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Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest engaged in the active management and cultivation of Blue Camas. Controlled burning was employed to clear land and improve growing conditions for Blue Camas. While Camas plots occurred naturally in the Pacific Northwest, Indigenous peoples would maintain a plot through the planting and harvesting of Camas bulbs, as well as by tilling and weeding. Camas plots were harvested by individuals or kin-groups, who were recognized as a particular plot’s cultivators or stewards. Stewardship was typically lineage-based, and cultivation rights to a particular plot were fiercely guarded. Multiple generations would often harvest the same Camas plot. Plots have been recorded as possessing physical boundary markers, and there were social consequences for harvesting from a plot that was recognized as being maintained by a particular individual or kin-group. The camas bulbs were harvested with a pointed wooden tool, and was done primarily by women.

Camas was an important component of the diets of most Indigenous groups located in the Pacific Northwest. Not all Indigenous groups harvested Camas themselves. Instead, many relied on trade in order to procure it. Indigenous groups that lived in environments that suited camas production, such as the Coast Salish, developed networks of exchange in order to procure a variety of goods and foods, such as cedar bark baskets and dried halibut.

In North American Indigenous cultures, trade had economic as well as diplomatic functions, with ceremonies such as the Potlach (among Indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest) serving as a means to legitimize an individual’s rule and establish their status as a provider. Camas was frequently traded in large volumes for such occasions.

Theories of Anthropogenic Dispersal:

As Indigenous land-management techniques have been theorized as having had a significant impact on the maintenance of the Garry oak ecosystem, one of the primary ecosystems in which Camassia quamash grows, researchers have investigated the potentiality of anthropogenic transport through an investigation of the genetic structure of Camassia quamash. Despite historical evidence for anthropogenic maintenance of Camas plots and transportation through Indigenous trade networks, analysis of the genetic structures of Camassia quamash have not substantiated theories of anthropogenic dispersal. The distribution of Camassia quamash across the Pacific Northwest is most likely the result of postglacial migration. These results imply that if anthropogenic dispersal of Camassia quamash occurred, it did not occur on such a scale as to leave a foot in the plant’s genetic structure.