneath the wide fronds the dates grow in great clusters, supported by
a strong but drooping stalk. These dates are very small and the seeds
are disproportionately large, but early in the fall, when they ripen, the
Coahuillas lasso the clusters and draw them down for food. Swarms
of bees surround the fruit as it ripens, and in the fronds of the palms
are multitudes of "yellow jacket's" nests. The Indians of Lower
California cut out the heart or center of the top of young palms and
eat them with great relish. I have not known the Coahuillas to
indulge in these "palmitos."

44. In the valleys near the summit of the range and especially in
the Pifion Flats are groves of the Juniperus occidentalism Hook., low ever-
green trees, with thin, shreddy bark. The fruit, a bluish-black drupe

62 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

the size of a small marble, is eaten by the Coahuillas and called by
them is -writ.

The acorn was one of the most generally used foods of the Indians
of the Pacific coast. Its use was noticed by Cabrillo, the first white
explorer to navigate these waters. "They eat acorns and a grain
which is as large as maize and is white, of which they make dumplings.
It is good food."1 Certain parts of the coast, the Upper San Joaquin
valley and the mountains of the Coast Range are thickly covered with
forests of this stately tree. There are no less than fourteen species of
oaks in the whole of California and about eight are found in the
southern part of the state.2 Their fruit contains "starch, fixed oil,
citric acid, and sugar, as well as astringent and bitter principles." The
largest and most palatable acorn is that of the white oak, or Mexican
"roble" {Quercus lobatd), "common throughout the state, on the
plains and in the foot-hills, in the southern part of the state somewhat
higher in the mountains." It was mostly from this tree that the
Indians of the past supplied themselves.

All the " live oaks " also, among them the Quercus Englemanni,
yield palatable acorns. There are several desert and shrub species,
Q. undulata, Torr., Q. oblongifolia, and Q. Wislienzi, var. fructescens,
the "desert oak" of the Southwest, from three to ten feet high. Q.
agrifolia, Nee, is the only one of the black oaks affording food to the
Indians. It is the coast live-oak of California, the " encino " of the
Mexicans. The oak is, however, somewhat rare within the habitat of
the Coahuillas and the acorn is not to them of great economic impor-
tance. They do not put the same dependence upon it as did the
Indians along the coast.

The Quercus dumosa, Nutt., which has a thick, large fruit, grows on
the Coahuilla mountain and is gathered in considerable quantities by
the Indians of Coahuilla valley. This acorn is called by them kwin-
yil. It is ground in the mortar and leached in the sand basket. Dr.
Havard reports that the sand mixed with the meal by washing has "a
decided effect upon the teeth. My informant, a medical officer, tells
me that he has seen an Indian forty-five years old with the crowns of
his otherwise healthy teeth half gone, while in Indians sixty years old it
is not uncommon to see all the teeth worn down even with the gums."3
Although the sand basket as a means for preparing food is in constant

*Relacion 6 Diario, translation by Mr. R. S. Evans.

2 Botany of California, United States Geological Survey.

3 Food Plants of the North American Indians, Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. XXII,
No. 3, March 27, 1895.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 63

use among the Coahuilla Indians, I have never myself noticed any such
effects.

The pifion or pine nut is a very important article of food. The
lower limit of the pineries, in southern California, is, of course, high,
being almost everywhere about 5,000 feet, and it is only by reason of
the fact that the Coahuillas have penetrated into the mountains from
the desert that this source of food is available to them at all. The
summits of Torres and Coahuilla mountains and the higher San Jacinto
peaks are covered with pines of several species; the gigantic sugar pine
of the Pacific slope (P. Lambertiana, Dougl.) with a cone a foot and a
half in length, the Mexican nut pine {P. Sembroides), and {P. Parry ana ,
Eng.), and also the single-leafed or Nevada nut pine (P. Monophylla),
so precious to the Indians of the Great Basin. These nuts are gathered
in large quantities, generally in the late fall of the year. Mr. B. H.
Dutcher, of the Death Valley Expedition of 1891 has given a careful
account of pifion gathering among the Panamints on the west side of
Death Valley.1 The tree was the P. monophylla, which has a small cone
three inches long. These were pulled and beaten from the trees with
a pronged stick and collected in light packing baskets while still sticky
with gum. They were then piled on a heap of brush and roasted,
which dried the pitch and spread the leaves of the cone. The nuts
were then jarred out by a heavy blow from a stone on the apex of the
cone. The nuts were winnowed from the chaff by tossing them from
a flat basket in the breeze. The Coahuillas harvest the nuts in pre-
cisely the same manner. Sometimes in mid-summer the cones are
beaten from the trees, before the ripened harvest time, thoroughly
roasted in a fire, split open with a hatchet and the nuts extracted.
Pinones are called by the Coahuillas te-wat-em; the cones te-vat,
and the little almond-like cavities in which the nuts lie and which are
exposed in section when the cone is split open are called he-push or
the " eyes" of the te-vat. The pine most used is the Pinus monophylla.

45. The sambucus or elder is of well-known value to the Indians
of North America and many are the purposes it serves. The Spaniards
in this state fully appreciated it and gave it the name by which it is
still well known, " sauco." The Sambucus Mexicana, Presl., is highly
prized by the Coahuillas. By them it is called hun-kwat. Through-
out the months of July and August the berries are gathered in large
quantities. The little clusters are usually dried carefully on the drying
floor and so preserved in considerable amounts. When wanted they

1 American Anthropologist, Vol. VI, p. 337.

64 E7HN0-B0TANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

are cooked into a rich sauce that needs no sweetening. They are
delicious thus prepared. An Indian family during this season of the
year will subsist largely on these messes of " sauco."

Several species of the manzanita, an exceedingly handsome tree or
shrub with a rich red-colored bark and small ever-green leaves, grow
on these mountains. It has a red fruit and is very common. The
"great-berried manzanita" {Arcostaphylos glaucd) is common through-
out the coast. Manzanita is a Spanish word, the diminutive of "man-
zana," meaning " little apple." The fruit is much enjoyed by the
Coahuillas and is called ta-tu-ka. It is eaten raw and is also dried,
pounded into a flour, and mixed with water.

