Date: 25 August 1998
From: Melissa Darby
Subject: grains vrs tubers
I have done research on the tuber of the Sagittaria latifolia. It is a
wetland plant that grows in standing water in ponds and lakes or along a
wet
shoreline. I would like to respond to Bob's discussion on this subject.
He stated that grains are little self-contained units that require no
special storage conditions beyond a reasonable dryness.
Sagittaria l. tubers contain about 50% water, and dry readily to a hard
nugget similar to a bean. Ddried tubers need to be soaked before they are
cooked, or
the tuber can be ground into a flour. It is very starchy, and
resembles a potato in taste and texture when fresh. Sagittaria l. tubers
are light and easy to transport once dehydrated.
Sagittaria l. tubers are harvestable from October through mid-May on the
lower Columbia River, with a less productive time during the February high
water in some of the patches that are adjacent to or connected to the
river. The Chinook people harvested the tubers in the fall when they were
first ready, and continued harvest through the winter according to Lewis
and Clark. My experiments suggest that efforts during the fall and spring
are the most cost effective; the winter harvest was cold and the water was
high.
The tubers are harvested by wading into the pond and with ones feet,
agitating the silty soft substrate that the tubers are suspended in, at
which time they are released from the substrate, and float to the surface
of the water. Ducks geese and swans use this method to obtain them. Many
of the First Americans reported harvesting the tubers in this manner.
Cosmopolitan in distribution, Sagittaria l. is found from Nova Scotia to
British Columbia, and south to the Great Basin, Mississippi Delta, and
Florida. A close relative is found in China, Siberia, Poland and other
sites in Europe.
According to Bob 'Tubers are wet and therefore heavy'. The Chinook made
their winter villages in the wetlands of the river, perhaps to take
advantage of several resources including Sagittaria l. tubers, waterfowl
and muskrats. The third most common mammal bone found in archaeological
sites of the area is muskrat (after elk and deer). They did not need to be
transported in this context very far. However, they could be transported
while they are drying out or dry, they are not 'fragile' and can dry slowly
or quickly with little spoilage. Fresh tubers cook in ten minutes in hot
ashes or by boiling. They do not need to be trimmed or peeled.
Bob also mentioned that 'Tuber development and therefore crop size can't be
tracked during the growing season because they are buried." I check the
patch by pulling one up, and that tells me how far along they are. When the
plant's biomass dies back, the tubers are at their largest. The bigger the
plants, the bigger the tubers. The average weight of the tubers from my
latest work is 13.3 grams based on a harvest of 231 tubers in a very
productive patch that had big plants, no cattle in the area and no carp
(both are predators). This was in a 3 meter by 3 meter area. The average
below-ground primary productivity of Sagittaria l. tubers is between
600-800 fresh grams per meter. However not all float at any one time.
It was also mentioned that storing grains can be tricky. Storing Sagittaria
l. tubers was done in pit cellers by the Chinook, in sheds by the Klamath
(recent). Some people in the mid-west dried it on strings in the eaves of
their houses.
It was mentioned that the tops of tubers are often toxic. Not the case
with Sagittaria l. which had medicinal uses, and could be used for tea,
forage for horses. Cattle eat it when they have access to it.
On the lower Columbia River, Sagittaria l. tubers grow in a silty
soil which overlays a grey 'gley' clay. Wetland soils are of course wet.
Nutrients, especially nitrogen are added to the water by waterfowl
excretions.
Sagittaria l. tubers are a wild food and need no plowing, weeding,
planting. On the lower Columbia and elsewhere it grows in solid
monocultures, like a crop, very thick. It looks like a corn field except
the leaves are a different shape and the plants reach a height of about 1
meter. Sagittaria trifolia grows in Japan and China. The tubers are grown
as a crop and used as food, and the foliage is used to feed cattle.
Wetlands are highly productive, more productive than grasslands.
I want to put Sagittaria l. tubers on the radar screen of those who study
paleolithic diet so that we may now be able to look for evidence of its
use. Sagittaria tubers have been found in boggy deposits a Calowanie, a
9,000 y BP site in the Polish Plain (Kubiak-Martens 1996). This is the
first evidence for the possible use of plant foods other than hazel nuts or
water-chestnuts in the diet of hunter-gatherers on the North European
Plain during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. There may have been a
similar pattern in North America. Tuber fragments of Sagittaria species
have also been found in coprolites from Dryden Cave, Nevada and perhaps in
Lovelock Cave (Neumann et al 1989).
As the ice was melting at the end of the last glaciation, wetlands were
prolific; one of the pioneer plants that spread to the recently glaciated
disturbed region was Sagittaria latifolia, which is spread by waterfowl
(the seeds are consumed by the birds, and also have a barb and a sticky
surface which sticks to the skin on the legs of waterfowl). As the
wetlands dried up, the plant was not as prolific. Wetlands produce more
calories per square meter than grassland. If it was indeed present and
prolific in the environment of North America 10,000 y BP, Sagittaria l.
tubers would have been good food for people, and the leaves good forage
for Mammoths. It is currently grown in China for forage, and cattle are
known to be very fond of it. When the ice sheet melted, and the wetlands
shrunk, this food and forage would have become limited as well. The
implications are...
I would be interested in feedback on the possible use of this plant by the
First Americans and/or Mammoths. I have some pollen data to support the
contention that this plant was prolific, but I would like more data that
either refutes this theory or supports it. Since stone tools or fire
cracked rock are not indicators of its use, it is generally invisible in
the archaeological record.
Neumann, Alan, Richard Holloway and Colin Busby
1989 Determination of prehistoric use of arrowhead (Sagittaria,
Alismataceae) in the Great Basin of North America by scanning electron
microscopy. Economic Botany 43(3) 1989, pp 287-296.
Kubiak-Martens, L. et al. Evidence for possible use of plant foods in
Paleolithic and Mesolithic diet from the site of Calowanie in the central
part of the Polish Plain. Kubiak-Martens, L.; Vegetation History and
Archaeobotany (1996) 5:33-38.
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