The mission of Longevity Herb Press is to heal ourselves and our planet through interactions with plants.

Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest:

A Digest of Anthropological Writings about

Native American Uses

Compiled by Krista K. Thie

With Illustrations by Rachel Hallet and Julie Gomez

Longevity Herb Press

First Edition 1999

Disclaimer: Some of the plants described here are very toxic and should not be taken internally. This anecdotal information is presented for historical interest, for scholarly and medical research, but not for medical advice or suggestions for personal medical use. Please work with your health care advisor if you are in need of medical care.

Copyright Ó 1999 by Krista K. Thie and Longevity Herb Press

1549 West Jewett Boulevard

White Salmon, Washington 98672-8928 USA

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits.

ISBN 0-9624868-3-3

To the medicine people of the Pacific Northwest First Nations,

in thanks for their scientific excellence in plant observation.

Quotation setting tone of book

“Always wildcraft with thoughts of beauty. Put beauty into your work. Ask yourself how much more beautiful will this plant community be when I am finished gathering.

From United Plant Saver’s Brochure (P. O. Box East Barre, Vermont 1997

Table of Contents

Contents of Scientific Family names

Contents of Common Family names

Preface

Introduction

How to use this book

H=page number in Hitchcock & Cronquist V= page number in Vitt (refer to bibliography)

Partial Contents and all Illustrations (in hard copy) in bold

     The Plants                            1-200

Lichens                                     1

Fungi                                        3

Algae                                        6

Mosses and Liverworts                      9

Club-moss                                 11

Horsetail                                  10

Licorice Fern                                       16

Conifers                                    18

Willows                                     39

Alder, Birch & Oak                         44

Nettles                                      48

Buckwheat & Dock                 52

Bitterroots                                 56

Water Lilies                               57

Buttercups                                59

Oregon grape                                       67

Mustards                                   70

Saxifrages                                 73

Roses                                       78

Peas                                         95

Vine maple                              102

Buffalo-berry                              107

Fireweed                                 109

Devil’s Club                             112

Wild Carrot and Lomatium             114

Dogwood                                   125

Huckleberries                            127

Pipsissewa                               129

Mints                                        140

Self Heal                                  143

Tobacco                                    144

Figwort                          145

Broomrape and Plaintain            149

Bedstraw                                   150

Honeysuckle                             152

Sunflower                                  160

Lily                                           186

False Solomon’s Seal                 189

Orchid                                       196

Mountain Lady’s Slipper            197

Iris                                            200

Bibliography                              201

Index of symptoms                     203

Acknowledgements

            Many thanks to my parents for their spending time in the woods with me as a young person, teaching me, through modeling, a love for wild places and the species inhabiting them.

Without Daryl Hoyt, my husband, and his long term support and encouragement, this project would never have been completed. He has steadfastly given me encouragement to pursue my deepest loves and been patient with the hours of typing and library work. Thanks to my son, Avery Thie Hoyt, for putting up with mom at the computer for hours on end and for his help in keeping me from being too ingrown and reminding me to take time for basketball, pillow fights, and gymnastics.

            Thanks to Dr. Eugene Hunn, ethnobiologist at the University of Washington, for opening his reprint files to me and introducing me to the important ethnobiological texts of the Pacific Northwest. He hosted an Ethnobiologist Conference at the University of Washington which I attended with my baby in 1984. He introduced me to the Desert Parsley genus (Lomatium sp.), an important food and medicine group. When I told Dr. Hunn my ethical dilemma in reprinting this information, he encouraged me to go ahead and print when he shared that he thought that knowledge helps people build appreciation and care for plants.

            James Selam for laughing with me about how every Indian needs his anthropologist and vice versa.

Adrienne Roan Bear for encouragement to print this information as many Native Americans do not have this wealth of information at their fingertips.

Dr. Nancy Turner, for warm conversation in her home one cold November, but most of all for her scholarship, reflecting her integrity and friendship with the People’s of the First Nations of British Columbia.

Robyn Klein for asking hard questions that helped me address the issues in the preface.

            Keith Chamberlain and other members of the Native Plant Society of the Gorge Mid Columbia Chapter in Mosier, Oregon for help in learning Columbia River Gorge plants.

            Cascade Anderson Geller, my herbal teacher, who keeps reminding me of the importance of grassroots science. That while knowledge may start with reading, knowing comes from personal experience in using and tasting. That the people who lived with the plants and use them daily will always know more than those who read and write about them.

Preface

          Returning to the Pacific Northwest in 1969, I started getting to know the wildflowers, trees and shrubs. Certain ones, like columbine and stonecrop, came into focus. Friends, a class in edible plants, and later formal botany studies helped me name them. Their uses fascinated me, but the references were scattered. So to organize them for my own learning, fifteen years ago, I started a card file, then transferred them to a word processor and finally to a computer. As my son grew up, I spent hours putting information into this collection while wild games of chase swirled around me. Finally I had one searchable place to go to find previously published information about any given species. Now when I take people on herb walks I have a ready reference to flip through to find information about any plant in which the group is particularly interested. When other herbalists, botanists, or land managers ask some native plant use, I can readily look it up.

            So while I have written this for my own use, for nature hikes and as a resource for future writing geared towards lay people, I hope that Northwest interpretive writers may find this a useful reference source for interpretive writing for nature trails and displays in parks. It could prove helpful to naturopathic physicians, herbalists, herb growers and educators. It may also be helpful for those interested in the complexity of forest ecosystems and how this is tied to our survival.

            Roots of this book started when I was young, while hiking and camping with my parents and sisters in the Cascade Mountains and around the world on their numerous work travels. The feel and healing scents of an ancient, integrated forest never leave you. As I grew, other focused vignettes about plants include savory spice-filled dahl, huge rhododendrons, and tea plantations in Nepal and India where I lived from age five to seven. I remember my father chewing fragrant sassafras twigs with me, showing me wild oats corkscrewing their way into moist soil, tasting sour grass (Rumex acetosella) and paying attention to the beauty in wild places and sharing that love with his family. My Mother shared her love of the beauty of wild creatures and brought flower bouquets into our home. They both gardened out of frugality, but also out of love for the vitality and freshness of the vegetables and flowers. They have a special love affair with fragrant flowers, lilacs, sweet peas and, of course, the roses.

            While I try to operate out of deep love and respect for fellow creatures on the planet, I know that, in part, from the history of my Euro-American heritage, I do not always succeed. While there is deep love in my culture, there is also greed-a deep survival fear-bred, I believe, from the constant wars and battles for land and sustenance over centuries in Europe. I think it is time to move beyond these fear induced behaviors, such as strip mining the earth, our forests and every other resource available. I think that, instead, It is time to return to our universal birthright, our inherent human qualities of love, intelligence and joyfulness. It is time to move from injury and destruction of our fellow species for short-term benefit, extraction, pit mining and clear-cutting forests-to noticing abundance and to return to original human caring.

            Reading through the numerous species listed here which at one time have proved their helpfulness to humans, I like to think that this list can help with the struggle to teach the importance of gene-pool preservation. Too often I’ve heard “It doesn’t matter if a few species go extinct, we don’t really need them”. I would argue that just for esthetics, each species is needed. However, almost every plant in some way has a connection to human health, not to mention the extensive uses of plants for homes, utensils, fishing and hunting equipment, food use, and clothing.

Many chemicals produced by plants that are healing to humans have never been made synthetically in laboratories. The plant-as a little chemical producing entity-is actually needed to provide the template for new ideas and the building blocks to create these complex chemical structures in the laboratory. Some we simply cannot yet make. Much of “modern pharmacy” is still based on the building blocks of chemicals found in the wild.

            Because of the genocide of Native Americans and the greedy taking of resources from this once abundant land by immigrant cultures, I have hesitated to publish and make more accessible this special information. But I think that knowledge also breeds care, respect and protection. After consulting with various people over the last ten years, I have decided that making this information more accessible makes it possible to help people appreciate and then to protect plant-life, rather than add to destruction. So I have decided to publish this, but with all profits going towards Native American cultural activities and teaching of all people about cherishing all other life forms on the planet. Copies of this book are available for Native American Cultural Centers.

Ethnobotany is the interactions of any group of people with plants. How people relate to the world around them gives insight into medicine, religion, as well as to how daily life was carried out. This book focuses on how Northwest Native Americans used plants as medicine.

There are numerous limitations to this approach. There are many tribal groups and traditions represented here. Yet the information is very difficult to transfer from one culture to another. I am in no way an expert on Native American religion or medicine, and yet I have a sense of how far this information is from in portraying the religious context in which these remedies were used for healing. European mindset and worldview is different from other important world thought. Even though anthropologists try to be objective in conveying information from one culture to another it is very difficult to step out of one’s cultural viewpoint.

In some of the early documents the added problem of warfare and genocide was occurring and information may not be very accurate from “Indian” to “white man”. Native American informants may well have played tricks on anthropologists (R. Klein). Robyn Klein, herbalist from Bozeman, Montana, shared with me that Native Americans have told her that these documents are not needed to convey apothecary information as it was “learned through dreams and vision quests”.

Yet if, a pharmaceutical company wants to find a new drug, the chances of success are greatly increased, if the plant scientists first work with empirical information from traditional healers. The more healers throughout the world that use a particular plant for an ailment, the likelihood increases of finding a successful drug. Herbalists, as least the European heritage ones that I know, rely heavily upon European, Native American, Ayurvedic and Chinese texts for finding whole plant medicines.

Propagate, instead of harvest, wild plants

Work to preserve native plant habitat. Learn what this is, why this is important. Join with Native Plant Societies or other organizations in your area working to preserve natural landscapes. Find ways to grow the plants you want to experiment with as medicine, especially if you promote a product made with any plants listed here, GROW them. Do not wild harvest.

            If you decide to wild harvest some species for personal use, make sure that they are hardy prolific plants and not fragile and difficult to propagate. Plants growing in areas that have been disturbed by bulldozers are usually hardy colonizers and readily adapt to the type of habitat that our culture provides: bare, open, and hot ground. Plants growing deep in an undisturbed forest are living in a shrinking habitat and will not adapt to a hot sunny location. Return to the same place year after year to ensure that the plants you harvest stay about the same in number or increase.

Check with my earlier book, A Plant Lover’s Guide to Wildcrafting: How to Preserve Wild Places and Harvest Medicinal Plants. There are so many plants to choose from, it is always possible to find a good substitute that is readily available and hardy instead of the rarer, more fragile plant. Never harvest a rare plant. This is a challenge to you to use this information to cherish and to increase the variety of the plants in your neighborhood. Each one is precious, as are you and me

Ethnobotany disclaimer

            While some of the remedies documented here may be excellent medicine, this is not the place to find self-help medicine. Do not take any of these plants as medicine, but work with your health care provider. Many people have died experimenting with plants.

These are stories and history to begin research projects with medicine. By comparing the information here with ethnobotanical and pharmacological information from other parts of the world, you may find a plant to work with that will be helpful for human health. Compare these entries to Ayurvedic medicine from India, Chinese traditional medicine, and European based herbalism. Preparation, dosage and first hand knowledge are key.