The sumac [Rhus trilobata, Nutt.), the twigs of which are so impor-
tant in basket making, bears a very small red berry, sel-it-toi, which is
very sour but much used both fresh and dried. Soaked in water it
makes a refreshing drink. The use of the rhus was noticed by Dr.
Edward Palmer.1

46. Perhaps the most important of the seed foods used by the
Indians is the justly famed "chia" [Salvia Columbariae Benth.), called
by the Coahuillas pa-sal. The plant is one of the smallest of the sage
family. It grows up from an annual root with a slender branching
stem, terminated by several curious whorls containing the seeds. These
are dark, round, flat bodies, that have a slippery, uncertain feeling to
the touch. The genus Salvia has an exceedingly wide range and use
as a food plant. According to Dr. Havard the Salvia polystarchia,
Ort., is largely cultivated in northern and central Mexico. These
seeds are rich in mucilage and oil. " After careful roasting they are
ground into meal, which, when thrown into water, expands to several
times its original bulk, the mucilage rapidly dissolving. By adding
lemon and sweetening a very popular Mexican beverage is produced."*

Chia was a staple food with the Indians of the Pacific coast. Large
quantities, already parched, have been taken from graves on the Santa
Barbara channel.3 The seeds are gathered by the Coahuillas with the
seed fan and flat basket, and are parched and ground. The meal is
then mixed with about three times as much wheat flour and the whole
pounded up together. It makes a dark looking meal. This is " pinole,"
called by the Coahuillas to-at. It is an old and famous preparation.
Molina gives the following definition of its constituents as made in

1 op. at.

2 Plant foods of the North American Indians, Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Lancaster, Pa.
Vol. XXIII, No. 2, 1896.

3 United States Geological Survey West of the 100th Meridian, Vol. VII, pp. 37, 40, 79, 80, etc.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 65

Mexico: "Pinolli la harnia de mayz y chia antes que la deslian."1
A little sugar is usually mixed with it. In this shape it is a much
prized article of food with all who have become acquainted with
its nutritive and reviving qualities. Experienced prospectors and
desert travelers carry a little bag of it with them, and when the warm,
alkali water holes are reached, a few teaspoonfuls of the pinole in a
quart cupful of the water seems to neutralize somewhat its danger-
ous qualities and make a refreshing drink more nourishing than gruel.

Pinole, by the Coahuillas, is sometimes baked into little cakes or bis-
cuits. Either way chia is used, it is very good ; has a pleasant, nutty
flavor, and is exceedingly wholesome. Moreover, it grows in consid-
erable quantity through the mountain ranges of the Coahuillas, and in
the early summer ollas stored with these seeds stand in every home,
and throughout the cooler hours of the day and evening there is ever
a woman grinding at her mill.

Beside the salvia, several other plants yield seeds that attract the
Indian woman and keep her busy through the months of May and June
with her yi-kow-a-pish and chi-pat-mal. Some of these seeds are very
beautiful, and possess a real fascination for the eye and touch. The
seeds of the Lasthenia glabrata (Lindb.), called by the Coahuillas
ak'lo-kal, in mass resemble iron filings, being of a dark color and fine
elongated shape. They are prepared by being pounded up into a very
fine flour, which is eaten dry.

But the most beautiful little seed of all is that of the small crucifer
called " pepper grass," Sisimbrium canescens, Coahuilla ds-il, a tiny
reddish brown seed, round, and flat in shape. It is ground up, cooked
in a large quantity of water, and eaten with a little salt.

The Atriplex lentiformus, Watson, one of the "salty sages," is found
in the Coahuilla valley and on the slopes of the Sierras. Its seeds
somewhat resemble the chia. They are prepared for food by grinding
and cooking with salt and water. It is called kd-sil.

The dry flats and valleys of the Coahuilla mountains are frequently
closely planted with wormwood, the Artemisia tridentata, Nutt. Its
feathery foliage whitens the landscape, and for long distances its
pungent odor dominates over every other fragrance. The seeds ripen
late in the fall, and are gathered by the Coahuillas and pounded up
for pinole. The plant and seed are named by the Coahuillas wik-wut.

47. The flowers or buds, in the case of a number of plants, yield
desirable food. The mescal or agave has already been referred to for

1 Vocabulario en lengua Castilliana y Mexicana, quoted by Bancroft, Vol. I, p. 374, note 90.

66 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

its many nutritive and useful products. The use of the yellow blossoms,
amu-sal-em, of the Agave deserti, has been mentioned above. The
flower-crowned tops of the succulent roasting stalks are invariably
saved and the splendid clusters of blossoms carried home, there to be
boiled and then dried for preservation. I have some, thus prepared,
in my possession, that have kept perfectly for five years. They are
still sweet and palatable, even inviting to the taste. The incomparable
waxy flowers of the Yucca Whipplei are prepared for food in the same
way, by boiling in an olla of water.

The use of the sweet scarlet blossoms of the Fouquiera spinosa has
also been noted.

The large sumac Rhus ovata, which grows in great clumps through-
out southern California and whose broad green leaves ornament many
a dingy range of chaparral, has a small blossom which grows in full
clusters and is of economic importance as bee-feed. These clusters of
the sumac, ndk-wit, are cooked in water and eaten.

A species of wild rose, common in southern California, grows
along the usually dry washes of the Coahuilla valley and hills. It is
either Rosa Californica or ramoscina. It is called ush-ul, and the cap-
sules, ush-ul-toi, are picked and eaten to a small extent.

One of the most curious ways of preparing food is the treatment of
the small slender capsules of the bladder-pod {Isomeris arborea, Nutt.), a
shrub with a hard yellow wood. These little pods, so the Indians have
informed me, are gathered and cooked in a small hole in the ground
with hot stones.

Beside the leaves of the Chenopodium, the tiny dark leaves of the
Sueda suffructescens, Watson, whose use as a dye for basket materials
has already been noticed, are boiled for greens.

