Wapato and camas

[Mike Cleven]

terry glavin wrote:
>
> well, kishkan, now you've done it. unintentionally, without doubt, but
> you've set me off. camas and wapato are among my peculiar obesssions. what
> follows (not to be self serving, honest) is from my forthcoming book, "the
> last great sea: a voyage through the human and natural history of the north
> pacific ocean."

blurb, blurb, blurb ;-)

>
>  . . . .One question that has vexed historians and anthropologists is how it
> came to pass, exactly, that as early as the 1850s just about every native
> community within sight of Mount Baker - that towering, dormant volcano in
> Washington State, just south of the Canada-U.S. border - was growing
> potatoes.

[potato history snipped]

How could it be that, by the 1850s, there were distinct varieties of
potatoes (potatos?  Where's Dan Quayle when we need him?) already
developed in the Pacific Northwest, i.e. no-eyes, red ones,
kidney-shaped ones etc.  Could these really have all sprung from the
Russian or even Fort Langley agricultural efforts?  I think that not
only the anthropologists should be interested in this; botanists and
agriculturalists should, too, maybe.  I don't know much about potatoes,
but it seems to me that to develop these different varieties would take
some experience, plus more than a couple of decades' growing seasons;
unless you really knew what you were doing breeding-wise.

It does seem odd, also, by way of circumstance, that the potato would
have come to this part of North America via Russia-Siberia; weren't
potatoes originally a New World crop to start with, like maize and
tomatos?  I was going to suggest the Wasco story of the Norse as a "what
if" origin for them, but AFAIK the Norse didn't have potatoes, like any
other European, until after the "discovery" of the New World by the
Spaniards, which would have been _before_ their supposed voyage up the
Columbia....

Mike