digitS'
Garden Master
Isn't it pretty!?
I am going to put this in the Random forum because I won't say too much about it as a flower. I grew Camassia once and it should still be popping up in what was Dad's yard. It didn't do real well even tho' I am where it grows wild. It just doesn't grow wild on that kind of soil - if you live in the north and have somewhat marshy soil, you may want to plant camas. It has lovely, early spring flowers.
Here is what Meriwether Lewis said about it in his journal on June 12, 1806: "The quamash is now in blume and from the colour at a short distance it resembles lakes of fine clear water, so complete is this deseption that on first sight I could have swoarn it was water."
I used to live in the town of Moscow, Idaho. Before someone got the idea to name the community for some Russians who lived thereabouts, it was called Hog Heaven. I lived for awhile on Hog Creek about a mile or so before it runs into Paradise Creek, right in the center of Moscow. It had been called Hog Heaven because of the camas growing there and the white farmers brought pigs to eat and grow fat on the roots.
The thing was, it could also be used for people food. The native Americans in this part of the world would dig and roast the roots in fire pits. Of course, after the pigs had rooted it out, the cattle had stomped down the ground or the European Americans had plowed and planted something they would probably load on the railroad cars and ship back East, there wasn't many camas roots for the Indians to eat.
On the "gold thread" I mentioned climbing cliffs in the Owyhee Mountains and happening on all this evidence of arrowhead making. This was probably a defensive place used by the Bannock Indians during their war with the American military in 1895. General Crook had something to say about the Bannock War: "...it was no surprise...that some of the Indian soon afterward broke out into hostilities, and the great wonder is that so many remained on the reservation. With the Bannocks and Shoshone, our Indian policy has resolved itself into a question of war path or starvation, and being merely human, many of them will always choose the former alternative when death shall at least be glorious."
You see, the reservation was formed by the Fort Bridger Treaty which declared: '. . .whenever the President of the United States shall deem it advisable for them to be put upon a reservation, he shall cause a suitable one to be selected for them in their present country, which shall embrace reasonable portions of the 'Port Neuf' and 'Kansas Prairie' countries, and that, when this reservation is declared, the United States will secure to the Bannacks the same rights and privileges therein . . ."
Well, where the heck was this "Kansas Prairie" mentioned in the treaty? No one knew!! Apparently, the transcriber thought he was hearing "Kansas" when what was being said was "Camas." The authorities ignored the Indians when they complained that the white farmers were putting pigs on the Camas Prairie.
And, so it goes . . .
Steve