A tall annual plant, unidentified, but called by the Coahuillas ten-il,
which has a yellow flower and large leaves, is cooked in an olla and eaten.

One of the cancer roots, Aphyllon Ludovicianum, Gray, called by
the Coahuillas mis-a-lem, grows plentifully in the sandy washes. It has
large succulent roots, yellow or white, and in the springtime, before
the plant blossoms, and while the roots are young and tender, they are
dug up and roasted in the coals for food.

The Astragulus, "rattle-snake weed" or "loco weed," is a genus
well known to California stockmen. It has numerous species, some-
what difficult of determination. Several species, at least, are poisonous
to cattle and sheep, and it is universally believed to madden horses,
dispossessing them of self-control and making them subject to fits

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 67

of ungovernable action, in other words, "locoing" them. One such
species, called by the Coahuillas kash-lem, has a curious use as a flavor-
ing principle. By summer- time the leaves fall away from the sere and
yellow branches of these plants, and they are covered by quantities of
straw-colored pods as big as the joint of a man's thumb. These quiver
and rattle with every motion of the air, and give it one of the designa-
tions by which it is known. These pods, according to Celestin Torte,
are pounded up and mixed with beans, and perhaps other articles of
food, as a spice.

48. Among the fruits most important to the Indian inhabitants of
the Southwest stand those of the cactus family. There are over fifty
species in the United States and a majority of these are found in California.

The Mexican prickly pear or "tuna" {Opuntia Tuna, Mill) is said
by Dr. Havard to have been brought to the Pacific coast from Mexico,
where it had been cultivated from time immemorial. It was planted
in hedges about the missions and ranch-houses, where it thrives still in
picturesque clusters and is now thoroughly naturalized. Its fruit is the
well-known "Indian fig." While it has not been planted anywhere on
the reservations of the Coahuillas, they sometimes obtain the fruit from
other Indians of the valleys. The cactus plant is called by the Coa-
huillas na-vit and the little bud-like fruit na-vit-yu-lu-ku or "the little
heads of the cactus."

There are numerous species of cactus throughout the mountains down
to the desert level. About a dozen yield fruit products utilized by the
Coahuillas. In most cases it is the ripened fruit or "fig" that is eaten.
In several cases it is the abundant seeds , in others, the buds and suc-
culent joints of stalk. Except in a few instances I can do no more in
the way of identification of these species than to give a description of
the plant and state its uses and Indian name.

The Opuntia basilaris is an especially valuable cactus plant to the
Coahuillas. It is one of the small varieties and has a tender slate-
colored stem in flat joints. The young fruit in early summer is full of
sweetness. These buds are collected in baskets, being easily broken
off with a stick. The short, sparse spines are wholly brushed off with
a bunch of grass or a handful of brush twigs. The buds are then
cooked or steamed with hot stones in a pit for twelve hours or more.
This cactus is called md-nal. Mr. Coville describes exactly the same
use of this plant by the Panamints. x This cooked cactus is, he says,

1 Directions for Collecting Specimens and Information Illustrating the Aboriginal Use of
Plants. Bulletin of National Museum, No. 39. 1895, p. 6, and American Anthropologist, Vol. V, p.
350, 1892.

68 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

called na-vo. I would call attention to the similarity of this word to
the general Coahuilla word for cactus fruit, na-vit. No vocabulary of
the Panamints has ever been published,1 but they are undoubtedly of
the same great stock as the Coahuillas and such verbal similarities are
to be expected.

Mu-tal is another of the opuntia, with flat, ugly jointed stems,
growing low and spreading over the ground in the' most arid stretches
of the valleys. The flat joints, the size of one's palm, are crowded
along their edges with buds as big as the last joint of a man's thumb.
They are gathered in large quantities, brushed, and dried. They are
often stored for subsequent use, and when needed for food are pre-
pared by boiling in water with a little salt and lard. Very frequently
also the fruit is allowed to ripen for its seeds. The figs, after being
dried, are spread out on a hard, smooth, dirt floor and then the woman
sits down beside the pile of cactus heads and with a flail, made
from the leaf stem of the desert palm, thoroughly threshes out the
seeds. These are then winnowed from the chaff and stored for winter
use. Along through the winter, as needed for food, they are pounded
into meal and cooked into an atole. These seeds are called wi- a/ and
they are obtained from several species of cactus besides the mu-tal.

There are two cacti growing along the slopes of Torres mountain
that in growth and structure much resemble the Opuntia Tuna. I
have not seen them in bloom and know nothing of their flowers. Both
yield luscious fruit in large quantities. Ti-nup-em might readily be
mistaken for a neglected and stunted growth of the cultivated tuna.
Na-u-tem is not so thrifty and grows low on the ground. Its flat stems
have exceptionally long spines, two to three inches. The a-yu-vi-vi is
a very small cactus, only about four inches high and covered with little
hooked spines. It has a very small, sparse fruit.

The cho-kal is a very furry cactus, with round jointed stems two to
three feet high. It is light brown in color and grows in communities,
sometimes covering a rocky cafion side for a half mile to the exclusion
of almost everything else. It throws off extremely disagreeable balls
of spines which fasten in a horse's fetlocks and give instant trouble.
Its fruit, which I have never seen, is said to be very good.

U-a-chim is one of the cylindrical or barrel-shaped cacti, light col-
ored and furry. It has an edible fruit. '

Kopash is the famed "nigger head*" the Echinocactus cylindricis.
It appears above the sand simply as a round fluted globe, a little larger

i A Panamint vocabulary has, however, been collected by Mr. Henshaw, but I think nowhere pub-
lished as yet.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 69

than a man's head. It is covered with spines and bears a small edible
fig. But its chief value does not lie in its fruit, but in its succulent
and thirst-relieving interior. No plant could be more admirably con-
trived as a reservoir, and the thick tough rind and protective spines en-
close an interior that is full of water. This plant is often resorted to
by thirsty travelers and, according to the stories told over the desert,
frequently saves life.

