The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 36
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
For the modern investigator, operating from Custis's manuscript
reports, with the misidentifications carefully corrected, his catalogues
are clearly one of the earliest detailed lists for a major North American
river ecosystem and thus are a valuable and intriguing source for en-
vironmental study. Immediately apparent is the fact that the river
valley that Custis describes bears little relation to that which now
exists. Many of the more dramatic species are now extinct on the Red;
some are lost to us entirely. Custis's data yield other more startling con-
clusions. For example, the American conception of the existence of
a "virgin West" at the time of the Louisiana Purchase is marred by
the discovery in Custis's catalogues of some sixteen European exotics.
Most were medicinal herbs found near settlements, but some were
growing as weeds deep in the wilderness of the Red River Valley. Ob-
viously the sporadic missionary and trading activities of the French
and Spanish had already introduced alien species. Custis's account is
the earliest to document this phenomenon in western America.67
His botanical notes are also useful in gauging environmental modi-
fication by the native peoples. Custis documents near Indian village
sites an unusual abundance of certain species (such as the jimson
weed, Datura stramonium L., and the great blue lobelia, Lobelia
siphilitica L.) used in medicine and ceremony. He likewise documents
the successional patterns of native species in taking over abandoned
Indian fields. Perhaps more important, the extensive prairies de-
scribed, as well as the absence of undergrowth in the hills, suggest
widespread environmental alteration by the Indians through the use
"The botanical specimens &8cc received some wet or dampness from rain on the way
from Nachitosh...." Dunbar to Dearborn, Sept. 6, 18o6, Rowland, William Dunbar, 348.
The Barton Herbarium is housed in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. The
other specimen from the collection is a medicinal herb, the eastern culver's root (Veroni-
castrum virginicum [L] Farw.). Custis's attached note describes it as having been col-
lected "about 450 miles up the Red River, in a large prairie." Since Custis's July 1 report
does not identify the specimens by name except in a handful of cases, very few of
the plants in this twenty-six-item collection can now be identified. One that can be iden-
tified is Yucca louisianensis Trel., a new species of soapweed native to the middle Red,
about which he noted, "the poor people use the root as a substitute for soap." The
author hereby corrects his initial identification of this specimen in Flores (ed.), Jefferson
and Southwestern Exploration.
67Le Page, History of Louisiana, 2o8-20og, had mentioned that such an exchange was
already taking place in Louisiana as early as the 172os, but Custis's list of exotics (the
identifications of which seem unquestionable) is the first documentation for the phe-
nomenon west of the Mississippi. Before Custis, the only United States botanist to list
European exotics was Muhlenberg, in his "Index Florae-Lancastriensis," Transactions of
the American Philosophical Society, III (x79q), 157-184, although Rafinesque would soon
do the same in "An Essay on the Exotic Plants, Mostly European, Which Have Been
Naturalized and Now Grow Spontaneously in the Middle States of North America,"
The Medical Repository, VIII (1811), 330-345.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/58/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.