Featured Plant

A Vanishing Landscape

"There are white men living in my country. Some can stay forever and some must go. . . People who raise hogs in my country must go with their hogs, because they kill out the young camas, and to kill that is to starve us. It is our bread and we cannot eat earth. . . We must fish and hunt and our squaws must dig camas and other roots, and when you touch us on any of these points, then we carry our rifles on the right and left of us."

1879- Chief Moses, letter to the Editor, Daily Intelligence, Columbia-Sinkiuse Band.

"Your people make farms and fence up all the country, the Indians make their farm too, which is the Great Camas Prairie, where our women dig roots to feed them and the children. The white men drive too many hogs and cattle upon the prairie, which eat up the roots of the camas and destroy the plant. We cannot eat without food, and the camas root has always been our food."

- 1877, Major Jim, Lemhi Band