            This book is similar to Charlotte Erichsen-Brown’s Medicinal and other Uses of North American Plants, (Dover Publications, New York, 1979) in that each author, dates of their work, and the page number precedes each entry. Here the entries are usually paraphrased, rather than directly quoted, following closely to the original work including especially references to collecting, making medicine and any prayers or rituals observed in administering the medicine. Hopefully this added information will make it more useful to herbalists, naturopathic physicians, and researchers. By including this information, this book differs from Daniel Moerman’s work, Medicinal Plants of Native America. Some of the descriptions of remedies are quoted in their entirety so that you can evaluate the meaning yourself.

How to use this book

First identify the plant in which you are interested. There are several ways to do this, one being to use “social botany” or learning from a local expert. Ask around, check with your local Native Plant Society, or schools for plant identifications hikes or classes.

Check your local library or bookstore to find a plant identification key. Hitchcock and Cronquist’s, Flora of the Pacific Northwest, is excellent especially for botanists. Page numbers are cross-referenced here so that it is easy to look up a description in “Hitchcock” from this. Pojar and MacKinnon, Lyons, and Niehaus are user-friendlier for non-botanists.

Some available field guides to identify plants in the Pacific Northwest:

Gilkey, Helen and LaRea Dennis. Handbook of Northwestern Plants. Oregon State University. 1967. Covers western Washington, Oregon and western British Columbia. This has a very handy easy-to-use key to find the scientific name of the family.

Hitchcock, C. L. and Cronquist, A. Flora of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press. Seattle & London. 1973. This was originally published as a five volume set where the detailed botanical drawings by Jeanne Janish are printed in full size.

Lyons, C.P. and Bill Merilees. Trees, Shrubs and Flowers to Know in British Columbia and Washington. Lone Pine Publishing. 1995. Also for northern Oregon. This is written for “scouts and grandmothers”. Since it is the book I first used to start identifying plants, it is my favorite beginner book. It is organized into categories of familiar shrubs, trees and flowers. You find flowers according to petal color.

Niehaus, T. F. and Charles Ripper. A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers, Washington, Oregon, California, and adjacent areas. Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 1976. Other herbalists love this guide for beginners. It identifies flowers by color with some groupings by family. Illustrations are clear and color photos lovely.

Peterson Field Guide is just about to publish a field guide on western medicinal plants. Check it out for identification help.

Pojar, Jim & Andy MacKinnon. Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Lone Pine Publishing. 1994. This includes Liverworts, Mosses and Lichens arranged by botanical family with keys.

Vitt, Dale, Janet Marsh and Robin Bovey. Mosses, Lichens and Ferns of Northwest North America. Lone Pine Publishing and University of Washington Press. 1988. A good field guide to help you identify some of these life forms found in this document.

Once you have the scientific name of the plant and the family it is in, you can refer to either of the two family indexes by the Table of Contents. One index is alphabetical by scientific name and one by common family name. The numbers here refer to sequential family, genus and species numbers that correspond to the page number where found in “Hitchcock”. Once at the family in the text, the genera are listed in alphabetical order. Within a genus, the species are alphabetical. Alternatively the index at the back of the text, gives you the page number where a family, genus or species is found in this text.

            The numbers before each plant name refer to the page on which it is found in Hitchcock and Cronquist. Any plant names that differ from Cronquist and Hitchcock’s Flora of the Pacific Northwest are written right after the author, date and page number, so many name synonyms are included for each reference. The most recent botanical names coined after the publication of Cronquist and Hitchcock are not included here unless an author uses them in their publication. The only two authors who would use the most recent botanical names would be Dr. Nancy Turner or Dr. Eugene Hunn

For example, to find the Desert Parsley, Lomatium dissectum, there are several ways to locate it. You can turn to the index in the back and look under “Lomatium” to find that it is located on page 119 and 120. If you know the family name, you can find “Apiaceae” in the scientific name list or “Parsley” in the common family name list. This family is found at H314. That means that in “Hitchcock and Cronquist” the Parsley or Carrot family is found on page 314. In this text, each genus and species is listed in the same order as the pages in “Hitchcock”. After flipping through this text and finding family number 314. Genera are listed in alphabetical order. Within a genera the specie are listed alphabetically as well.

            The names and initials following a scientific name refer to the person who first documented and named the plant and those who came later and changed the name! Sometimes these names are helpful to trace name changes especially from older documents. As you can see in the example below, “Hitchcock” gave this desert-parsley one name. In 1929, it was Leptotaenia dissecta with a common name of bitter head. In 1957 it was called Leptotaenia multifida with Cough root or Indian Balsam as common names. In 1959 Murphy supplies the additional common name of Toza. Subsequence authors do not introduce additional names.

            Sometimes included is the tribal name such as in the reference below for 1929. But most regional or tribal affiliation is clarified in the bibliography in the back.

Example:

H330 Lomatium dissectum (Nutt.) M & C

(Desert-parsley

1929 Steedman 472. Leptotaenia dissecta. Bitter head. Thompson.

1957 Train 65. Leptotaenia multifida Nutt. Cough root or Indian Balsam.

1959 Murphy 37. Toza.

Krista K.Thie

June, 1999

Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest:

A Digest of Anthropological Writings about

Native American Uses

Lichens

V251 Alectoria sarmentosa (L.) Ach. and Usnea spp.

(Maidenhair Moss or Old Man’s Beard)

1928 Smith 66. The Bella Coola people warmed a “certain long white lichen, if found on the red alder tree” to put on an open boil or sore.

1973 Turner 195. (Smith is probably referring to Alectoria sp. and Usnea sp.)

1982 Turner and Efrat 26. Three Hesquit elders think that this plant was probably a good medicine, but no one from the previous generation had passed the particulars on. In the past, to hide their medicine sources, healers would bring the medicines to the patient, dried and ground up, so the plant ingredients were unidentifiable.

1983 Turner, et. al., 55. Collected and stored for their absorbent qualities, these lichens were used as baby diapers, women’s sanitary napkins, or as bandages for wounds. John Thomas called Usnea longissima, “Indian Bandage”, a good wrapping for wounds, that can be left in place for some time.

V248 Bryoria fremontii (Tuck.)Brodo & D. Hawksw.

(Black tree lichen)

1909 Teit 618. White and black lichens growing on rocks. Smutle’lst.

            These were boiled for lean people to drink the resulting liquid, to make them fat.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 10. Alectoria fremontii Tuck. p.14.

            Weaned babies were fed saskatoon berry juice and boiled black tree lichen “syrup” (Gabriel 1954:28).

            It was thought that a pregnant woman should not eat this as a food or it would make the baby dark (Lerman).

            This lichen, when dried, powdered, and mixed with grease, was put on a newborn baby’s naval (LA).

1990 Hunn 352. After boiling, this lichen was used as a poultice for arthritis.

1990 Turner, et. al., 74. Also Alectoria fremontii and A. jubata. Thompson. While widely used as a food, this plant was little used medicinally. Teit in 1900, wrote that it was warmed by a fire, then put onto the “wound left from cutting off a wart”.

V202 Cladonia chlorophaea (Flk.) Spreng.

(Cup Lichen)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, and Kennedy 15. This whole plant was boiled to make a washing solution to put onto slow healing sores (LA).

V253 Letharia vulpina (L.) Hue

            (Wolf Lichen)

1902 Chestnut 300. Yellow Moss (Evernia vulpina (L.) Ach.

            The Yukis and Wailiakis peoples considered this plant very valuable to dry running sores and to reduce the accompanying inflammation.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 15. Boiled a short time, the weak solution was drunk for internal problems. It was boiled longer for a stronger solution to use as a wash on sores and wounds (ST).

1990 Hunn 354. Sehaptin. The simmered plant was used as a poultice on sores, boils, bruises and swellings. Or the liquid was drunk for a hemorrhage.

V235 Lobaria pulmonaria (L.) Hoffm.

(Tree Lungwort)

1928 Smith 66. Sticta sp. Lichen. The whole plant was used as medicine. It was only the plant collected from red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) or crab apple (Pyrus diversifolia) shrubs and not from willow (Salix sp.).

            The whole plant was boiled and the resulting liquid drunk for stomach pains. The dose was five cupfuls each day. It was not used as a purgative or astringent for vomiting, diarrhea or constipation. But, this same decoction was used as an eyewash.

            The whole plant was also powdered and put on the skin for some unspecified complaint.

1958 Jacobs 130. Euro-american use. Sticta pulmonaria is used for lung problems.

1982 Turner and Efrat 26-27. Hesquiat medicine for “coughing up blood”.

            Lichens found on rocks or in different trees were used for different illnesses. It was also combined with a number of other plants. Here, Alice Paul, could only remember one of the possible combinations, that with bull kelp. First burn the fronds, mix the ashes with water and then apply. She also tells of how the Sechelt people put Lobaria on children’s faces that peel, “revealing a light-coloured ‘patchiness’ very much like the lichen itself”. This medicine had special preparations and was considered sacred.

1990 Turner, et. al., 76. Thompson. Here, Annie York, knew that this was used for something, probably a medicine, but could not remember the details.

V229 Peltigera canina (L.) Willd.

(Studded Leather Lichen)

1990 Turner, et. al., 76. Thompson. Bernadette Antoine remembers that this plant was used by old-timers to rub into bee stings.

V230 Peltigera canina Willd. (Seaweed of the Ground or Dogtooth Lichen)

1973 Turner and Bell 263. This was a love charm, but how it was prepared is uncertain (Boas, 1921).

1982 Turner and Efrat 27. This plant had some medicine use, but no one remembered what it was.

1983 Turner, et. al., 55. Ida Jones, described a use for a plant, that might be this one. An old woman, that she knew, used this to help a man urinate who could not.

Lena Johnson, looking at a sample of this plant, said that a similar looking one, except that it had white flowers, was chewed to help cure tuberculosis.

            p. 56. Densmore, in 1939 working among the Makah, made notes about a fungus, found growing on the rocks was used, mashed. The poultice was applied to hard-to-heal rubbing sores or leg sores, particularly ones from bruises caused from walking in rocks.

HYPOCREACEAE (Ergot Family)

Clavipes purpurea (Fr.) Fl.

(Ergot)

1902 Chestnut 299. “Its general medicinal use is well known to the Indians.”

FUNGI

Fungus species

1909 Teit 618. Pubescent boys rubbed a white fungus, growing on tree trunks, on their bodies to gain strength.

1928 Smith 68. Gitksan. Fungus, found on a birch tree, or sometimes on a hemlock, was “set alight, and used to sear a rheumatic person”. (For more information, see Fomes, look under the citation, 1980 Turner, Bouchard & Kennedy.) (Moxibustion)

1980 Turner, Bouchard & Kennedy 16. Babies were bathed in a mushroom broth, to make them as strong as mushrooms are when they push aside rocks as they emerge from the ground.

1990 Turner, et. al., 77. Thompson. Some mushrooms, according to Annie York, were burned and the ashes were used on cancer sores.

            Others told how newborns were bathed in a mushroom infusion “to make them strong and independent” like mushrooms that grow up through hard ground and push aside rocks.

Lycoperdaceae

(Puffball)

Battarrea phalloides (Dicks.) Pers.

(Puffball)

1957 Train 33. A young puffball is sliced, then used as a poultice directly on swellings and sores.

Calvatia gigantea Pers.

(Giant Puffball)

1975 Palmer 49. These were considered poisonous to eat, but were used as medicine. The inside of the puffball was dampened, then rubbed into a sore on the back of a horse. The inside of the puffball turns to powder with a color similar to mustard.

1980 Turner, Bouchard & Kennedy 15. Used in the same way as listed under Lycoperdon spp.

Calvatia cyanthiformis (Bosc) Morg.

