Today's visit by Sea Lion guests was to the Nez Perce Indian Cultural Center at Lapwai, ID, where they had a hands-on experience with native foods and preparation. The tribes' most important vegetable is the camas bulb which can be roasted and which tastes like sweet potato. It can also be ground into a meal for a porridge or bread. When the mountain meadows are solid blue in June with the flowering camas, a member of the lily family, the Nez Perce people gather here to harvest camas bulbs with long-pointed digging tools they call "tookas," as shown here. The bulbs are baked and then ground in a stone mortar with a pestle.
The Corps of Discovery noted in their journal on October 21, 1805, that Private J. Collins presented a "verry good beer made of the Pa-shi-co-quar-mas (camass) bread." The camas bread, which they traded from the Indians, got wet and soured, so they made beer!
