FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
ALISMACEAE, SAGITTARIA LATIFOLIA, INDIAN POTATO, ARROWHEAD, WAPATP, SAGITTARIA CHINENSIS Alismaceae
Hensolt, Edith A. 1966. How Oregon Indians Used the Native Flora. Benton cdounty Historical Society & Museum, Philomath, Oregon.
ALISMACEAE, SAGITTARIA LATIFOLIA, INDIAN POTATO, ARROWHEAD, WAPATP
It grows in shallow water or mud. Some has recently been found on Sauvies Is., where it was plentiful, till the marshes were drained and introduced carp and wild ducks about cleaned it out. Smooth, solid tubers, not large, break off easily from long flabby roots. Squaws waded out, breast-deep, if necessary, holding to a canoe, and dug the tubers with their toes. When they floated up they were tossed into the canoe. It was a very important Indian food. Legends tell about its use "before the salmon came to the Columbia". The Chinooks of the lower Columbia had a well developed commerce in wappato. One winter Lewis and Clark lived on elk they killed and wappato bought of the Indians. Haskins says they are very good, boiled like a potato, with sweetish, chestnut flavor.
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
SAGITTARIA CHINENSIS Alismaceae, ARROW-HEAD
is a plant of China. The Chinese arrow-head is sold in the markets of China and Japan as food, the corns being full of starch. It is extensively cultivated about San Francisco, California, to supply the Chinese markets, and the tubers are commonly to be found on sale.
Kavasch, Barrie. 1979. Native Harvests. Recipes and Botanicals of the American Indian. Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, New York.
is a prodigious aquatic plant that was a staple food of the American Indians all across our continent. One of our most valuable native foods, arrowhead roots are delectable and nutritious, resembliung new potatoes. They can be eaten raw, though they contain a bitter milky juice that becomes sweet and tasty when the tubers are dried or cooked. Prepare these wild tubers exactly like potatoes. Dried and ground into flour, they are useful in many other food forms.
Berzok, Lindsa Murray. 2005. American Indian Food. Food in American History. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.
This water plant found alol over North America and used especially by Northwest tribes produces potato-like tubers in the mud bottom of shallow lakes and pools. The Chinook of Washington named these nutritious, starch-rich bulbs wapatoo. The bulbs are not easy to harvest because gatherers must wade into the water to dig them. As a shortcut, the ndians sometimes raided the secreted stores of muskrats. Once obtained, wapatoo were prepared like potatoes-boiled or roasted, or strung on strings to sun-dry if not needed immediately.
Hensolt, Edith A. 1966. How Oregon Indians Used the Native Flora. Benton cdounty Historical Society & Museum, Philomath, Oregon.
It grows in shallow water or mud. Some has recently been found on Sauvies Is., where it was plentiful, till the marshes were drained and introduced carp and wild ducks about cleaned it out. Smooth, solid tubers, not large, break off easily from long flabby roots. Squaws waded out, breast-deep, if necessary, holding to a canoe, and dug the tubers with their toes. When they floated up they were tossed into the canoe. It was a very important Indian food. Legends tell about its use "before the salmon came to the Columbia". The Chinooks of the lower Columbia had a well developed commerce in wappato. One winter Lewis and Clark lived on elk they killed and wappato bought of the Indians. Haskins says they are very good, boiled like a potato, with sweetish, chestnut flavor.
Excerpts from Hawkes, Alex D. 1968. A World of Vegetable Cookery. Simon and Schuster, New York.
The Arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifolia, of the Arrowhead Family, Alismaceae) is a native of the temperate and subtropical parts of the Old World, particularly the Orient. It has long been cultivated in China (as chee-koo or t'sz-ku), Japan (as kuwai), and Korea for its edible underground corms.
The plant, and several others of its group, is grown in this country as an ornamental in water gardens, for the handsome arrowhead-shaped leaves and showy erect spikes of white flowers. In suitable conditions, the Arrowhead is a rampant grower. In rich wet soil, each corm will rapidly send out eight or more runners, each of which soon forms a new corm at its end. These corms, as found in markets, principally in Hawaii and California, are roundish or somewhat cylindrical, and measure up to about one and a half inches long, and often almost as much in bredth. With a gray, bluish-colored, with much the consistency and flavor, when cooked, of a sweet potato.
Arrowhead corms are very tasty when boiled in a small amount of salted water until firmly tender, then thin-sliced, chilled and served with a vinaigrette dressing, as a salad. Or cut the hot boiled corms into quarters and serve at once with butter and salt and pepper to taste.
A native North American Arrowhead, Sagittaria latifolia, extending through Mexico into Central America, also called Arrowleaf, Wapato, or Duck Potato, has long been used by the Indians as a potato substitute, the corms being either boiled or roasted. It has an especially fine nutty flavor, and good texture. It thrives in boggy spots.