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Show Goshute W E S H A L L R E M A I N : U TA H I N D I A N C U R R I C U L U M G U I D E mention this medicine. This plant has a covering around the… the covering around the plant's root… The root of this plant is the seed and it is hidden by a covering around the root, which looks some-what like a lampshade, that is where one can find the seed. This plant grows apart from other plants, it grows along here. That is what I remember from my observations of the preparation of this particular plant. In preparation of this particular plant, my paternal grandmother would break off a piece of the plant and throw it away. My paternal grand-mother would tell me that when the plant is stored along with that part of the plant still attached, after it is dried, will change the taste, making it taste bad. But, when one breaks off that particular part of the plant and throws it away, store it, then the taste is very good. . . . There is another plant that grows along a ravine known as dutsi'ape, its stem is also used by the people and it is very good. The stem of the dutsi'a is very sweet. The dutsi' tastes somewhat like that of the sagebrush. I remember when we would go to the other side of cedar mountain to gather, prepare and eat sagebrush stem. We would go there and gather these plants. As young child, I would go there and gather the plants, sometimes I would roast them and boil them, this is my experience with that plant. I did not realize how important this plant was to my paternal grandmother. Some of the women would travel on horseback to gather the dutsi'a stem and return with a lot. The women would come home with the stem of the dutsi', prepare them and boil them. I have observed the ways of the old people, with my own eyes. I have experienced collecting the bark from the sagebrush, south of here, walking among the sagebrush. A small sagebrush was another plant that had a good taste… it was delicious. I have also observed how the people used the small sagebrush plant. We would go to the other side of waade'i and collect the small sagebrush and eat the stem. We would roast them and boil them and sometimes we would eat them raw. That is what we used to do when we were children. We would also collect the (siigoo') and eat them. The sego lily grows where the sagebrush plants have burned, that is where these plants grow. The sego lily plants grow to be larger than normal. We would take our maternal grandmother's and our mother's digging stick and go to that place and dig for the sego lily roots and eat them. We would gather what we had dug up, bring them home and spread them out to dry. (We would do the same with the other plants that we went out and gathered.) We had abundant knowledge of all the traditional foods and medicine. Maude Moon interview, tape 22, section 3, Wick R. Miller Collection, Center for American Indian Languages, University of Utah. T H E G O S H U T E S 1 2 2 |