49. A review of the food supply of these Indians forces in upon us
some general reflections or conclusions. First, it seems certain that the
diet was a much more diversified one than fell to the lot of most North
American Indians. Roaming from the desert, through the mountains
to the coast plains, they drew upon three quite dissimiliar botanical
zones. There was no single staple, on the production of which
depended the chances of sufficiency or want. Any one of several much
used products might be gathered in sufficient quantities to carry the
entire tribe through a year of subsistence. There was really an abun-
dant supply of wild food, far more than adequate, at nearly all times
of the year, for the needs of the several thousand Indian inhabi-
tants of former times, although hardly a score of white families will find
a living here after all the Indians are gone. And the secret of this
anomaly lies in the fact that the Indian drew his stores of food from
hillsides and canons, where the white man looks for nothing and can
produce nothing. The territory is a very large one, perhaps 4,000
square miles of canons and mountains, rough plains, and sandy des-
erts. In all of it, as we have seen, there are few spots of beauty; only
the valleys of pines, the wonderful canons of palms, and the green
potreros about the springs; while over most broods the hot, throbbing
silence of the desert. And yet this habitat, dreary and forbidding as
it appears to most, is after all a generous one. It bears some of the
most remarkable food plants of any continent. Nature did not pour
out her gifts lavishly here, but the patient toiler and wise seeker she
rewarded well. The main staples of diet were, indeed, furnished in
most lavish abundance. Let us notice a few instances. The crops of
legumens, that annually fall from the splendid mesquite groves of
the Cabeson or the New river country, could not be wholly utilized by
a population that numbered a hundred thousand souls. I have seen
the mesquite beans fallen so heavily beneath the trees in the vicinity of
Martinez as to carpet the sand for miles. Centals could be gathered
about every tree. Hundreds of horses and cattle that ranged the val-
ley, to say nothing of the busy women that had crowded their grana-
ries full, effected no visible diminution of the supply.

7© E7HN0-B0TANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

In the splendid moonlight; after the heat of the day, from all
directions there would come the busy thud of pestle in wooden mortar,
as the women worked leisurely at the mills, while jest and laughter
broke the continuity of their toil. Every bush or tree was dropping
fatness. The desert seemed the very land of plenty, where the manna
fell at each man's door.

Or, consider the agave. The various portions of a single plant
might keep a family in food for a week. It is a splendid food, delici-
ous, nourishing, and when roasted seemingly superior to deterioration.
The lower levels of the canons of the San Jacinto range or the sides
of the Coyote valley could annually feed an army with agave. The
" chamish " or " yslay " (Prunus Andersonii) in certain parts of the
mountains grows very abundantly and yields splendidly. A single
canon often contains enough to supply an entire village with meal of
pounded pits. Within the habitat of the Coahuillas scores of such
canons could be found.

The road from Coahuilla valley down to Ahuanga creek descends
along the bottom of a gorge. The sides of this canon are covered
with Yucca Mohavensis. In July or early August these palm -like trees,
for so they almost are, are all crowded with stalks hung with heavy pods,
more fruit drying in the sun than the entire tribe could devour. The
groves of oaks and pines in the higher valleys of San Jacinto ; the
abundant crops of chia and other seed plants; the elder berry, so
greatly enjoyed, that frequently families will live for weeks on little
else; all of these can be found in inexhaustible quantities. Another
fact very favorable to the Indians is the long season over which the
gathering of these staples is distributed. The harvest time opens in
April, with the budding out of agave and yucca stalks, and from this
time until late fall there is no month without its especial product. The
chia and other seed plants are ready for the fan in May and June, the
wild plums in June and July, the mesquite and sambucus in August,
and the pinons and acorns from September on. For only about four
months of winter was it necessary to hoard food. The ollas and basket
granaries were sufficient store-houses.

50. The uses to which the majority of these food plants have been
put are passing away and will not be revived. The Indians are begin-
ning to earn a large part of their support by civilized labor. They are
the best sheep shearers in southern California, riding in bands through
the country in spring and fall. Many work through the summer in
orchards and vineyards and in fruit-drying and packing establishments.

FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 7 1

On the reservations they raise cattle, especially in the mountain Coa-
huilla valley. They plant maize, beans, peas, potatoes, water melons,
squashes and. in the mountains, also wheat and barley. All but the
last two require irrigation, and for this purpose they make in the
mountains small reservoirs, by damming and deepening the springs,
and dig rude zanjas or irrigating ditches. In the Cabeson valley they
conduct the water short distances out of the canons in which it trickles,
or at certain villages they irrigate small patches from their wells. The
vegetables are boiled or fried ; the melons are a favorite fruit, as among
all Indians ; the barley is cut for hay for the stock, and the wheat is
threshed and ground on the metate to make flour. The threshing
is an interesting scene. The hay is piled in a small stack upon the
threshing floor, a circular, hardened plat of ground, called wa-ki-wa-
nut. Indian boys then ride ponies round this stack, while a man
slowly rakes the straw well under the horses' feet. An hour's hard
riding will thresh out a good-sized pile. The men then take rakes,
wa-kau-vil, and draw off the straw. Rude pitchforks, sal-sal-awit, are
also used. Then the women gather up the grain and chaff in large
baskets, se-kwd-vel-em. A winnowing cloth, ke-la, is spread on the
ground. The winnowing is done in the afternoon, when the fresh
wind from the Pacific reaches the valley. A woman fills her chi-pat-
mal or winnowing basket and, standing on the cloth, holds her burden
high above her head and shakes the contents slowly out. The chaff
is carried away by the wind while the heavy grain falls at her feet.
Heads that the horses' hoofs do not thresh out are carefully gathered,
placed in a deep se-kwa-vel, and the woman steps in and tramps the seed
out with her bare feet. The grain is either stored in the basket gran-
ary, mai-a-not, or put into gunny sacks, kbw-kwa-nil. Two women
will winnow a couple of centals in the course of an afternoon's leisurely
work.

