Wapato and camas and potatoes and Puget-area native peoples

[Dave Robertson]

LhaXayEm,

Wel, alta na tEmtEm mEsayka wawa lhush ikta.  Interesting discussion.  Incidentally, if you search the SALISHAN listserv archives from about a year-and-a-half ago, you ought to find relevant postings.  For the moment I will just mention Wayne Suttles' classic book "Coast Salish Essays", which contains a fine article on the history of potato-growing in the Straits/Puget region native cultures.  Ixt mEsayka wawa nayka weyk lili anqati, mayka t'u7an Makah waptu, wikna?  Didn't one of you mention to me recently that you grow Makah potatoes?

Dave



Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM> wrote:
>
> 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
>