(Puffball)

1983 Turner, et. al., 56. Calvatia lilacina Berk. These, and perhaps other puffballs, were used to heal leg sores and to stop hemorrhages.

Echinodontium tinctorium

1990 Hunn 353. Sehaptin. A woody fungus used on skin to prevent chapping.

Fomes fomentarius (L. ex Fr.) Kichx.

1975 Palmer 49. Moxibustion. This was used as moxa to as many as thirty points on the body for joint pain and stiffness, especially for headaches, toothaches, bruises and bunions. “A piece the size of a pea or larger, depending upon the degree of pain, is placed on the skin, which is moistened directly over the pain and ignited with a glowing stick. The fungus burns slowly and draws the skin together, forming a star of wrinkles around the fungus. If you get it right on the pain, it goes up in flames. While burning, it feels like a needle going down, until finally it pops, leaving a flesh-coloured burn about one-quarter inch in diameter. At this point the pain vanishes, but Isaac Willard has used it from one-nine times, depending upon whether the pain recurs.”

            “For headache, the fungus is burned on the back of the neck where there is no hair. For toothache, it is placed on the gum. Isaac Willard has observed the large round one used by the Japanese for back pain, and he does not understand how they bear the pain of the treatment.”

            p. 60. The plant found on Betula papyrifera was used in as a hot, dark tea for burning pain.

Fomes officinalis (Vill. ex Fries) Faull

(Bracket Fungus)

1948 McIlwraith Vol. I, 732. Polyporus officinalis. This fungus was pounded, then put into water to make a “brew” to drink for venereal disease.

1945 Gunther 50. Fomes sp. The Makah were the only people making significant use of this plant. They scraped it on a sharp rock to make a powdered body deodorant.

1971 Turner and Bell 68. Fomes or Ganoderma sp. Echo-maker. These fungus were believed to cause echoes in the forest.

1973 Turner 195. Fomes and Polyporus sp. Bracket fungi were pounded, then decocted and the liquid drunk for gonorrhea (Smith, 1928). See McIlwraith, 1948.

1980 Turner, Bouchard & Kennedy 16. Fomes spp. and Polyporus spp.

            One kind of fungus growing on Douglas fir, dried near a fire, pounded into powder, was then boiled for a few minutes to make a drink for tuberculosis (ST; ML).

            Another tree fungus, from ponderosa pine, was used as a poultice, for internal medicine, and as a poison antidote (ST; ML; LP).

            For pains and swelling in his joints, ST’s father “cut down a pine tree, cut off some of this fungus, sliced it, boiled it, and soaked his sore joints in the solution”. ST considered this good for any sore bones or swellings. It can be steeped in hot water, rather than boiled.

            To use internally for poisoning or stomach sickness, set the fungus by the fire until it turns red. Then scrape it with a knife to collect three to four tablespoons of powder. Drink one cup of warm water with a spoonful of the powder stirred into it. The first dose causes vomiting, or in later stages of poisoning, bowel evacuation. The second dose cleans the intestine. Soon the patient feels hungry and “is cured” (according to ML).

            For a serious cut, this powder, mixed with “gray” willow cambium, was put directly on the cut to stop bleeding; but great caution was used with this (AL).

            Another mushroom growing on birch trees, maybe Fomes fomentarium, which is small and flat, was used to make a poultice to put on arthritic joints. To make the poultice: pound until “mushy”, place in a cloth along with warm towels and put on the skin (ML). For a rheumatism cure, “the skin above the affected area was moistened with spittle and a small piece of fungus was placed on it, then ignited and allowed to burn down to the skin. If the smouldering fungus ‘popped’ when it reached the skin, the cure was successful; the rheumatism ‘jumped out’”. (Lerman describes this cure, while ML identified the fungus.)

Ganoderma applanatum (Pers. ex Wallr.) Rat.

or Fomitopsis pinicola (Sw. ex Fr.) Karst., or other similar species

(Bracket or Shelf Fungi)

1983 Turner, et. al., 56. Bracket fungus make a protective charm to “echo” bad thoughts back to the originator.

Lycoperdon

(Puffball)

1902 Chestnut 300.

            The leathery outer covering of the puffball made a part of a medicine man’s paraphernalia. Put on a stick with gravel inside, the skin made a small rattle.

            “The spores are used to some extent to dry up running sores.”

1928 Smith 66. Bovista pila. Puffball. Bella Coola.

            The spores were dusted on to wounds, gonorrhea sores and suppurating sores, but not boils.

1929 Steedman 504. Polyporus abietinea Fries. Owl wood. Thompson.

            This fungus usually grows on fir trees. The spores, called “powder by the Thompson people, were used as such. The young men dusted them on their bodies to give them strength.

            p. 459. An unidentified large fungus, that grows mainly on old fir trees, was used as an unidentified medicine.

1980 Turner, Bouchard & Kennedy 16.

            Mature spore powder was used on diaper rash, like talcum powder. Severe rashes were treated with spores mixed with alumroot, (Heuchera cylindrica) or with the spores alone. The inside of a puffball was rubbed on a baby’s buttocks to prevent excessive urination (Ray 1932:128).

1990 Turner, et. al., 80. Lycoperdon perlatum, Lycoperdon sp., Bovista sp., and Calvatia sp. Thompson.

            The spores were considered “very poisonous for the eyes”, but were used as a medicine on burns and sores. The spore powder was even thought of as a “really good medicine”.

            Hilda Austin tells how her uncle had an allergic reaction develop while picking hops, much like a poison-ivy rash. His eyes and skin were swollen. His skin had a running rash. Her mother, or maybe her grandmother, made a medicine from four gallons of chopped red alder bark. The bark was covered with water, then simmered until half of the water was gone. This boiling was repeated until the water was again half gone. The resulting liquid was applied to the uncle’s skin with a sterilized cloth. After that, puffball spores were sprinkled over the whole rash on his face and hands. The next day, this was repeated. By the next day, “the affected skin just peeled away and he was completely better”.

Polyporus versicolor L. ex. Fr.

(Willow Fungus)

1928 Smith 66. Polyporus officinalis Fries. A shelf fungus. Fomes lacricis (Jacq.). (No verification of present name.)

            “Bella Coola. This (?) fungus ground, steeped in water, and the decoction taken internally for gonorrhea.

            S. Carrier: If found on the Douglas fir tree, dried, powdered, a handful steeped in boiling water and the hot decoction taken internally as an emetic and purgative. Said to act within an hour. Not used if found on any other tree. “

This was perhaps the only fungus used by pharmacists in 1928. Park, Davis, and Company made a fluid extract and a triturate prescribed to relieve night sweats of tuberculosis. In large doses, it is cathartic. “Its medicinal virtues have long been known in the old world.”

1971 Turner and Bell 68. This is probably the willow fungus boiled by the Saanich, to make a medicine to “treat babies with convulsions”.

1990 Turner, et. al., 81. ?Polyporus sp. Willow fungus. Thompson.

            Annie York tells how this was a kind of “great-horned-owl wood” or bracket fungus. Only the one growing on willows was considered medicinal. Hunters, especially, would eat this for its purgative or tonic action. By emptying their digestive tracts, the hunters “would not be short of breath when climbing up mountains”. It was believed to be poisonous if eaten in large amounts.

Fuligo sp.

Slime mold

1966 Boas 382. “A soft and slimy fungus called, xa ts!is, (“rotten-on-ground”), was put on boils and swellings “to draw them out”.

1973 Turner and Bell 263. This genus is probably the one described by Boas, 1966.

Tricholoma magnivelare (Peck) Redhead (syn. Armillaria ponderosa)

(Pine Mushroom)

1990 Turner, et. al., 83. Thompson.

            Here, Mabel Joe, tells about a woman named after the pine mushroom. Perhaps as a baby she was bathed in an infusion of this mushroom to make her strong. She also calls Nancy Turner’s baby this, because she washed the baby in the liquid from a jar of mushrooms that Mabel gave to her.

ALGAE

Fucus sp.

Rockweed

1928 Smith 66. Kelp.

            Bella Coola. “A small kelp found on the rocks sometimes used for a sweat bath.”

            See also Rumex occidentalis.

1966 Boas 376. Here is a long description of several sweat bath techniques, that include placing Fucus sp. on the hot rocks, then covering them with other plants, sea water, and having the patient lay down on this covered with a blanket.

            p. 383. For itchy scabs on children’s’ heads and bodies, rub the child with kelp while on the beach. Back at home, rub the scabs with catfish oil, then burnt ochre. After that the child should not eat herring roe or fresh salmon, because the scabs would then stay fresh like the salmon.

            P. 379. Here is detailed treatment for a man with rheumatism. First he would heat about three hundred stones, and gather yellow cedar boughs. Meanwhile his wife collects four to five baskets of Fucus sp. She puts two full baskets in a small canoe, which is put near the bed of her husband. (p. 380) After wetting the seaweed, “hot stones are put into the canoe and covered with more seaweed. These, in turn are covered with the cedar branches, which are laid on crosswise, covering the whole length of the canoe. Over these, they place a board to support the head.” Water is sprinkled on the whole time, while the patient lies down on the branches, covered with “old mats or with cedar blankets. The head is kept cool. Some people, after this steam bath, will jump into the cold water to frighten away the sickness.”

            For leg and foot pains, use a foot bath of fresh and salt warm water, with yellow cedar tips, elder bard, Lonicera involucrata and Fucus sp..

            (P. 386) Locomotor Ataxia was a common ailment with the Kwakiutl, especially in Knight Inlet. Perhaps it was caused by standing in cold water, fishing, for long periods of time. “People afflicted with locomotor ataxia bathe in the sea and rub their bodies with the small slippery kelp ...which grows on the beach."

1973 Turner 260-261. Fucus gardneri Silva (Sea Wrack)

            "Four or five pounds of fresh Fucus sp. were cut up and mixed with dried tobacco (Nicotiana sp.), alder bark (Alnus rubra), and the bark, berries, or leaves of black twinberry (Lonicera involucrata). This mixture was heated with red-hot rocks and placed as a compress" on various aches and pains, such as sore and swollen feet. (Boas, 1966).

            " Fresh Fucus sp. was also rubbed on the legs and feet for the disease, locomotor ataxia (op. cit.). If a person felt generally sick, or had rheumatism, Fucus sp. was used to make a steam bath. Several baskets full were put into a canoe or large tub, red hot rocks were placed on it and covered with more Fucus sp., over which yellow cedar boughs (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) were placed. The sick person would lie on the boughs and cover himself with a blanket so that the steam could not escape. After this treatment, he would sometimes try to ‘scare the sickness away’ by jumping into the ocean (op. cit.).”

1983 Turner, et. al., 51. Bladderwrack or rockweed. For luck in whale hunting, whalers rubbed the blister like bubbles of Fucus sp. on their bodies and canoes until the inside of the plant contacted the skin.

            Prospective parents prayed for a fine whale hunters before a child was born. A pregnant woman, whose child might be a boy and therefore a whaler, also rubbed her skin this way.

Halosaccion glandiforme (Gmelin) Ruprecht

(Bladder Seaweed)

1982 Turner and Efrat 24. This had a medicinal use that Alice Paul could not remember.

1983 Turner, et. al., 51. A newly wed woman would squeeze the bubble-like sacs until the plant juices squirted into her mouth. She did this if she wanted her first born to be a boy.

