Potato Mountain and Mountain Potatoes
Western spring beauty (Claytonia lanceolata) produces edible leaves and, in particular, an edible corm that has been a focus for aboriginal food harvesters for thousands of years. Also called mountain potato in English or sunt’iny in the Tsilhqot’in language, this small perennial blooms in early spring soon after snowmelt, often carpeting the hillsides with its delicate pinkish-white flower. The corm is typically the size of a pea or a cherry and is relatively easy to harvest, growing only three or four centimeters below the surface. Aboriginal harvesters often stored large quantities of sunt’iny for use during the winter. When cooked, the corms taste like potatoes.
A favorite sunt’iny harvesting location for the Tsilhqot’in people is a mountain called Chinaz Ch’ez, known in English as Potato Mountain. For millennia, aboriginal peoples have climbed into the subalpine parkland in late spring and summer to harvest sunt’iny and other plants, to hunt, and to socialize. Typical of aboriginal seasonal gatherings in other high elevation harvesting areas, those on Chinaz Ch’ez were both economic and social events. Visiting, courting, games, races, contests, teaching, storytelling, all took place against a background of harvesting and preserving sunt’iny and other plants.
Tatlayoko Field Station is at the foot of one of the age-old routes onto Chinaz Ch’ez. The mountain fills much of the view from the ranch house windows.
Resources:
Carla Rae Mellott. Contemporary perspectives on the practical, ethical, and ritual aspects of the Tsinlhqut’in Sunt’iny (Claytonia lanceolata) harvest on Tsinuzch’ed (Potato Mountain), British Columbia. MSc thesis. 2011.