Native peoples depended on plant roots for food, including that of the Pacific Silverweed and other Cinquefoils. In Cascadia*, it is thought the Indigenous population may have exceeded 1 million in the area west of the Cascade crest, Fort Ross to the Aleutians. The US held 5 million Indigenous, with 2 million in Canada, perhaps 1.5 million in California alone: the highest concentration of any region being here in Cascadia. Stored bulbs and seaweed aside, each year there must have been an enormous cache of baked and dried roots, fruit, and nuts. One can starve to death eating only trout; carbohydrates are essential, especially enough to feed a million people during the Winter. The numbers don’t add up: a 1 million populace’s caloric needs vs. today’s scarce native plants known to be consumed by Native Americans. Might there have been Cinquefoil plantations “hidden in plain sight” that were not obvious to pioneers; purposely planted areas that disappeared as other native and introduced plants “took over” when their caretakers disappeared? The silent disappearance of forest groves and forest glades is the untold story of the NW Indigenous Peoples.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4254430
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=anserina
https://www.plc215.org/…/uploads/2020/01/Stillaguamish.pdf
https://www.se.edu/…/09/A-NAS-2017-Proceedings-Smith.pdf
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-16.pdf
The silent story of Native Americans along the northern Pacific Rim is their loss of:
both of the below
forest groves
forest glades
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