Leathesia difformis (L.) Areschoug

(“Bubble” Seaweed)

1982 Turner and Efrat 24.

            This plant was used a medicine, but Alice Paul could not remember the details.

Lessoniopsis lettoralis (Farlow & Stec.) Reinke

(Short Kelp)

1983 Turner, et. al., xx. This entry may also relate to the Postelsia sp.

            Burn the stipes for the ash to make a salve. This was then rubbed on a boy’s spine to strengthen his whole body.

Neriocystis luetkeana (Mertens) P. & R.

(Bull kelp)

1966 Boas 383. Children, with scabs that itch, are not to eat herring roe or fresh salmon or else the scabs will stay “fresh like the salmon”. On the beach, the scabs would be rubbed with fresh kelp. After this back at the house, the child’s scabs are rubbed with catfish oil and then burnt ochre.

            For a bad burn, put a skate liver on the wound or seal blubber or the “long leaves of kelp”.

P. 384. A remedy for bleeding, was to tie a small pebble of diorite directly onto the artery with a piece of a kelp bottle. “The stone is placed on the wound so that the cold may stop the blood.”

P. 386. Loss of skin pigment seems common among the Northwest Coast people. It is thought that the cause is by “passing over the trail of a double-headed serpent”. Thought to be contagious, if a husband has it, the wife is sure to also get it. Indians are afraid to touch the clothes of someone with pigment loss. For a cure, the people would try to treat it by bathing in salt water and rubbing kelp into the skin. (Boas notes here that this does not seem to help.)

1973 Turner and Bell 261.

            In hopes that delivery would be easy and that a child would become as slippery as kelp, a pregnant woman was treated with warm, damp kelp, on the stomach and small of the back. (Boas, 1930).

            Swollen feet were rubbed with the long leaves of kelp. (Boas, 1966.)

            To help a child grow long hair, powdered, dried kelp leaves were rubbed into the scalp (op. cit.).

            The long, hollow tubes from kelp were buried in the floor of the winter ceremonials house for special effects sounds making voices sound as if they were coming from the middle of the fire.

            P. 262. Men going to war made kelp air rings that were kept by their wives. If the ring burst, the man would surely die.

1982 Turner and Efrat 25.

            “The hollow floats and upper stipes were used to store oil and other liquids, and as a mold for making a skin ‘cream’ out of cottonwood resin and deer fat.” The hot, liquid salve was poured into the hollow kelp bulb stem and allowed to solidify. Then the mold was cut open and the solid, ball of ointment removed.

1983 Turner, et. al., 53. The Nootka (Fenn, 1979), Hesquiat, as well as the Nitinaht used the bulb as a mold for a salve made from cottonwood buds or pine pitch mixed with fat from deer stomach. The melted oil and resin was poured into the bulb, left to harden, then cut away, leaving a chunk of salve to store. The salve was used to protect skin from the sun, wind and cold.

Porphyra spp.

(Red laver)

1973 Turner 195.

            DM said that the Interior (Carrier) peoples bought it to eat for goiter.

1973 Turner and Bell 262. Red laver. This is still eaten and considered a healthy food and laxative.

Postelsia palmaeformis Ruprecht

(Sea palm)

1982 Turner and Efrat 26.

            According to Luke Swan, Manhousat, the whalers would rub their arms with “four to eight pieces” of sea palm, hoping to make them as “tough and resilient” as this plant, which grows in pounding surf. Fucus gardneri, Laminaria sp. or other “short kelps may also be used in a similar way.

1983 Turner, et. al., 54.

            This plant was not stored, as it could always be collected fresh, nearby the Nitinaht’s village.

            Dried, then reduced to ashes, the entire plant was used in various ways.

            The ashes were rubbed on the face of someone having convulsions or having gone “crazy”.

            The ashes were mixed with water and the liquid drunk, but, John Thomas in telling this did not know what for as he was a child. “So many things you see a doctor doing, they don’t tell kids . . . even if I asked, they wouldn’t tell me.”

            One family (Ida Jones’), made a salve, by drying the stipes in the summer, burning them, “powdering the charcoal and mixing it with raccoon bone marrow”. This was rubbed into a baby boy’s spine, right from birth, to give strength. “He’s going to be a strong man when he grows up-long life.”

            The Nootka and Ahousat, rubbed joints of whalers and long-distance runners with the ashes (Fenn, et. al., 1979).

?Rhizoclonium sp.

(All green, slimy vegetation in salt and fresh backwaters)

1948 McIlwraith, Volume 1 728.

            Here is a detailed description of steaming procedures for ill people. For stomach troubles, rheumatism, or “water in the blood”, the green moss-like growths from stones, under the water, were used to line a steam bath. As many other medicinal herbs as possible were used according to the season, such as nettles, devil’s club bark, western dock, cottonwood leaves, young spruce bark or debris from cones eaten by animals. First a hole by the river was dug, then filled with hot rocks, next covered with river sand and gravel and then medicinal plants. This steaming was used by everyone and was not secret information kept within one family.

1973 Turner 195. (Here Turner identifies McIlwraith’s “green moss-like growths from water-covered stones” as possible this species. (See McIlwraith, 1948, above.)

Ulva lactuca

(Sea lettuce)

1945 Gunther 50. The Quinault put this on sunburned lips to make use of its cooling properties.

1973 Turner and Bell 262. Sea lettuce and Enteromorpha intestinalis (L.) Link, were “mixed with black twinberry bark (Lonicera involucrata) and soaked in boiling water to make a poultice for a woman with a cold or with sore hard breasts after having a baby (Alfred, 1969).”

(Crab seaweed)

1945 Gunther 50. The Makah put this onto a new mother’s breasts to help the milk flow.

Spirogyra spp.

(“Green pond slime”

1990 Turner, et. al., 69. The Thompson people pulled this green slime from ponds by twisting it onto a stick. It was then used to poultice blistered burns or frostbitten hands and feet.

(Seaweed)

1945 Gunther 50. Makah women would gather seaweed, burn it in piles during strong winds, “believing” that the winds would go away when it smells the acrid smoke, making it safer for their husbands at sea.

Bryophyta

(Mosses and Liverworts)

Moss

1973 Turner and Bell 263. Bandages were made with moss and also as a sort of “paper towel” for many tasks, such as cleaning fish. It was also spread on floors and beds.

1983 Turner, et. al., 57. Absorbent mosses were used like paper towels in the house, especially to wipe salmon clean. They were also used as sanitary napkins and baby diapers. Large quantities were collected and stored in the summer.

1928 Smith 65. Mnium affine Bland. S. Carrier. The entire plant, without the roots, was boiled to use as a wash on a swollen face.

1983 Turner, et. al., 59. Mnium punctatum L. was used as a remedy for swellings on legs (Densmore, 1939).

Pellia spp.

(Thallose Liverwort)

1982 Turner and Efrat 27.

            If a small suckling child could not suck because of a sore mouth or throat, it was given the “juice or chewed-up pulp” from this plant. Alice Paul tells here of how her niece could not drink milk or water. The morning after she was given this remedy she was much better and could drink.

Plagiomnium insigne (Mitt.) Koponen

Rhizomnium glabrescens

& other Mnium group mosses

1973 Turner 196.

            The green fronds, crushed in warm water, were used as a poultice on any infection or swelling. These mosses were used for their drawing power for boils, blood, blisters, and female breast abscesses. Especially, they were used on children (MS; DM).

POLYTRICHACEAE

(Polytrichum Family)

VMB Polytrichum commune Hedw.

(Hair Moss)

1983 Turner, et. al., 59. Mary Thompson tells how this was chewed throughout labor to help speed it up.

VMB57 Polytrichum juniperinum Hedw.

(Juniper-leaved Hair Moss)

1983 Turner, et. al., 59. Densmore writes of a woman whose father told her to eat freely of this. Perhaps this refers to her using it during labor like P. commune listed above.

Conocephalum conicum (L.) Dumort

(Liverwort)

1966 Boas 383. Mouth rashes and cankers are treated with liverwort. Either it is held in the mouth or a mother puts the plant into water, then she dips her finger in the water and wipes out a tiny child’s mouth with it.

1973 Turner and Bell 263. See Boas, 1966.

1983 Turner, et. al., 58. Perhaps this was the plant used for urine stoppage (see also under Peltigera canina). As a girl, Flora Joseph, was told that this was good for the kidneys.

            Mary Thompson used it as an eye medicine, perhaps for cataracts, since she has them. She took the identifying sample to use for medicine, but gave no preparation details.

            Lena Johnson mentions that different people use the same remedy for different things. It was also eaten by people with recurring dreams of having sexual intercourse with a dead person. If the dreams were not soon stopped, it was thought that the dreamer would “join his dream” and soon die.

VMB 53 Sphagnum spp.

(Sphagnum Mosses)

1945 Gunther 50. Sphagnum was used for wound dressings (Makah), sanitary napkins (Chinook), and bedding (widespread).

1966 Boas 380. People would used sphagnum moss collected from four different places to wipe the body of someone with a fever. It was then returned to where it was gathered and as the moss cooled, then the body will become cool.

1973 Turner and Bell 263. “Young people wiped it on their faces to make their skin as light as the colour of sphagnum (Boas, 1966).”

1983 Turner, et. al., Considered a good disinfectant, it was especially used for baby diapers.

H40 Lycopodiaceae

(Clubmoss Family)

H40 Lycopodium clavatum L.

(Elk-moss, ground- or running-pine)

1928 Smith 48. “Inserted in the nose to cause bleeding and cure headache.”

1990 Hunn 355. L. annotinum/clavatum. Sehaptin. The infusion, was used as a hair wash, to make it grow.

H40 Lycopodium selago L.

(Fir club-moss)

1983 Turner, et. al., 60.

            John Thomas’s family used this as a fast and effective emetic and purgative. When he was a child, he “was give four short branches of the plant to ‘clean him out’. This made him very sick and made him ‘go all day’ (empty his bowels).”

            Ida Jones also remembers that it was a purgative, while Mary Thompson knew it was “strong medicine”.

H44 Equisetaceae

(Horsetail Family)

H44 Equisetum arvense (L.)

(Common Horsetail)

1929 Steedman 462. Thompson. Several species were used as medicine. Ashes from burned horsetail stems are dusted thickly over a burn and bandaged. Sometimes the ashes are mixed with animal greases or oils and then smeared over the burns.

1945 Gunther 15. Shave grass or common scouring-rush. Cowlitz. Stalks, broken-up, then boiled, made a liquid to use as a hair wash for vermin.

            Quinault            . Horsetails were made into a drink with willow leaves, for a girl to drink to regulate her menstrual cycle. The informant insisted that this was not an abortifacient.

1971 Turner and Bell 68. Horsetails were eaten and considered “good for the blood”.

1973 Turner and Bell 263-4. “Used to make a poultice for cuts and sores (Johnson, 1969).”

1980 Turner, Bouchard, and Kennedy 18.

            Women used horsetails to polish their fingernails.

            Large and small horsetails were used as medicine. Stems of large ones were boiled to make a solution to wash sore on children’s skin. Fluid from the stem was used as an eyewash. For internal medicine, the large ones (E. hyemale) were thought stronger, but small ones could be used, too.

            Stems were made into a “tea” which was drunk “for sluggishness due to a cold”, also “as a diuretic to stimulate the kidneys, and for backache and lumbago. For syphilis and gonorrhea, horsetail was boiled with false box (Paxistima myrsinites) or with the clear pitch from the bark blisters of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa).” This was drunk daily by the cupful, along with “sporadic doses of pure pitch”. This treatment was effective, but too strong to take in quantity or often. The patient also took a horsetail and pitch bath.