51. It is an interesting question from what source these Indians
first became acquainted with agriculture, the use of irrigation, and with
those plants indigenous to America — maize, beans, pumpkins. The
California Coast Indians do not seem to have been planters. Cabril-
lo's Relacion, however, records repeatedly that the Indians told them
that there was much maize growing in the interior. But this statement
is far from final. They may and they may not have understood one
another. He seems nowhere to have seen maize growing or in the
possession of the coast Indians, though he noticed their other impor-
tant foods, the maguey, seeds, and the acorn.

72 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

On the other hand, when the Spaniards discovered New Mexico,
they found the Pueblo Indians cultivating maize, beans, and squashes.
The Cocopahs and lower Colorado tribes are described by Don Jose
Cortez,1 in 1799, as raising an abundance of the above vegetables. So
did the Mojaves, Chemehuevis, and Yumas when first seen by Ameri-
can troops and explorers. On the banks of the Colorado irrigation
is not needed, neither is any preparation of the soil. The stream
simply overflows and leaves rich, damp, alluvial strips along its sides.
All that is necessary here is to press a seed down into the mud and
leave it alone. In places such as this agriculture will begin if any-
where. Lieutenant Michler reported in 1851 that the Yumas even cul-
tivated the " seed grass " for food, preparing the seed afterwards by
grinding it in a mortar of mesquite wood and kneading the meal into
cakes to be dried in the sun.2 This cultivation was also carried on far
out on the Colorado desert along the channel of the New river, not
many miles north from the Hardy's Colorado where the Cocopahs still
raise abundant crops on land submerged each summer by the overflow.
Along the New river lagoons are village sites where many Indians
once lived on the crops they produced, but which have now been aban-
doned, owing to the increasing aridity of the desert. Dr. Veatch, in
1857, entering the desert here from the California side, stopped at a
lagoon not far from the Salton basin, where his guide, a Diegeno
Indian, told him

that this secluded spot was his early home. He was born here and the tribe
he now rules over here had their lodges and lived in abundance on the maize,
melons, and frijoles that he described as growing here with a luxuriousness
unknown to any place away from the so-called desert.

These same facts are recorded by a correspondent in the Alia Califor-
nia of November, 1858, and have been also related to me by Diegeno
Indians now living in Jacumba pass, just south of the American
boundary line in Lower California. Their retirement from the
desert seems to have been about seventy years ago, and was due to an
interruption of the overflow into the desert of the Colorado, which was
not regularly resumed until 1849. It would now be possible to resume
life once more along the New river channel, if there were Indians to
make the move. Now, it is only a few miles north from here, about
the base of the San Jacinto mountains that the Coahuillas have long
lived. Here they have cultivated maize and frijoles for certainly a

1 Report, date 1799, translated in Pac. R. R. Nar., Report on Indian Tribes p. 117.

2 Emory, Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. I, p. 112.

DRINKS, NARCO TICS, AND MEDICINES 7 3

great many years. It is easier to imagine that the knowledge of agri-
culture with the seed of corn, squash, and bean came to them long ago
across the desert, than that they learned of these things only in this cen-
tury from the Spaniards. Westward of the Coast Range, however, where
artificial irrigation is necessary, cultivation of the soil may not have
preceded the missions, although Mr. Taylor years ago made interest-
ing mention of finding on the Sesepe river, near Piru, " remains of
ancient acequias or irrigating canals, made exactly after the plans of
those of the Gila, covering a space of some four hundred acres," and
which he suggests is " the only thing of the kind to be met with in
California." ■

In concluding this paragraph I cannot forbear calling attention to
the fact that change of diet is not an unmixed good. Doubtless
it is an inevitable change, but it has wrought havoc in the health of
many families. The transition from a plain atole to a mess of hot
food, fried in grease, is more than an Indian's constitution can abide.
I believe the heavy mortality among children, the decay of teeth and
skin eruptions that are appearing, are due in large part to the aban-
donment of native foods for those of civilized life.

CHAPTER VIII.

DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES.

52. The preparation of cool and refreshing drinks from the fruit
of the prosopis and the aromatic sumac has been noticed above. The
flower of the "ochotilla," or Fouquiera spinosa, is used also to pre-
pare a sweet beverage by soaking the splendid scarlet blossoms in
water.

Of these three beverages the mesquite drink is most commonly
used, indeed, during the hot summer months it is drunk continually.
A wide clay basin, containing a mass of half-crushed pods of the
algaroba is kept filled with water, and everybody helps himself to a
good draught as thirst impels. The screwbean, however, as stated
previously, makes the better beverage.

Besides these cooling summer drinks the Coahuillas have a tea
plant that is very much prized. This is the Ephedra Nevadensis, Wats,
called tu-tut. This ephedra grows along the mountains facing the

1 California Farmer, Vol. XVI, No. 15.

74 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

desert, and is especially abundant within the territory of the Coahuilla
on the slopes below Pifion Flats. It is a shrub of three feet or so in
height. The branches and twigs are greatly multiplied, while the
leaves are almost entirely absent, being reduced to mere sheathings
about the twigs.

The ephedra has, I believe, well-known medicinal properties ; cer-
tainly the tu-tut is much valued by the Coahuillas. Bunches of these
twigs are almost universally to be found tucked among the thatching
of every jacal or packed away in basket or olla. The tea steeped from
it forms a pleasant and refreshing beverage.

Coville, in his notes on the Panamint Indians, reports that they
use the seeds of the Ephedra Nevadensis, roasting and grinding them
and making them into a bitter bread.1 I have not discovered this use
of the seeds by the Coahuillas.

Another shrub which yields its twigs for tea, but which I have never
seen growing, is called td-tu-ka. It would seem important to deter-
mine the species of this plant, but it is impossible to identify it from
the dried specimens in my possession.

The Simmondsia Calif ornica, Nutt., is a large shrub which bears a very
curious nut. It is inclosed in a sheath and is about a half inch in
length. It splits in half in such a way as to resemble closely a coffee
berry, and it is by this name that it is locally known. Dr. Havard
says that these nuts yield a very fine oil, and that the " Indians of
southern California use them as an article of food." The only use to
which they are put among the Coahuillas, who call the plant kbw-a-
nuk-al, is in the preparation of a beverage. The nuts are ground and
a "coffee" made by boiling the meal.

