Melvin R. Gilmore

Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies, a classical book, was published more than a century ago and has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Tells the traditional stories and describes the lifeways of some of the first people of the Plains: the Pawnee, Sioux, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, and Omaha Indians. Through these stories, readers learn of the essential ties Native peoples have to the land.

A classic of ethnobotany, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region has been enlarged for this Bison Book edition with thirty drawings, by Bellamy Parks Jansen, of plants discussed by Gilmore. The taxonomic glossary has been updated as well. Readers will find here, conveniently described, the uses that Plains Indians made of the wild plants they collected and of those plants they cultivated for food, clothing, medicine, and ornamentation. This fascinating book, originally published in 1919, reveals cultures that evolved in close harmony with their environment.

In 1932, with this slim but important volume, the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology began its publication series. Melvin R. Gilmore, a preeminent ethnobotanist, joined the Museum as its first curator of ethnology in 1929 and in 1930 established the Ethnobotanical Laboratory: the largest such collection in North America. He became director of the laboratory in 1938. In this volume, he discusses the establishment of the laboratory and the importance of ethnobotanical research. Nearly a century later, the Ethnobotanical Laboratory is still unique for its extensive collection of archaeological and systematic comparative wood, seeds, and plant parts from around the world, and for its ethnographic examples of how traditional cultures collect, store, process, and use these plants.