            Small horsetails (E. laevigatum) were boiled with twigs from chokecherry to make a tea for children with colds.

            The hollow stems of horsetail were used as a straw to give medicine to babies (Ray, p. 218).

            To make a wash for skin rash from poison ivy, horsetails were pounded and mixed with water.

1990 Turner, et. al., 86. E. arvense and E. telmateia.

             Annie York comments here that the Thompson name in Steedman’s manuscript refers usually to the “branchless horsetails” and not these species. Though perhaps these are included in Steedman’s comment about “several species”.

            She continues telling about how to pick the new tops to boil them for a tea to drink for “stoppage of urine”. The dose is by the glass full.

Mabel Joe mentions that it was used as a postpartum medicine.

H43 Equisetum hyemale L.

(Dutch Rush)

1945 Gunther 15. See E. arvense.

1971 Turner and Bell. See E. arvense.

1973 Turner and Bell 264. See E. arvense.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, and Kennedy 18. See E. arvense.

1990 Hunn 353. Sehaptin. The infusion of the plant was drunk for venereal disease and as a diuretic.

1990 Turner, et. al., 86.

            The Thompson people used this mostly for medicine. The boiled spring shoots made a tea to drink when someone had trouble urinating.

            A root decoction was drunk to shorten labor or after childbirth to bring the placenta quickly and “to clean you out”. Usually these are gathered and dried in short segments and kept until the baby’s birth is imminent. A “handful”, about three centimeters in diameter, is put in the teapot, boiling water poured over, and left to steep for five to ten minutes. The pregnant woman drinks this over several days. This medicine is also made from E. arvense.

            The liquid from the spring plants was used as drops to relieve sore eyes. This liquid is stored in the refrigerator until needed. The stem decoction is also used as a wash for sore and itchy eyes or for possible blindness, as from cataracts.

            The anthropologist Teit writes of seeing the ash from burned horsetail stems used as a powder to sprinkle on burns which were then covered with a bandage. The powder could also be mixed with animal fats, then rubbed on the burn as an ointment.

H43 Equisetum laevigatum A. Br.

(Smooth Scouring-rush)

1957 Train 46. E. kansanum Schaffn. The whole plant, boiled for thirty seconds, was used to drink as a ‘tea’ for kidney trouble.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, and Kennedy 18. See E. arvense.

H43 Equisetum telmateia Ehrh.

(Giant horsetail)

1945 Gunther 15. Quileute swimmers rub themselves with this to feel strong.

            The Quinault pressed juice from the root, mixed it with human milk or made a tea from the root to use to wash sore eyes.

            The Makah ate the fertile tips raw to slow a case of diarrhea.

1973 Turner and Bell 264. See E. arvense.

H43 Equisetum variegatum Schleich.

(Northern Scouring-rush)

1902 Chestnut 305. “In their practice of medicine the Indian doctors take grim delight in throwing the hollow stems into the fire so that they may explode, and, by virtue of their continued crackling, stimulate their patients to renewed vigor.”

            One woman informed Chestnut that the plant was a good eye medicine.

1983 Turner, et. al., 60. Horsetails are considered a good springtime food.

            Horsetails were used as a water source if the only other water source was polluted or contaminated by cedar trees growing in or nearby which could cause diarrhea. Perhaps this is related to the Makah’s (see Gunther above) use of this plant for diarrhea.

H46 Polypodiaceae

(Common Fern Family)

Fern (species and genus unknown)

1923 Smith 48. The root decoction was drunk for worms.

“Gitksan: The large, round, green root-stock, but not the rootlets, mashed with bark of balsam fir (Abies grandis) and devil’s club (Fatsia horrida Sm. B. and H.), a little gum of scrub pine (Pinus contorta) or tideland spruce (Picea sitchensis), and root of skunk cabbage (Lysichitum kamtschatcense), warmed a little, and applied to a boil or ulcer, which it brought to a head. Also used for rheumatism, and as a plaster on the chest for hemorrhage of the lungs.”

H48 Adiantum pedatum L.

(Maiden-hair fern)

1945 Gunther 14. The Makah, Lummi, and Skokomish took the water from the soaked leaves and used it as a hair rinse.

            The Quinault burned the leaf for an ash to rub on the hair to make it long, black and shiny.

            The Makah chewed the leaves to relieve a sore chest, stomach problems and to stop internal bleeding during wars (Densmore, 313 & 316).

1971 Turner and Bell 68. Here are references to Gunther, Densmore and Drucker.

1982 Turner and Efrat 29. The dried fronds were burned, the ashes mixed with another unknown ingredient and steeped in water. The tea “was drunk for shortness of breath and to give strength and endurance, especially for dancers in winter. Hesquiat dancers would take nothing but this medicine on days when they were dancing; it made them ‘light on their feet’ and helped them continue dancing for a long time without tiring”. The green fronds were also chewed for the same effect.

1983 Turner, et. al., 61. John Thomas tells how the dancers would rub their feet with this fern to make them light-footed. Fenn, 1979 wrote that Nootka athletes and dancers also considered this a “good medicine” plant. Densmore, 1939, wrote that the fronds were chewed by the Makah for stomach trouble, for a sore chest, and for internal hemorrhaging.

H49 Athyrium filix-femina (L.) Roth

(Lady-fern)

1928 Smith 48. Asplenium cyclosorum Rupr. “Little roots cleaned off, from five to ten centres, mixed at times with roots or branches of the currant (Ribes laxiflorum Pursh.) boiled strongly, but for a short time only, and the decoction used as a wash for sore eyes.”

1945 Gunther 14. The Cowlitz used a tea internally made from the rhizomes to relieve body pain.

            The Makah pounded and boiled four fern stems, for a woman to eat to ease labor. “‘ In preparing this medicine the fronds of the fern were stripped from the stalk with a downward motion toward the roots and a prayer was offered that the child would ‘slip’ as easily as the fronds of the fern were removed.’” (Densmore, 317)

1973 Turner 196. See Smith 1928.

1982 Turner and Efrat 29. “Like bracken fiddleheads, they were eaten as a medicine for internal ailments.”

1990 Turner, et. al., 88. This fern, simmered for a tea, to drink for “vomiting blood (?ulcer)”.

H49 Blechnum spicant (L.) Roth.

(Deer-fern)

1930 Boas 216. Struthiopteris spicant L. The Kwakiutl took licorice fern, hemlock roots, juniper bush and deer fern for a remedy to stop stomach pains and diarrhea. The drink was made by first washing the ferns, then all four ingredients were boiled together.

1966 Boas 381. Struthiopteris spicant L. The Kwakiutl boiled deer-fern with spruce (Picea sitchensis), gooseberry (Ribes sp.), hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and blackberry roots (Rubus ursinus), for a drink to use instead of water for diarrhea. Another remedy was to hold the deer-fern roots, without any chewing, in the mouth, then to swallow the juice for diarrhea.

1945 Gunther 15. Struthiopteris spicant. The Quileute made a tea from the leaves to drink for general feelings of sickness.

            Fresh leaves were put directly on paralyzed body parts.

            The young raw leaves were chewed for colic.

            The Makah ate the green leaves for lung problems or stomach distress (Densmore, p. 313).

1973 Turner and Bell 264. The Kwakiutl took the inner part of the rhizome for diarrhea. See Boas, 1930 above.

1982 Turner and Efrat 29. After watching deer rub their sore stubs after their antlers break off, the Hesquiats used the fronds similarly for skin sores.

            One woman with internal cancer ate the fronds as medicine and lived a long life.

1983 Turner, et. al., 63. According to Fenn, 1979, the Nootka used these fronds as a tonic or all-around good medicine.

            Ida Jones of the Nitinaht said that deer-fern fronds and salal leaves were eaten to relieve hunger or to suppress hunger pains when someone was lost in the woods.

H50 Cryptogramma crispa (L.) R. Br.

(Parsley Fern)

1990 Turner, et. al., 88. The Thompson washed the fronds to infuse them for an eyewash or for a tea to drink as a gallstone remedy.

H51 Dryopteris austriaca (Jacq.) Woynar

(Mountain Wood-fern)

1945 Gunther 14. D. dilatata. The Klallam people pounded this root into a pulp which was then put on cuts as a poultice.

            The Snohomish used the soaked leaves for a hair wash.

1982 Turner and Efrat 29. Deer were seen to rub their sore antler stubs on this fern like the deer-fern.

            The Hesquiats used the young fronds in a similar fashion as lady fern and bracken and gave this the same name.

H51 Dryopteris filix-mas (L.) Schott

(Male Fern)

1928 Smith 48. Aspidum spinulosum. Shield fern. The Bella Coola ate this root raw in to “neutralize poisoning from eating several kinds of shell-fish” early in the summer.

1973 Turner 197. In the fall the rhizome has white edible “fingers”. Eaten raw, they are said to be “good for losing weight”.

H52 Polypodium glycyrrhiza DC. Eat.

(Licorice-fern)

1928 Smith 48. P. vulgare. Parasitic Sword Fern. Bella Coola. “Roots-sometimes mixed with leaves of the red cedar (Thuja plicata) or with other medicinal roots which the informant had forgotten-boiled, and the warm decoction taken internally for pains in the stomach, but not for vomiting or diarrhea. Neither an emetic nor a purgative.

            Roots chewed for swollen sore throat.”

1945 Gunther 13. P. vulgare. This was used by the native peoples of Western Washington as a demulcent, laxative, expectorant in cases of chronic catarrh and asthma, and as a purgative. For some time licorice fern was in the United States Dispensatory list, and the European settlers used it as taught to them by the native healers.

            To relieve a cough, the Makah would roast, peel, and chew the rhizome, then swallow the juice.

            The Cowlitz crushed the rhizome, mixed it with young fir needles, then boiled this for a tea to drink for a case of the measles.

            The Quinault considered the ones that grow on alder moss as the best quality. They baked the root or used it raw as a cough medicine.

1971 Turner and Bell 69. “The Saanich and Cowichan chewed the rhizomes as a medicine for stomach trouble, sore throat, or a cold (Paul, 1968; Harry, 1969).

1973 Turner and Bell 264. People sucked on the root, then swallowed the juice for sore throats or to just flavor the mouth (MS; DM).

1982 Turner and Efrat 30. The spring rhizomes were collected for food and a mouth sweetener. George Ignace says, “Just pick it up, chew it, and suck it and swallow the juice” for relief of a cough or sore throat.

1983 Turner, et. al., 64. The licorice tasting rhizomes are chewed and the juice swallowed for a sore chest and a cough. Ida Jones comments that these taste sour, so you drink water to chase the juice. Many native groups in the Northwest have used these for colds, coughs and sore throats, but all others consulted just chew the sweet rhizomes for their pleasant taste.

1990 Turner, et. al., 91. The Thompson people chew the rhizomes or make a tea from them for a cold or sore throat. The rhizomes were also used for sore gums.

H53 Polystichum munitum (Kaulf.) Presl.

(Sword Fern)

1945 Gunther 13. The curled, young leaves were chewed raw, then swallowed for sore throats and tonsillitis. This was also done to aid childbirth. The same was used as a poultice held on with salmonberry bark, for sores and boils. The liquid from boiled rhizomes was made into a wash for sores or dandruff in hair.