53. Tobacco, as is well-known, is a native American product, and
its use among Indians nearly universal. There are several species
indigenous to the Pacific coast. Nicotiana quadrivalvis, var. multivalvis,
Gray, is said by Douglass to have been cultivated by the Indians of the
Columbia river. N. plumbaginifolia, Torr., is the wild species used,
according to Powers, by the Neeshenams of California, and N. atte-
nuata by the Klamaths, according to Schummacher. N. trigonophylla,
Dun., N. Bigelovii and N. attenuata were all used by the Indians of
Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and southern California, according to Dr.
Edward Palmer.

N. attenuata, Torr., grows plentifully in the territory of the Coa-
huillas. It is quite a tall plant, two feet or so high, with gummy,

1 American Anthropologist, Vol. V, p. 351.

DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES 75

repulsive leaves and a showy flower. Occasionally an acre or so will
be sprinkled with this helpful little weed. The Coahuillas call it
pivat-isil or "coyote tobacco," to distinguish it from the "pivat" of
the whites. It is still smoked, but its use is disappearing in favor of
the cultivated article. Formerly it was prepared by being pounded
up in small stone mortars, especially kept for this purpose, mixed with
water and chewed.

Two varieties of the milkweed, Asclepias, furnish a curious product.
The white sap in these plants, which exudes freely when its stem is cut,
is collected by the Coahuillas in a cup and set aside for one night to
solidify. Sometimes it is heated over the fire. After being thus coag-
ulated, it is chewed. Its bitter taste disappears after a little and a
tasteless gum is left which affords inexhaustible satisfaction to the user.
One of these varieties, Asclepias erosa, Torr., is called ke-at; the other,
which has a red flower, the species of which has not been determined
by me, is called wich-sal. The prepared gum is chil-se. fcWicieaC Lijargr*

The passion for intoxicants among Indians, as is well known, is
strong. Havard, in his monograph, cites a number of plants used by
them as intoxicants or delirients. The Coahuillas, in their native
state, seem to have been quite largely free from the use of such drugs.
They did not, so far as I can learn, ever distil or ferment the agave,
as did the Apaches in the manufacture of their "tiz-win." There is
one plant, cited also by Havard, which contains a very poisonous ele- -
ment, which was used by the Coahuillas to produce delirium. This is
the Datura meteloides, which they call ki-ki-sow-il. It is a small
repulsive annual with a broad leaf and for fruit a large burr. The
whole plant is, or formerly was, pounded up, mixed with water and
drunk in small quantities, which produced the stimulus and eventual
unconsciousness desired. It evidently contains an active poison, and,
according to the Coahuillas, used frequently to produce death. It is
now almost wholly avoided. Havard says of it that it was smoked and
added to intoxicating drinks by the Colorado river and Pah Ute tribes.

The appetites or cravings which lead men in all parts of the world
to indulge in stimulants is a very curious physiological phenomenon.
Its real basis does not seem yet to be fully understood. The wide
comparison, of the use of such principles or drugs should assist in
determining the nature of alcoholism and attendant morbid appetites.

54. Anyone whose fortune it is to associate at all intimately with
almost any of the Indians of North America must shortly become
aware of the intensity of their religious feeling and experience. The

76 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

Indian appreciates thoroughly the mystery of life and the reality of
the unseen. A large part of the training of an Indian and much of his
mature exertions is devoted to the cultivation of spiritual emotions.
The student of Indian society has come to understand that chieftain-
ship in a tribe rested not alone upon skill, courage, and resourceful-
ness, but also upon the reputed strength of a warrior's "medicine."

The discussion of the Indian shaman's position and practice forms
no part of our subject and is referred to, as is also the temescal, merely
to introduce our study of remedial plants and herbs. Suffice it to say,
that the medicine-men among the Coahuillas seem to form a special
class, having undergone a preparation and initiation that makes them
exorcists and men of influence for life. They are still common and
keep up their practices although most of the mountain Coahuillas are
nominally Roman Catholics. They operate on the sick in the manner
common throughout America, by prayers, barkings, coughing, biting
the flesh, and occasionally pretending by sucking to draw foreign sub-
stances from the body. Their practices appear to be often successful,
relieving the patient's mind and assisting the restoration to health.
Father Boscana, who described the practices of medicine-men at San
Juan Capistrano, related that their cures were frequent and only to be
explained by witchcraft.1

55. The use of the sudatory or sweat-house, well known through-
out California by the Aetec word " temescal," was formerly very com-
mon in the Southwest and California. For a considerable number of
complaints its effects were doubtless beneficial, and the general health
was probably improved by it as well. Foreigners have generally
marveled at and derided this institution, but except for injury done to
the eyes by smoke its effects are pleasant and comforting, and the cold
bath which invariably followed the sweat reduced the body to a normal
condition and to a healthy and vigorous organization could do no
injury. But the use of the temescal for the fearful, infectious plagues,
as small-pox, was, according to all accounts, very injurious. Resort to
it when affected by these diseases invariably resulted fatally. This
result may have served to discredit the practice, for it is no longer
customary in any but a few remote Indian villages. There is a temes-
cal at Puerta la Cruz, near Warner's ranch, one at San Isidro, and
one in the Coyote canon. There is also an abandoned one near La
Mesa in the Cabeson valley, with a dry well at hand. Other than these
I know of none in use in southern California. Those at San Isidro

1 Chinigchinich) p. 312.

DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES 77

and Coyote canon are still considerably used. The Coahuillas call the
temescal hash-lish. They build the house above ground. Two crotched
posts are set up about ten feet apart, a ridgepole added and then logs
are leaned about it from all sides so as to form an elliptical hut, with a
low door on one side. Brush and soil are firmly compacted all over
the sides so as to inclose tightly the room. Into this the Indian, when
afflicted with cold, grip, fever, or like complaint, and frequently when
no illness is felt at all, enters, and building a fire in the center of the
hut squats for an hour or two in the heat and smoke. The result is
great perspiration. This is followed by a cold plunge or bath in
adjacent pool or stream.

