Chumash Plant Management

Chia

Island Chumash Plant Usage Guide Stop 4

The Chumash carefully managed plants and plant communities to improve the yield of wild seeds. Certain native annual plants are "fire-followers" and sprout more vigorously or in greater profusion after fire has cleared away old growth. By periodically burning off grasslands, the mainland Chumash increased the seed and bulb production of useful fire-following plants, and discouraged invasion by shrubs of the chaparral and coastal sage-scrub communities. Periodic burning may also have been practiced by the Island Chumash to increase the supply of important plants such as chia, red maids, and native bulbs and grasses.

One of the most important fire-following plants used by the Chumash was chia ("i"lepesh), a blue-flowered annual that grows on the islands as well as the mainland. The Chumash and other American Indians harvested the small, gray-brown seeds by brushing them into flat-bottomed baskets using seed beaters made of willow.

Chia seeds were used both as a food and as a remedy for eye problems. When eaten, chia was roasted, ground into meal, and mixed with cold water to form a gruel. As a medicine chia was used to remove foreign particles from the eye. When placed under the eyelid a seed would become soft and sticky, eventually adhering to a foreign particle so that both could be easily removed.

Another seed-bearing plant with multiple uses was red maids. Red maids seeds were parched, ground into meal, then shaped into small cakes. The seeds were also used as religious offerings, and have been found in burials on both the Channel Islands and the mainland. The Chumash name for red maids was hutash, the same as the name for Earth, the mother of all things.