Sagebrush and juniper abound, and beneath their branches the sage lily develops in splendor. Along the bluffs of the Columbia, wild clover covers many dry hillsides, and distant fields take on a misty, purplish hue, like wafted smoke. Lupines and larkspurs tint the landscape for miles, while locoweeds, some of them of great beauty though of evil fame, are very abundant. Here, too, are the yellow-belled rice root, the blazing star, and the Lewisia and the Clarkia, named for the adventurers who discovered them.
Among early botanical explorers, besides Lewis and Clark, were Douglas, Nuttall, Pickering, Brackenridge, and Tolmie. Douglas relates that in hunting for cones of the sugar pine, after he had shot three specimens from a 3OO-foot tree, he was confronted by eight unfriendly Indians. By offering tobacco he induced them to aid him in securing a quantity of the cones. As they disappeared to comply with his request he snatched up his three cones and retreated to camp.
The flora of Oregon plays an important part in the Indian lore of the region. Nearly two hundred plants found place in the commercial, industrial, medical, culinary, and religious economy of the Northwest tribes. With the passing of winter, camps became active with preparation for the annual food gathering. Tribes migrated to the camas prairie, the wappato lake, or the wocus swamp, for the yearly harvest. Throughout the State there is a great variety of wild fruit, which formed a principal article of subsistence for the natives. A dozen varieties of berries, wild crab apple, plum, Oregon grape, ripened in their season. Bird-cherry, salal, and wild currant grew in profusion in forests and along the seashore. Nuts of various kinds were stored for the lean months, and seeds of numerous grasses and rushes added the important farinaceous element to the diet.
The Indians also utilized a great many varieties of nutritive roots. Camas, the most extensively used, is an onion-like bulb with a spiked cluster of blue flowers. In some parts of the State, great fields are azure in April with its bloom. Townsend says, "When boiled this little root is palatable, and somewhat resembles the taste of the common potato; the Indian mode of preparing it, however, is the best—that of fermenting it in pits underground, into which hot stones have been placed. It is suffered to remain in these pits several days; and when removed, is of a dark brown color . . . and sweet, like molasses. It is then made into large cakes ... and slightly baked in the sun." Another root is the wappato, a marsh bulb growing in great quantity along the lowlands of the Columbia, on Chewaucan Marsh in Lake County, and in