56. The Indians of California appear to have had a knowledge of
medicine and remedial treatment far in advance of most tribes of
North America. Many of their practices show a considerable under-
standing of the nature of the complaints they were designed to relieve
and were unquestionably beneficial.

An interesting review of this system of native therapeutics has been
made by Dr. Cephas Bard,1 in which many customs cited in Bancroft's
Native Races are verified out of the writer's rich personal experience in
the practice of medicine among both Indians and Mexicans, for many
years in this state.

Powers also, in his Indians of California, gives good-sized lists of
plants utilized for medicines.

The patient quest for food, the minute examination of every grow-
ing thing to disclose a possibly useful property therein, has discovered
to the Coahuillas a number of remedial herbs. These are put into
use as often as any complaint which they are known to relieve appears,
and I have known some of them to be tried by white men with reputed
benefit.

Perhaps the largest number of these remedies are purgatives or
laxatives. These qualities in certain plants would be likely to be soon
discovered by the investigator, and there is a certain necessity for the
use of these principles, as several of the staples of food, like the mes-
quite bean, appear to produce constipation. The Adenostoma Sparsi-
fo/ium,T orr., the greasewood or chamiso, so abundant on the hillsides of
southern California and a really handsome tree or shrub, with yellowish
green or reddish bark and fragrant flowers, has been already noticed
as furnishing food in its seeds and as of great use in building and for
fuel. The twigs of this sankat, as the Coahuillas call it, are dried and

1 Contribution to the History of Medicine in Southern California. Ventura, 1894.

78 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

steeped in a drink to produce vomit and bowel relief. It is of very
common resort for pain in stomach or intestines. These twigs are also
ground very fine, mixed with grease, and used for a salve.

A strong, black decoction of the leaves of the " wild buckwheat,"
Eriogonum fasciculatum, Benth., called by Coahuillas hu-la-kal, is drunk
for pain in the stomach and also for pain in the head. The white
flower of the buckwheat, so well known as " bee-feed," is steeped to make
an eye-wash.

The wormwood, Artemesia tridentata, Coahuilla wik-wut, is used for
stomach complaints in the same way as hu-lu-kul.

The leaves of the "creosote bush," Larrea Mexicana, d-iu-kul,
obtained from the desert are steeped and drunk for bowel complaints
and for consumption.

The Perezia microcephala, Gray, an herb two or three feet high, with
thin oblong leaves and purple flowers, called by the Coahuillas hd-bak-
a-ba, is used, when prepared as a decoction, to produce a very quick
passage of the bowels.

The root of an undetermined plant, called chi-vi-ni-vish, is cleaned
from just where it branches into the stem, pounded up, boiled into a
dark draught, and used to alleviate any sort of pain.

The balsamic leaves of the Eriodyction Californica, a low shrub,
very common throughout southern California, are reported by the
"Botany" of the Geological Survey of California to yield a tonic when
infused in spirits. When merely steeped in water this herb makes a
strong and not unpleasant tea, sometimes used, within the writer's
remembrance, by white families. The Coahuillas commonly use the
leaves of this herb, which they call tdn-wi-vel, for a poultice or lini-
ment. The leaves pounded up are bound upon the sores of both men
and beasts and a strong decoction is used for bathing sore parts or the
limbs when painful or fatigued.

The leaves and twigs of the Aplopappus Palmeri, Gray, Coahuilla
he-nil, are bound upon the feet, together with hot stones, to relieve
swelling and pain.

An eye-wash is prepared by steeping the leaves of the Baccharis
glutinosa, Pers., called pd-ki.

Another plant, whose species or genus could not be determined
from my specimen, named by the Coahuillas ki-ta-vel, is beaten up,
root and all, and applied as a liniment or poultice.

Besides the Larrea Mexicana in consumption, several other plants
are used for coughs, pain in the chest, and phthisis.

DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES 79

A tea of the leaves of the sumac, Rhus ovata, Coahuilla ndk-wit, is
drunk for coughs and pain in the chest. So also are the twigs of the
Bigilovia graveolens, Gray, Coahuilla tes-i-nit, a shrub with a wide
range, but found in this case on the desert.

For fevers the Coahuillas use the root of a plant called by them
se-vi-tu-ki, which is crushed and boiled, the liquid being then used for
bathing the face, neck and hands ; a very little may also be drunk.

The above enumeration covers pretty well the scope of native
pathology; bowel and stomach complaints, coughs, colds, and mild
fevers, sore eyes, occasioned by the smoke of jacal and sweat-house,
sprains, muscular soreness and injury, with occasional rheumatism.
These were their only diseases before the introduction of the contagious
and specific maladies q|^ the whites. Of these latter, by far the most
destructive is tuberculosis, which is constantly active and frequently
removes a whole family of children. Measles, whooping-cough, and
especially small-pox, have been terrible scourges at times. Venereal
diseases among the Coahuillas, thanks to their isolation and a saving
distrust of the white man, who is never admitted to their community
life, are practically unknown. In this last respect I believe the
Coahuillas are superior to almost any tribes of the Southwest.

57. Several medicines also are applied to sick stock.

The Larrea Mexicana is not only used for consumption, but is given
to horses with colds, distemper, or running at the nose.

A drink prepared from the Adenostoma fasiculatum is given to sick
cows.

At Cabeson I was once shown a bundle of dried roots, gathered in
the San Bernadino mountains, called fe-a-il, from which was made a
medicine for horses.

The most serious affliction from which horses suffer is, however,
saddle-gall. The California stock saddle is the most efficient riding
seat, for all practical purposes, ever devised, but though designed
and constructed with extreme care, it is unpreventably hard upon a
horse's back in the unparalleled exertions incident to western stock rais-
ing and mountain riding. The saddle-tree is heavy and the strain of
pulling with a reata from the pommel in handling cattle is very hard
on the back and hide. The heat in summer is great and horses are
ridden harder and more continuously than perhaps anywhere else in
the world, sixty to eighty miles on a stretch being common for a good
horse and rider. It invariably results that a saddle horse is marked by
patches of white hair on withers, back, and sides, that cover the scars

So ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS

made by saddle-tree and cinch ring. The various herbs, valuable for
liniments and washes described above, find thus frequent use in the
cure of saddle-gall.

