Ethnobotany of the Meskwaki Indians / by Huron H. Smith.

1928]

SMITH, ETHNOBOTANY OF THE MESKWAKI.

187

correct dress is shown in Plate XXXVIII, figure 3. In their burial
customs, we again see a more primitive type of grave house, shown in
plate XXXVIII, figure 1. It is constructed of hewn poles, with a
grave marker of a squared pole, planted butt end up in the ground, to
a depth of about thirty inches.
The Meskwaki are best at agriculture and general farming now.
They produce the usual garden vegetables and field crops of the region,
and plenty of eighteen foot corn is raised. Like other aboriginal
peoples, they cling tenaciously to their own varieties of corn, squashes,
pumpkins, beans and potatoes and never quite allow these to die out
in favor of the better-yielding, improved varieties of the whites. Most
of the older people among the Meskwaki retain their knowledge of
woodcraft and hunting, though there is little hunting done on their
reservation now. John McIntosh killed the last deer on the reservation
twenty years ago.
The soil of the Meskwaki reservation varies from a rich loam on
the river bottoms, to sand on the side hills and clay and gravel on the
ridges. There are still some considerable areas of woods left, and their
chief burying ground is on a side hill in the woods. The trees of the
reservation are all hardwoods, with soft maples, basswood, ash, box
elder, red and white elm, and cottonwood on the river flats, and oaks,
black locust, hickory, butternut, hard maple, hawthorns, hazel nuts,
cherry, hackberry, hop hornbeam, and prairie crab on the hills. There
is no actual swamp on their reservation, so that they have to travel
several miles to get certain medicines that grow only in swamps. The
writer was taken thirty miles to be shown the skunk cabbage. However,
a good representation of the usual prairie and woodland species was
obtainable on the reservation itself. A reforestation project on their
reservation is shown in plate XXXVIII, fig. 4. Other than these plants,
however, the residents were forced to carry in the seeds and roots of
the plants they wanted. As the Indians are a great people to visit other
reservations even in other states, considerable numbers of foreign plants
were brought in and placed under cultivation and have become
naturalized.
The aboriginal religion of the Meskwaki was the same as that of
other Algonkian tribes. It was filled with stories of personified animals.
Charles Keosatok, deceased, told about the medicine lodge of the
Meskwaki. He said that the Meskwaki name for Manabus, the culture