Camas plant. Image © 2003 www.clipart.com.

Emerging from the Bitterroots, the Corps was a starving band. When they met up with the Nez Perce on the Weippe Plain, the men of the Corps quickly gorged themselves on salmon and camas root offered by the Indians. Very quickly, the men became incredibly ill. Their systems were not used to this root.

Camas root, or Camassia, has several common names, such as indigo squill, meadow hyacinth, and quamash. The Indians gave the name camas, or quamash, to the plant. The camas plant has a showy blue flower on a grass-like stalk. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark wrote in their journals about seeing fields of camas that looked like blue lakes.

The Indians would gather the bulbs in spring or early summer while the flowers were in bloom. They probably did this to avoid digging up the bulb of the deadly death camas by mistake. The natives even went so far as to dig up and destroy the death camas bulbs that grew around the fields of quamash or camas.

The bulbs of the common camas were a staple food of Northwestern Native Americans. After harvesting the root bulb, they would boil or roast them in pits, much in the way Hawaiians prepare a pig for a luau. They dug a pit, lined it with stones, and built a fire in it. Once the fire burned out, the coals and ashes were raked away, leaving only the hot stones. A blanket of leaves and native grass was placed in the pit. Flattened camas bulbs, called cakes, were placed on top with another layer of leaves covered by a foot of dirt. The next day the bulbs were uncovered and in the process of slow steaming, the starch in the camas plant was converted to sugar. The roasted bulbs were very sweet and very nutritious. Some were eaten after roasting, but most were then dried and stored for later use. They are said to taste like baked pears.

However, all camas bulbs and plants are poisonous unless cooked. Perhaps the roots eaten by Lewis, Clark, and their men weren't cooked long enough. It's a safe bet, though, that they simply overate!

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