A curious poultice for such saddle sores is made of the root of the
" mock orange," Cucerbita perennis, called ne-kish. This is crushed and
mixed with sugar and applied to the wound.

Is-wa-chai-al, the mistletoe, that grows abundantly upon the juni-
per, is dried, pounded up into a flour, and sprinkled as a powder into
such wounds.

The worst saddle-gall I ever witnessed was received by the pony of
a Coahuilla Indian with whom I made a trip in 1897 from the Coa-
huilla valley across the Cabeson, descending from the mountains by the
trail north of Torres peak. His horse was a small black bronco of not
more than 750 pounds weight, and as tough as new raw-hide. Its back
began to be sore, however, the second day and in spite of every care
grew daily worse. By the time we returned to the mountains the
animal's withers were swollen as large as a man's head, and a sinus as
large as one's forearm, discharging pus, extended down each shoulder
to the breast. The last day of mountain climbing the horse was com-
pletely disabled and fell repeatedly, banging his nose and head on the
trail. In this extreme juncture the Indian relied for a remedy upon
the intoxicating Datura meteloides, hunting the obnoxious weed in the
storm-swept gorges. He crushed the entire plant between two flat
stones, wet it still more with water and rubbed it into the sores. He
said it was very strong medicine and would relieve a gall when all else
failed. He said further, that as a delirient it was used with extreme
danger, that his father, who is a medicine-man of Santa Rosa village,
had known four men to die at one time from indulging in it.

Unlike the practices of the medicine-men, this knowledge of the
plants to be used in sickness is common to all and peculiar to neither
class nor sex. The knowledge in these matters is greatest, of course,
in the old men and women, but the good effects of some herbs are
known to every child.

This wisdom is only a part of the race adjustment of this people to
their chosen home.

58. The Shoshones have not been estimated highly by ethnolo-
gists. According to Brinton, Virchow found some of them the lowest
in skull-form of any tribes of the continent.1 Whether or not the
Coahuillas are really superior to other tribes of Nevada and Utah I

* Races and Peoples, p. 256.

DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES 8 1

cannot, from comparative observation, say; but I am certain that
from any point of view the Coahuilla Indians are splendid types of
men and women. Physically they are handsome, often large of size,
many men six feet and over, with splendid shaggy heads, and faces
of much command and dignity. Their desert home has given them
great powers of endurance and enormous toleration of heat and thirst.
With rare exceptions, and those always young men who have fre-
quented the settlements, they are absolutely honest and trustworthy.
Unlike the Mojaves or Cocopahs they know neither beggary nor pros-
titution. Their homes and persons are orderly and clean. The fine
pools and springs of warm mineral waters which are common through-
out their habitat are most gratefully prized possessions. Probably not
less than two centuries ago the ancestors of these Indians entered the
great range of territory still occupied by their descendants. They
came from the deserts north of the San Bernadino range and the stock
to which they belong is a desert people, but the Colorado valleys and
surrounding mountains raised new difficulties and offered new oppor-
tunities. Their adaptations to these conditions, their utilization of
whatever was there to be secured, raised their standard of culture until,
as it seems to me, it will compare favorably with that of any Indians of
western United States, save the Pueblo builders. After having
explored with some completeness the various portions of their country
and realized the difficulties attending life in certain portions, and the
call upon courage and endurance that the desert always makes, the
knowledge gained by this people, the culture they attained, apparently
long before seen by white men, seem to me to be a remarkable triumph
for men of a low, barbarous inheritance.

Their splendid wells, unique perhaps among the Indian tribes of
America, their laborious though rude irrigation of the maize, their set-
tled community life, with its well-built houses and basket granaries,
their effective pottery, their exquisite basketry, their complete and
successful exploitation of all the plant resources throughout hundreds
of square miles of mountains and plains, these are not insignificant nor
contemptible steps toward civilized life. Several of these arts, espe-
cially agriculture, doubtless were borrowed from the Colorado river
tribes, or from the New river dwellers ; but their utilization, under
physical conditions so much more difficult than the fertile irrigated
plains of the Colorado overflow, may be regarded as a step in
advance.

These things suggest how decided is the influence of the desert

82 ETHNO BOTANY OF THE CO AH U ILL A INDIANS

upon culture, and throw light upon the reason for the origin of the
indigenous civilization of the Nile valley or the deserts of Turkestan.

The desert stops the roving, migratory life, and compels settled
habitation by natural or artificial sources of water supply, which is the
prerequisite of cultural progress.

The culture of the Coahuillas was- a developing barbarism, and it
is folly to insist that it would have made, of itself, no further advances.

I have been particularly incited to record these memoranda of
human patience, toil, and endurance, because the Indian himself will
soon be gone, and the wide wastes, which he alone appreciated and
utilized, will be left untenanted.

The decline in this population is extremely rapid. They have been
steadily decreasing for several generations, and the end now seems
almost in sight. Villages, which ten years ago, when I first visited
them, seemed reasonably well inhabited, now number scarcely half as
many souls. On every side stand abandoned jacales or crumbling lit-
tle adobe huts destitute of occupants. A sombre stillness broods over
these little communities. Occasionally a woman's figure, bent under
her food basket, appears returning over the hills, or a horseman rides
in and out among the cattle that continue to browse where jacales and
granaries once stood, but there is no evidence of active life or of a
population holding its own.

Many of the trails once trodden in quest of food are now aban-
doned ; great stones filled with mortar holes remain along the pine
ridges and in the canons of oaks, where no Indians ever come now to
gather and grind their seeds. The trails that connect valley and
desert are seldom trodden, and as numbers decrease the Indians less
often assemble for summer feast or religious celebration.

So perishes a tribe that once controlled southern California from
the Colorado river westward to the Pacific sea.

5 3? ,14

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