Restoring Idaho's Bounty | The Legacy Grows: Lewis and Clark's Garden

Then: Life-sustaining root crop for Nez Perce people, who shared it with the starving Lewis and Clark party.
Noted and collected: Weippe Prairie, Idaho, on June 23, 1806.
Now: Camas, still dug in traditional ways, is celebrated by tribes for its traditional, spiritual and cultural importance.

Lillian Pethtel, whose Idaho ranch lies smack in the middle of Lewis and Clark's overland route, has spent a lifetime studying their plant discoveries. Now she's helping reestablish them. She collects wildflower seeds and dries them on her windowsills as part of the garden club's effort to resow native plants where noxious weeds have invaded.

KAMIAH, Idaho — Many plants helped Lewis and Clark, but only one, camas, helped save their lives.

As they came out of the Bitterroot Range onto Idaho's Weippe Prairie in 1805, the explorers were starving and weak. At a Nez Perce village, the ravenous men were fed dried salmon and camas root, a staple of the Nez Perce diet.

On the return trip, Lewis and Clark spent nearly a month in late spring with the Nez Perce. At their Camp Chopunnish on the banks of the Clearwater River, Lewis collected 50 plants, nearly one-quarter of the Lewis and Clark Herbarium. Among them was ragged robin (Clarkia pulchella), a new plant genus named for Clark. Today the site of Camp Chopunnish in Kamiah is occupied by a lumber mill surrounded by fields of noxious weeds.

Development and farming also threaten or have closed some of the traditional Nez Perce camas-gathering spots. Wild camas, like salmon, is steadily declining.

"We ask for permission to dig camas, but some farmers say no. Cows eat some of them," says Allen Slickpoo Jr. of Kamiah. Roots should only be harvested where the creator put them, he says, so it would not be appropriate to cultivate or transplant camas.

Camas remains an important part of Nez Perce tradition, and it is still dug according to tradition from the Weippe Prairie. Every summer at the Root and Berry Festival in Kamiah, the Nez Perce give thanks for and serve camas as sacred and life-sustaining roots.

"Traditional foods make our people strong and keep us healthy," says Sharen Stevens of the Nez Perce Bicentennial Committee, formed because the Nez Perce want to be partners in the upcoming bicentennial.

The Nez Perce also have established a tribal root and berry committee to help preserve sacred foods, traditions and sites.

One of their biggest supporters in Kamiah is Lillian Pethtel, 89. Pethtel moved to Kamiah in 1945 and learned about native plants from Elisabeth Penney Wilson, a Nez Perce elder. The Pethtel ranch still contains most of the species native to the area, and traditional Nez Perce trails that Lewis and Clark used can still be seen crossing the property.

Pethtel also was at the forefront of a growing movement to save and reintroduce native plants. Idaho garden club members help the effort by reseeding native plants along roads and hillsides to combat invasive plants such as yellow star thistle.

"The interest in preserving native plants and habitat has increased so much that it's mindboggling to me," Pethtel says.

Age doesn't stop Pethtel from leaving her car in the middle of a road while she scrambles up a hillside to collect native plant seeds. Her windowsills are already crowded with trays of ragged robin, fescue (Festuca idahoensis) and columbine (Aquilegia formosa) seeds set out to dry.

Some of the seeds will end up planted along Idaho roadways. But Pethtel's motives go beyond fighting noxious and invasive weeds. She sees a special and simple beauty in native plants. "A plant doesn't have to be a hybrid to be beautiful," she says. "I'm glad more people are starting to realize that."

Restoring Idaho's bounty On the banks of the Clearwater River meet two cultures coming together again to save traditions, habitat and native plants

Restoring Idaho's bounty
On the banks of the Clearwater River meet two cultures coming together again to save traditions, habitat and native plants