Bitterroot is Bitter Root – by Deane Jones
BITTERROOT IS BITTER ROOT. Let’s go picking bitter roots.
by Deane Jones
A while back, a gent took us severely to task for using bitter root or Bitter Root as two words. The Forest Service, said he, uses it as one word and we should too.
We never got around to answering the gentleman, but for his information, this part of the country was using it as two words long before Gifford Pinchot or Teddy Roosevelt dreamed up the Forest Service. And we’ll probably continue.
All of which got me to thinking about bitter roots, and the profusion in which they grew on the flats out by the fairgrounds, in the days when there wasn’t a house between South Sixth Street West and the fairgrounds, in the area just east of Catlin Street (then Arthur).
For years the Flathead Indians made annual pilgrimages to Missoula, pitched camp on the flats, and dug bitter roots for days. The [Indian women] would lay out thousands of the roots to dry in the sun. I never did figure out whether the brew they made from them was medicine or beverage, but they sure made a lot of it. One of my operatives says it was medicine.
Civilization Spreads
As Missoula grew, the bitter root acreage shrank, until it is now virtually nonexistent. Where the bitter roots bloomed, we now have supermarkets, banks, variety stores, homes, garages, and you name it. You can still pick bitter roots on the foothills around Missoula, and up toward Lolo, but on the flats (what flats?) don’t bother.
Those flats were an integral part of the growing-up of any kid in Daly Addition. Each summer, after school let out, Orchard Homes residents who owned a cow or two each would put them into a cooperative herd. Kenneth Cameron, who must have been all of 8 or 9 years old, got the “contract” to graze the cows on the flats. I thing it was something like two-bits per cow per week. Anyway, Ken and his brother, Skip, along with three or four more of us, herded those cows from morning till night.
Pastoral Paradise
During those long, warm, lazy afternoons, as the bosses chewed for hours on one patch of grass, we’d roll in the sagebrush, dig at the bitter roots, throw rocks at each other and the cows, pull the briars and thistles out of our bare toes, and just plain have fun.
On days when there was an extra kid along, we might strip the beads off the sagebrush and roll cigarettes. Or make it over to Mrs. Jameson’s store on Garfield and buy some cubebs.
Arthur Street was the western fringe of the grazing land, and I remember that George Richards lived there, at the corner of 10th Street, and Godfrey Johnson, and down aways, the Replogles and the Finefrocks. That was along about 1917.
End of the Line
The street car barn was located out at the end of Arthur, the terminal of the line that ran up Fifth Street, then over to Third and on up to Higgins Avenue and over the bridge. We always managed to get the herd over thataway by late afternoon, and got in some good licks at climbing walls and stacks of rails, going through the seats of parked street cars, and playing motorman at the controls.
By 5:30 or so (nobody had a watch, but the sun was unfailing) the herd was back in Orchard Homes, one cow to Farmer Brown, two or three to Farmer Smith, and so on, ready for milking.
The above Deane Jones – Keeping Up With Jones column appeared in The Missoulian on June 25, 1967.