in summer. Throughout the caribou area proper, the berry crop is considerable, and judging from Morice's[1] account of the Carrier some tribes dried and pressed them into cakes for storage. Edible roots also played an important part. As we come southward into the bison area, the flora grows somewhat richer in wild fruits, such as the cherry, plum, strawberry, etc., while in the more arid portions, the prickly pear is abundant. Of roots there were several species, but particularly the prairie turnip (tipsina, in Dakota). Even in the guanaco area we find the Aucaria imbricata, a kind of pine tree growing along the eastern border of the Andes, bearing abundant nuts, not unlike chestnuts, which are eaten raw, boiled, or roasted. Here also the algarroba, or mesquite tree, abounds and from its seeds a food is prepared. In the treeless parts of Patagonia are the prickly pear and a few other scant food plants, while the pampas proper is devoid of all except a few edible grasses. On the other hand, the territory of the Fuegians is fairly well provided with berries which they use, but also produces wild celery and scurvy-grass, of which they make no use.
THE SALMON AREA
All the streams between San Francisco Bay, California, and Bering Strait, Alaska, draining into the Pacific are visited by salmon. These ascend from the sea en masse to spawn, constituting a "run," in local speech. As they reach the very headwaters, they are available to all the tribes of this drainage, even those far inland. The run for each species of salmon occurs but once a year and this developed periodic seasonal practices not unlike those of agricultural peoples. As the time for the run approaches, the tribes gather upon the banks of the streams, equipped with fishing appliances, dip nets, harpoons, and weirs, as the local conditions may require. Then when the salmon pass, they are taken out in great numbers, to be dried and smoked. In the interior of the Columbia Basin, the dried fish are afterwards pounded fine in mortars, thus being reduced to a state not unlike pemmican. This pulverized food is carefully stored in baskets as the chief reserve food supply of the year. The tribes on the coast and
- ↑ Morice, 1906. I.