            Spore sacs, scraped from the leaves, were sprinkled onto a burn.

1971 Turner and Bell 69. “The Songish dried spores from the backs of the leaves and used the fine powder to cure sores and boils (Boas, 1890).”

1982 Turner and Efrat 32. For uterine cancer, the fiddleheads were chewed as medicine.

H54 Pteridium aquilinum (L.) Kuhn

(Bracken fern)

1902 Chestnut 304. Bracken was used as a diuretic for horses, “but its action is violent and dangerous”.

1971 Turner and Bell 69. The leaves were part of Songish girls’ puberty rituals.

1982 Turner and Efrat 32. The early spring fiddleheads were used for “troubles with one’s insides” such as uterine cancer, as were fiddleheads from lady fern, spiny wood fern, or sword fern.

1983 Turner, et. al., 63. Here is cited a study about naturally occurring substances that can induce tumors, noting that this plant is considered carcinogenic and should not be used as a food source until further research is carried out. However it is possible that the long heat processing, such as with pit cooking, to prepare these as food or medicine may have changed the damaging chemicals.

1990 Turner, et. al., 90. The Thompson would pound fresh rhizomes, then place them on broken bones as a poultice. Annie York says, “It sets the bone in its place”. Julie Kilroy adds that is was the fronds, not the rhizomes used and that they were put on sores.

            “... If you break your bone, you boil that (fronds) and stick it in there, put the leaves in there, and you get better ... When there’s sores ... (you) smash it really hard ... with a rock, those green leaves, pine pitch, and melt that (pitch), and you strain it clean and you mix it in there ... and you rub that (on) if you get sore. That’s what one lady tell us ... (You leave it on) one day, maybe every day, do that and it’ll get better.”

            Mabel Joe also tells about making a poultice or a wash from the leaves that was put on a broken bone area. “It gets better fast.” She continues saying that the rhizome “tea” was drunk for internal injuries or for vomiting blood. This was made by mashing the leaves with a rock, then steeping these in boiling water for a short time. This tea was also drunk for a lagging appetite or for a cold.

            An arthritis sufferer lay on a steam-pit made with red-hot rocks, then covered with bracken leaves, with a little water poured on top.

Wood Sap

1928 Smith 66-67. “The sap that oozes from any kind of wood when burning considered a good remedy for sores.”

            Charcoal was rubbed under the eyes to help prevent snowblindness.

            The Bella Coola took burning twigs of very dry hemlock to sear the skin for all kinds of internal ailments (moxibustion).

            “Northern Carrier: Hot coals used as a blister (sic) for a bad pain in the leg before applying an ointment.”

H56 Taxaceae

(Yew Family)

H57 Taxus brevifolia Nutt.

(Pacific Yew)

1928 Smith 48. “Branches with leaves boiled, and the decoction taken internally for the lungs. Neither a purgative nor an emetic.”

1945 Gunther 16. Yew wood was made into bows and other things which required great strength. It was associated medicinally with imparting strength. A young man might rub himself with smooth yew wood to increase his strength.

            The branches were rubbed on the body when bathing. Soaking crushed leaves in water, which was then made into bath water for the old and also for the very young to increase their perspiration and to make for an improved health condition. Another tribe, takes the same preparation and boils it to make a drink for “any internal injury or pain”.

            The Cowlitz moisten leaves of yew, grind them, and apply the pulp to wounds.

            Also the chewed leaves were spit onto wounds, which is said to sting, but is supposed to heal.

            The Quinault are also the only group making use of the (peeled, dried and boiled) bark as a tea to drink for lung medicine.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 35. A sunburn ointment was made by scraping yew-wood and mixing this with Vaseline.

1988 Turner 184-186. Yew was used in cleansing and for scent. It is also connected with death and bereavement.

            A bark decoction was drunk as a tonic and general medicine.

            The fleshy part around the seed was eaten. The wood was used in making bows, snowshoes, wedges, spears, mat needles, handles and digging sticks.

1990 Turner, et. al., 112. Thompson. Annie York tells how "bereaved people (such as widows and orphans) scrubbed themselves with yew branches rather than hemlock to purify themselves. The bark, collected in the morning from the sunrise side of the tree, was boiled and the decoction drunk for 'any illness'."

H57 CUPRESSACEAE

(Cypress Family)

H57 Calocedrus decurrens (Torr.) Florin.

(Incense-cedar)

1902 Chestnut 306. Libocedrus decurrens. Torr. Boiled leaves are "occasionally used to relieve stomach troubles".

1957 Train 67. Libocedrus decurrens. Torr. Only one report of this plant was "secured ... and that of a rather dubious efficacy. Some families" make a boiled twig and bark tea to protect against infection from any contagious disease like smallpox.

H58 Chamaecyparis nootkatensis (Don) Spach

(Yellow Alaska Cedar)

1928 Smith 49. "Bella Coola: A little soft bark used to cover poultices of false bugbane (Trautvetteria grandis Nutt.) and of tall buttercup (Ranunculus acris L.)"

1930 Boas 217. Kwakiutl. For his wife's swollen kidneys, a husband went to the spruce patch to dig the roots and pray for a cure. He shaves off the root bark until "he has enough", then put the "acrid roots" in a basket. (It is unclear whether this is the root bark or the roots.) Then he prays with a yellow cedar tree and picks some of the soft ends of the leaves. At home, he boils this for some time, then strains it, gives his wife one cup to drink, four times in the day.

1948 McIlwraith Volume I 732. The Bella Coola had no medicine for insanity, but used the following one from the Kwakiutl. First a piece of skin from the left side of the base of the neck was cut from a recently buried corpse. It was left for a day in a small stream, then steeped another day in a cup filled with water. The patient drank this liquid, which immediately recovered his sanity. Next he drank water which had yellow cedar needles boiled in them to strengthen him and to prevent a relapse. Now that the patient is cured, he must observe continence for one year or he will die.

1966 Boas 382. For “painful place” rub on chewed Yellow cedar and Lonicera involucrata leaves.

            p. 384. An old yellow cedar blanket was burned and the ashes were rubbed on a child to make the body strong (if the other children of a woman had died when they were young).

1973 Turner and Bell 266. Kwakiutl. "An extract from the tips of four yellow cedar branches was drunk for general illness, or used to bathe sores and swellings (Boas, 1930; Willey, 1969). The sharp boughs were rubbed on sores and swellings until the skin was broken, then medicine such as tobacco (Nicotiana sp.) or yarrow (Achillea millefolium) was rubbed on (Brown, 1969).”

            “Yellow cedar was also used to make sweat baths for people with arthritis and rheumatism. It was usually mixed with some other medicinal plant, such as yarrow, black twinberry (Lonicera involucrata), or Conioselinum pacificum (Boas, 1966; Roberts, 1969). If a person was very ill, an old cedar bark blanket was burned and the ashes were mixed with catfish oil and rubbed on the patient. Then a mat was put over him and struck with four burning spruce boughs. The yellow cedar gave him strength and he recovered (Boas, 1966)." See Boas, 1930.

1973 Turner 197. See McIlwraith, 1948.

H58 Juniperus sp.

(Juniper)

1928 Smith 49. "Gitksan: Entire plant, including roots and berries, boiled for a day, and the decoction, when cool, taken internally for many ailments, including hemorrhage and kidney trouble. A purgative and diuretic."

1959 Murphy 43. For rheumatism "burn fire down to coals. Put on green juniper boughs, and have patient lie down on them and steam, drinking meanwhile tea from leaves."

H58 Juniperus communis L.

(Creeping Juniper)

1909 Teit 618. This decoction was drunk at child-birth, juniper alone or with "Sage-bush". The bruised twigs, then boiled for the liquid which was used as an eye wash by hunters to make them "clear-sighted".             This was also drunk in sweat-houses and used as a purification wash in combination with "sage" and "soapberry".

1928 Smith 49. "Bella Coola: Roots, leaves, branches, and bark boiled, and the decoction taken internally as often as desired for many ailments, including a cough from the lungs, and pain in the stomach. Neither a purgative nor an emetic.”

            “Southern Carrier: Branches boiled, and the vapour inhaled for headache and pain in the chest.”

            “Northern Carrier: Tips boiled, and the decoction taken internally as a purgative, also for a cough."

1929 Steedman 474. Thompson. A twig infusion was made to wash sore eyes. A small branch “tea” was drunk as a stomach tonic.

            505. The stem with the whorls of small leaves was boiled to make a purifying body wash for hunters, warriors, and widowers.

1957 Train 61. If boiled, young growth, is said to make a reddish liquid. This is drunk in small doses as a blood tonic. Boiled twig tea, cooled is drunk for venereal disease.

            One family, dries the fruit, to have seeds (after removing the fleshy part) to eat every day for a blood tonic, or especially for lumbago.

1966 Boas 381. Kwakiutl. This plant was boiled all day, until the gum "is given off". This liquid was drunk to relieve shortness of breath and to purify the blood.

1973 Turner 197. Addie Saunders adds to Smith's comments above, that a root, leaf, branch and bark tea was also used for ulcers and heartburn.

1973 Turner and Bell 266. Kwakiutl. See 1930 Boas at H49 Blechnum sp. for a recipe to cure diarrhea. See also Boas, 1966.

1975 Palmer 50. The whole stem was put into boiling water for a short time to make a drink for any sickness or even when healthy. See Teit 1905. Ray (1942-215, 220, 222) writes that juniper was burned when a corpse couldn't be buried right away, and to exorcise the house and clothes of the deceased and to relieve the dreams of the dead.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 19. Nitnaht. Steep needles and bark in hot water for a drink for colds and consumption or as a tonic before taking a sweatbath. The boiled branches made a wash to protect a person from witchcraft.

1988 Turner 185. A branch decoction was drunk as tonic and general medicine for colds, coughs, influenza, digestion, lung, kidney and urinary ailments. The branch infusion (or decoction) was taken for arthritis, rheumatism, muscular aches, paralysis, the circulatory system, to lose weight or lower blood pressure. It was also a wash for eyes and used in puberty rites.

1990 Hunn 354. Sehaptin. The infusion of an unspecified part was a wash for a baby to counter magic or to drink for fever.

1990 Turner, et. al., 92. Thompson. Mary Anderson, in 1980, reports here about how to make a tea to “make your insides nice”. Take 3 branches about 10 cm. long and steep.

            Annie York describes using this tea for "leakage of the heart". Others tell of using this for aching muscles, kidney problems, a cold, and as a physic. (See Teit 1905.) This tea was also drunk for high blood pressure. Hilda Austin tells of a friend with hypertension who drunk this for two weeks and brought the blood pressure back to normal.

             Janet Charters tells of her mother saying that this plant makes good tuberculosis medicine if the branches are cut from a plant growing alone, "even if it's just a little bush".

H58 Juniperus communis var. depressa

(Common Juniper)

1958 Jacobs 63-4. USP 1820-1870 inc. NF 1910-date. Euro-american use. "It is efficacious in gonorrhea, gleet, leucohorroea, skin diseases, scorbutic diseases, dropsy, and kidney complaints. The fruit is used as a diuretic, emmenagogue, carminative, stimulant, anthelmintic, and for snake bites. The Cree Indians used the plant to make a poultice for wounds. An oil is obtained from the fruit."

H58 Juniperus occidentalis Hook.

