"BLEDOS" OF ANCIENT WRITERS—ITS MEANING.
Lafitau[349] gives a description of the Iroquois mode of preparing for the warpath. He says that the Iroquois and Huron called war "n'ondoutagette" and "gaskenragette." "Le terme Ondouta signifie le duvet qu'on tire de l'épy des Roseaux de Marais & signifie aussi la plante toute entiere, dont ils se servent pour faire les nattes sur quoi ils couchent, de sorte qu'il y a apparence qu'ils avoient affecté ce terme pour la Guerre, parce que chaque Guerrier portoit avec soy sa natte dans ces sortes d'expeditions."
This does not seem to be the correct explanation. Rather, it was because they undoubtedly made some sacrificial meal of this "duvet," or pollen, and used it as much as the Apache do hoddentin, their sacred meal made of the pollen of the tule, which is surely a species of "roseaux de marais."
The great scarcity of corn among the people passed while en route to Cibola is commented upon in an account of Coronado's expedition to Cibola, in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas de América y Oceanía.[350]
We are also informed[351] that the people of Cibola offered to their idols "polbos amarillos de flores."
Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed through by Coronado's expedition.[352]
That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.[353]