of blue camas. They used controlled burning to clear land and improve growing conditions. While blue camas plots occurred naturally in the Pacific Northwest, Indigenous peoples would maintain a plot through weeding, tilling, harvesting Camas bulbs, and replanting. 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, with the work of cultivation being done primarily by women. Food use Camassia species were an important food staple for Indigenous peoples and settlers in parts of the American Old West. While Camassia species are edible and nutritious, the white-flowered deathcamas species (which are not in the genus Camassia but in a number of genera in the tribe Melanthieae) that grow in the same areas are toxic, and the bulbs are quite similar in appearance. It is easiest to tell the plants apart when they are in flower. The quamash was a food source for many indigenous peoples in western North America. Blue camas was harvested when in bloom, in spring or early summer. After being harvested the bulbs were pit-roasted or boiled. A pit-cooked camas bulb looks and tastes something like baked sweet potato, but sweeter, and with more crystalline fibers due to the presence of inulin in the bulbs. The eating of too many such baked bulbs – especially if undercooked – can cause excessive flatulence, due to their containing inulin and other oligosaccharides. After cooking, the bulbs could be pounded into a paste and made into cakes. Native American peoples who ate camas include the Nez Perce (Nimíipuu), Cree, Kalapuya, Blackfoot, Yakama, and Coast Salish, including the Lekwungen or Songhees who collected camas in what is now Victoria, British Columbia, the Lekwungen name for which was Camosun, or "place to gather camas". The Kutenai called the camas "xapi" (Ktunaxa). Camas bulbs contributed to the survival of members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the Great Basin, expanded settlement by whites accompanied by turning cattle and hogs onto camas prairies greatly diminished food available to native tribes