(Western Juniper)

1957 Train 62-64. (Editor's note: J. utahensis does not occur in the area covered by this text, but according to Train, is the most common species in Nevada. Train writes that the Indians in Nevada used this species interchangeably with J. occidentalis.)

            Shoshones and Paiutes used this for cold and cough remedies. The boiled, young tip growth was used as tea. Sometimes ripe (with one report of immature) berries were added to this remedy or taken alone for colds and coughs. One report suggested inhaling smoke from leaves or branches for headaches and colds. Sometimes the smoke from burned branches or berries was a fumigant after an illness.

            Recipes for mixtures with the following plants are listed under their names: Artemisia tridentata, Salvia carnosa (S. dorrii?), and Wyethia mollis.

            Young twig-end “tea” was drunk as blood tonic and general tonic. It was taken hot for hemorrhages, for fever reduction, stomach-aches, kidney trouble, influenza (see Lomatium dissectum) and for smallpox and kidney problems (mixed with Dalea polyadenia , which is common in Nevada, but not found in the Pacific Northwest).

            A strong solution of boiled twigs made an "esteemed ... antiseptic wash for measles, smallpox ... or sores. Heated twigs were rubbed on measles eruptions to relieve discomfort. Mashed young twigs were used as poultices on burns or swellings. Young boiled twigs were made into poultices for rheumatism and the cooled liquid made into a wash.

            Decoctions from either twigs or resin from Pinus monophylla or Abies concolor mixed with cracked juniper berries, were drunk for venereal disease.

            The powdered twig ends steeped in cold water, then strained for a drink to "rid the alimentary tract of worms".

            Or the powdered twigs, heated over a fire, was "bound in a hot cloth against the neck for a sore throat. The material was reheated from time to time". Leaves, pounded, moistened, were tied in a cloth with a hot rock and held on the jaw for toothache or swollen and sore gums.

            Sweat baths were used for rheumatism and "heavy colds". A fire was made in a specially excavated depression until the ground was heated, then the fire and coals were raked out and the depression was lined with young juniper twigs on which the patient laid, covered with blankets to induce sweating.

            One informant mentioned using the roots, dried, finely shaved, then boiled for a tea for venereal disease.

            Boiled berry tea was used as a diuretic for kidney ailments. One recipe was to boil nine berries in one quart of water. One-half cupfuls were taken three to four times a day. One recipe called for green berries and another called for the addition of Pinus monophylla. Berry tea was also used for a blood tonic, taken as daily half-cupful doses for a week. One cupful was taken for heart trouble. Menstrual cramps were treated with less than half-cupful doses. Berries boiled in a little water, the tea drunk several times during the day was used for rheumatism. It was also made into an external hot pack.

H58 Juniperus scopulorum Sarg.

(Rocky Mountain Juniper)

1929 Steedman 465. Thompson. A few fresh berries were sometimes eaten for their diuretic properties and as a bladder medicine. Berries from other juniper species were used in a similar fashion by the European settlers.

            512. A strong berry decoction was used as a tick wash for horses.

1958 Jacobs 64. J. virginiana. USP 1820-1870 inc. Euro-american use. "The leaves are stimulant, diuretic, and emmenagogue. It has been used in kidney complaints, suppression of the urine, and obstructed menstruation. The excrescense caused in the fungus growth are said to be anthelmintic. The volatile oil is anthelmintic and bactericidal. ...A cerate has been employed to keep up the irritation and discharge of blisters. "

1945 Gunther 21. The liquid from boiled roots made a foot bath for rheumatism. The aroma from boiling leaves made a scent to disinfect a house. The liquid made a disinfecting bath for any sick person as well as a drink for a general tonic.

1957 Train 62. One informant tells of boiling twig ends for a tea to drink in "dosage of less than half-cup daily over a long period for venereal disease".

1971 Turner and Bell 70. The branches were hung in houses to keep away germs during epidemics (Paul, 1968).

1975 Palmer 50. This was used like J. communis for tea and in the sweathouse, as well as to keep earwigs and bedbugs out of the house.

            To steam a man to help cure the “flu”, his wife covered him with canvas, then made steam to inhale by dropping hot rocks into a juniper brew until it boiled. "If you take juniper once every week or two you will never get sick."

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 20. For a poison to coagulate the blood of people and deer, arrows or bullets were soaked in water with pounded branches and berries.

            Sap was boiled, from five bark strips cut from the bottom of the tree (two by four inches or five by ten centimeters) in one or two quarts of water, to make a tea for flu and colds. (ML uses this).as an emergency medicine drink for internal hemorrhaging, about seven centimeters or three inches of a branch tip was dipped in boiling water.

            Mashed, dampened branches were used as a poultice on sores and arthritic joints (Watkins p 32; Ray p 221).

            Berries were considered poisonous. Though a few steeped in hot water made a drink, used only with great caution in the sweathouse. Berries were also thought good for tuberculosis (Lerman; Ray p 221)

"It's the meanest medicine" for "combating evil spirits associated with death". (There are more details included.)

1988 Turner 185.

            A decoction of the branches was made for a general medicine or tonic. It was also used as a drink or wash for arthritis, rheumatism, muscular aches and paralysis. It was a drink (decoction or infusion) for the digestive tract or stomach and the "black measles" and chickenpox. The fruit was used as an insecticide.

            Adding the fruit to the branch tea and it was used for colds, coughs, influenza, and respiratory ailments as well as for the heart, blood pressure and circulatory system.

            The fruit was eaten or a branch decoction was used for kidney or urinary ailments; as a wash for wounds, sores, burns.

            It was used in puberty rites, during death or bereavement, and as a charm for luck, wealth, and love.

1990 Hunn 354. Also Juniperus occidentalis. Sehaptin. The berries were boiled and drunk for colds and as a laxative. The leaves and inner bark were boiled and the infusion drunk for coughs and fevers. An unspecified portion was boiled and drunk to produce sweat before sleeping for colds, sore throats, flu, venereal disease and for the kidneys.

1990 Turner, et. al., 93. Thompson. Teit, in 1900, wrote that the small fresh berries were eaten for kidney ailments. Annie York agrees with Steedman that the berries were used either fresh or dried when used for a diuretic medicine for the bladder. The bough decoction was drunk for "black measles" and the chicken pox.

            Mabel Joe, one time had backaches from kidney ailments. She drank this tea and her backaches went away. She tells of using the branch and berry tea for colds, tuberculosis, heart problems, or before childbirth to help the muscles relax. For the latter, it was drunk daily before a birth in the morning.

            Esther John told of drinking the bough tea or using it as a wash for hives and sores. Apparently this was also used for tuberculosis in the same manner as Juniperus communis. A decoction of the berries was used as a wash for bites, stings, rheumatism, and stomach problems. Mabel Joe smashed boughs with those of Douglas fir, boiled them and washed her children in the brew daily when they had "seven-year itch". This worked, but more slowly then modern medicine.

             Branches were boiled or burned in a house as a "disinfectant" or "air freshener", after a sickness or death in the household. It was also used to keep mosquitoes out of a house if you had no screens. Sometimes branches were put on stove tops if children had colds, but too much smoke would cause eye irritation.

            There is further information about using this as a fumigant during times of death and disease. They were perhaps used for protection from spirits and disease because of their strong smells or because of their prickly boughs, similar to the use of rose or devil's club.

H59 Thuja plicata Donn.

(Western Red Cedar)

1928 Smith 49. "Bella Coola: Very soft bark used to bind up wounds, and to cover poultices of false bugbane (Trautvetteria grandis Nutt.) and of tall buttercup (Ranunculus acris L.). Leaves, sometimes with the gum-coated cones, boiled, and the hot decoction taken internally for pain in the stomach. Neither an emetic nor a purgative. Leaves powdered by pounding, mixed with a little cold water and taken internally for pain in the stomach, also externally for coughs and internal pains, as heart trouble, rheumatism, swollen neck, and pain in the stomach."

1930 Boas 226-227; 232-233. Kwakiutl. For pain in the small of the back, a man's younger brother goes to collect hellebore (Veratrum viride) and red cedar leaves for a poultice. The cedar leaves are to soothe the stinging from the hellebore (Veratrum viride).

            Four pieces of the inner bark, each four fingers wide, were made into part of a bandage to protect and heal a carbuncle.

1929 Steedman 461. Thompson. A boiled twig and small branch, drink, mixed with Cornus pubescens (C. sericea according to Turner), tea was drunk postpartum.

1945 Gunther 20. For sore throat or toothache the buds were chewed. A bud decoction made a gargle. The leaf ends, sometimes mixed with roots, were used cough and cold medicine preparation. Cedar limbs were boiled for tuberculosis and for a wash for venereal disease sores. The inner bark of a small tree was chewed or decocted for use as an emmenagogue. This was not used when a pregnancy was suspected, but just for delayed menstruation.

            A tea of bark and twigs was used for kidney trouble.

            Cedar seeds with branch tips were infused for a drink to bring down fever.

            Cedar limbs were widely used for every day and in ceremonial bathing.

            Limbs were considered good luck.

            Cedar is strongly associated with death. Cedar tips were chewed to stay nausea when burying a dead person. Singed cedar limbs were swept on the walls of a house after the dead person was taken away. Other tribes used the same branch “brooms” "to scare the ghost after death".

1971 Turner and Bell 72. Boughs were used to rub the skin often to the point of bleeding in spiritual cleansing rituals (described in detail here).

1973 Turner 197. Margaret Siwalace tells of using the branch tips, heated, pounded and mixed with eulachon grease, to make a double vest poultice for the upper body for bronchitis and as described under Smith above.

1973 Turner and Bell 266-268. See also Boas, 1930 above.

            Shredded cedar bark was used to cauterize sores and swellings (Boas, 1966).

            For sties, small sticks of cedar were broken in front of the eye one after the other. When the sticks were thrown away, the sty would disappear. It was believed that sties were caused by a person stepping on a brittle cedar stick when he was young (Boas, 1966).

            Cedar has many mythological and spiritual connections.

            "A person peeling cedar bark would offer a prayer to the cedar tree: 'Look at me, friend! I come to ask for your dress, for you have come to take pity on us...for there is nothing for which you cannot be used....Take care, friend! Keep sickness away from me.. O friend!'"

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 23. Cedar boughs, Douglas-fir boughs, rose branches and often stinging nettle were boiled together for a skin and hair wash used during a sweatbath. It has a lovely smell and could also be drunk as a tonic. Sometimes a weak tea just from cedar branches (small bundles of equal size) was drunk. Boughs were used to scrub the skin during a sweat, but it was necessary to not rub to hard so as not to cause skin infections.

            A decoction of the boughs made a good hair wash to eliminate dandruff and kill "germs" of the scalp. For arthritis and rheumatism a soak in the same solution was made to ease pain in the joints. A very weak solution was taken internally, because "it was toxic in large doses".

1982 Turner and Efrat 36. Cedar bark, beaten into a soft sponge was rubbed on toddler boys with a cold octopus broth to make them strong. Girls were taught to rub the same broth on their hands to strengthen them.

1983 Turner et. al., 70. Red Cedar was not much used medicinally by the Nitinaht It was thought to cause diarrhea by drinking the water, if a tree grew too near the water source.

1988 Turner 185-186. A decoction of branch was drunk postnatal by women.

            A decoction of fruit was taken for leprosy.

            It is thought if you sleep under Thuja it can cause vivid dreams. It has magical and mythical connections.

1990 Hunn 357. Sehaptin. An infusion was drunk for hemorrhage, eyes, belly ache and used as a hair tonic. The roots and bark were used in cough syrup.

1990 Turner, et. al., 96. Thompson. Women sometimes drank a cedar tea postpartum. The old or green cones were boiled for a drink for leprosy.

            A cedar root formed like a "doll" gave good luck to the person finding it. A person sleeping under a cedar or a spruce tree would probably have vivid dreams.

H59 PINACEAE

(Pine Family)

H60 Abies sp.

(Fir)

1928 Smith 51. "Northern Carrier: Bark boiled in water and the decoction taken internally as a purgative. Gum used as an ointment on wounds, and especially on burns.” ...

            “Gitksan: Juicy inner bark, scraped from the trunk of the tree, after removal of the outer bark, taken internally for constipation.

            Gun from the bark blisters taken internally as a purgative and diuretic for 'consumption', gonorrhea, and many other serious ailments. Applied externally to cuts and sores, especially the sores of gonorrhea.

            The young cones, obtainable in August, sliced across, mashed, and used for the same purposes as the gum from the bark blisters."

1929 Steedman 462. Sweet branch. Thompson. The young shoots, and sometimes the bark, were boiled for a tea to drink for stomach troubles and as a tonic.

1988 Turner 185-186. This was a tonic or general medicine. The decoction of the branch, bark, inner bark or pitch (eaten) was specifically taken for colds, coughs, influenza, respiratory ailments and the health of the digestive tract.

            The pitch was made into a poultice or wash for wounds, sores, and burns. The decoction of bark, gum or sapwood was taken for gonorrhea. The gum or decoction of bark was a useful eyewash for sore eyes or cataracts.

1990 Turner, et. al., 98. Also Abies grandis, A. amabilis, or A. lasiocarpa. Thompson. Annie York here how a young girl rub her face and clothes with boughs before sleeping in the mountains so that bears would not bother her.

            Teit writes that babies were washed in a "'balsam' or spruce bough" decoction for strength. The liquid pitch in Abies sp. tree blisters are great medicine (See 1990, Turner, A. lasiocarpa) in particular for cuts and sores.

            The pitch mixed with roots from Ranunculus spp. made a poultice for tuberculosis. If "too much 'balsam' pitch were taken, it could make one stout". The pitch was used internally for any "bad disease", or for a cold or tuberculosis. ( See Steedman under A. grandis.)

1990 Hunn 351. Sehaptin. Fir was used for chest colds.

H60 Abies amabilis (Dougl.) Forbes

(Pacific Silver Fir)

1973 Turner 197. See Smith under Abies grandis. Hitchcock notes the A. amabilis was named A. grandis var. densifolia before.

H60 Abies concolor (Gord. & Glend.) Lindl.

(White Fir)

1957 Train 19. A little (teaspoonful) of soft bark resin was eaten every day to "cure" tuberculosis. A boiled bark or needle tea was drunk instead of water for tuberculosis or other lung ailments.

            Warmed pitch, alone or mixed with Psathyrotes ramosissima, was used as a poultice for sores, boils or cuts.

             See Juniperus utahensis for a venereal disease treatment.

            See J. occidentalis

1957 Train 113. Slight bactericidal action.

1957 Train 118. There was a slight rise in rabbit blood pressure for a short time with a small dose. The Minimum Lethal Dose. is 0.58. With a large dose there was a slight blood pressure rise is rabbit blood pressure with a sharp fall. The rise was less with a large dose. Death was by failure of circulation.

H60 Abies grandis (Dougl.) Lindl.

(Grand Fir)

1928 Smith 50. White or balsam fir. "Bella Coola: Bark of root or of stem boiled, and the decoction taken internally every day for tuberculosis and stomach trouble. Said to have cured many cases of tuberculosis.

            Gum from bark blisters found on young trees warmed, mixed with mountain goat tallow, and taken internally for sore throat; also drawn on a hair across sore eyes.

            Young, green leaves baked, mixed with fruit of skunk cabbage (Lysichitum kamtschatcense) gathered in October, or the buds gathered in April, split, dried on top of the house, roasted, mixed with a small quantity of slightly roasted roots of the cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum), one or two cupfuls of the gummy buds of the black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), and four or five cupfuls of fresh eulachon oil, allowed to stand one day, then boiled and kept in a box for a hair perfume. Kitimat Indians said to be more expert in its preparation.”

1929 Steedman 462. Thompson. The boiled bark and gum tea was drunk as a physic. A very strong decoction of bark and gum (or sap, sap wood and gum) was drunk as a gonorrhea remedy. A bark decoction was used as a sore eye wash or a little gum was put in the corners of sore eyes each night.

            509. Ritual details are included here that tell of a young girl using these branches as she prays for strength, energy and protection.

1945 Gunther 19. Needles "were boiled as a tea for colds."

1973 Turner and Bell 268. At 75 years, Wilson (1969) made a tea from the bark as a tonic every day and had done so for as long as he could remember, saying that it kept him young and strong. He looked about 50 and his youngest child was 10 years old. To make the tea, bring the green bark (or dried bark, broken into little pieces) to a boil, then allow it to stand overnight.

            “The pitch collected from the small blisters on the young trees was used in many ways. It was mixed with water, boiled, and taken as a tonic and laxative, or for coughs and tuberculosis. It was mixed with oulachen grease and eaten or rubbed on sores and boils. Sometimes for tuberculosis it was rubbed on a person's chest and back and left until it dropped off, or 'until all the medicine was gone'. It was also heated, mixed with catfish oil, and taken twice a day for constipation (Boas, 1966).

             Sometimes the root was held in the mouth to cure gum boils and canker sores (op. cit.)."

            Grand fir was also used for purification and shamanistic rites.

1971 Turner and Bell 69-70. A bark infusion was used for "falling hair and dandruff." The bark was pounded off the roots, then steeped in warm water, which was massaged into the scalp.

1975 Palmer 50. A tea made from boiled bark was drunk for tuberculosis and other sicknesses. Soft pitch was put on sores and changed daily. A hard, reddish pitch found under the limbs was chewed to clean the teeth. Gum from the inner bark can be chewed or made into a  poultice to apply with spruce (Picea glauca) on sores.

            European-heritage pharmacist's used to buy balsam pitch.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 23. See A. lasiocarpa.

            This was used in the same way as subalpine fir, but had much larger pitch blisters.

1982 Turner and Efrat 41. Considered almost the same as Abies amabilis, the liquid from the pitch blisters mixed with oil, was rubbed on hair for its lovely smell as well as to keep hair from falling out.

1983 Turner et. al., 71. Grand fir was used interchangeably with Abies amabilis. The branches were used to freshen the air particularly if someone had been sick, either by hanging them in the house or by burning them like incense for the smoke. If you breathed the smoke it was thought that you would not get sick.

            Bark crushed with Alnus rubra and Tsuga heterophylla bark and boiled as a tea was drunk for internal injuries. More detail under Alnus.

1990 Turner, et. al., 97. Thompson. See Steedman above.

1990 Hunn 351. Sehaptin. The inner bark was used for colds and fever.

H61 Abies lasiocarpa (Hook.) Nutt.

(Subalpine fir)

1959 Murphy 37. "Tea from needles and resinous blisters" was drunk for colds.

1971 Turner and Bell 72. A mixture of deer tallow and hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) sap was rubbed on the face to prevent sunburn.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 23-25. This is an important medicine (see also A. grandis), especially the clear pitch from the blisters in the bark. It is collected with a spoon, dipper or hollow, leg bone, tool that is inserted in a blister which then squirts out. It is stored in a container until needed. If it gets dirty, melt and strain it.

            For consumption, ten drops, once in early morning and with a second dose taken at bedtime. At noon, the patient would vomit, with at least one or two little worms (considered the cause of consumption) included, and defecate. Then as the patient felt better, they would eat boiled, dried salmon and a little soup.

            In small doses, the pitch was taken for ulcers (WA), and appendicitis (Lerman 1952-4), for general weakness and appetite loss.

            "Mixed with deer marrow it was applied externally each evening to cure a goiter. It was left on the skin overnight."

            "If one had a 'bad stomach', with a loss of appetite and loss of weight, he would take a 'tea' made by boiling three or four pieces of 'balsam' bark in water." A dose of three cups per day for four days was taken. This caused a general sick feeling with achy bones, vomiting and bowel evacuation, "but after four days the patient would wake up feeling better and with a good appetite".

            Bark tea was drunk for a bad cough.

            One informant chewed the branch tips for a remedy for an allergy caused by his contact with water hemlock (Cicuta douglasii).

            Dried, powdered bark was rubbed on the neck and underarms like talcum powder for cleansing and nice scent. The dried, powdered needles was mixed with marrow for a nice scented hair dressing and to keep one from loosing hair .

            Boughs were sometimes used "as a bedding base in the sweathouse". A bathwater made with the boughs was used "to make a baby short and strong" (Lerman).

            The strong smelling branches were used to revive someone from a faint. (Spier 1938:166).

            ST considers the "balsam tree" the king of the evergreens.

1988 Turner 185. Pitch was eaten as a tonic or general medicine.

1990 Turner, et. al., 98. A. amabilis, A. grandis, and A. lasiocarpa were probably used more or less interchangeably. Thompson. Though one woman mentioned that branches only from a tree growing just on the highest peaks were made into a tea used "for any illness".

            This inner bark was eaten by Mabel Joe for "shadow on the chest" or early tuberculosis. Her mother brought it for her, after she took it, it made her feel sick. "I was aching all over, just as if I had the flu, but after that I got better, ... went back for the X-ray and (had) no shadow" on the lung.

            The boiled branch liquid made a skin wash used by "old people" for the good scent. This liquid was also mixed with liquid from boiled sweet grass and some Okanagan broad-leaf plant and then with deer fat for a hair perfume.

Louie Phillips tells of using the liquid pitch from the blisters on this tree and mixing it with Vaseline to put on sores. Animal fats were probably used in earlier times before Vaseline.

            He also tells of boiling the bark to make a tea to drink over a period of time to aid in healing sprains and bruises or for a cough. He used this when he had a broken sternum. Others tell of smearing the pitch on cuts, covering this with a bandage "to draw the 'poison' out".

1990 Hunn 351. Sehaptin.

            It was used in the sweat lodge for purification. It was boiled then used as a wash or drink to make hair grow.

H61 Larix occidentalis Nutt.

(Western Larch or Tamarack)

1929 Steedman 475. Thompson.

            The decoction of this was used as a wash or bath to make babies strong and healthy.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 25-26. Sap is available and eaten any time of year. The pitch powdered and mixed with grease was considered good for a girl's complexion.

            Some type of liquid pitch from certain larch trees was used as medicine, but no details in Lerman’s writings. (The Okanagan-Colville believe that in the summer the blood is thin, and in winter it is thick which helps one stand the cold. In the spring and fall the blood changes and to help with this change various herbs are used.) For instance the tops (about one meter) of a young tree was broken off, this all was boiled, for a strong tea to be drunk by a whole family in March and November. ST considered it a good blood purifier any time of the year, and especially good when mixed with Oregon grape.

            The boiled tops were made into an antiseptic wash for cuts and sores (LP) and soaking "arthritic limbs and severe skin sores " (Ed Monaghan). EM said that for severe arthritis and cancer, a tea, reheated each use, was drunk several times per day for a prolonged time period. NF had also heard of this for arthritis. Coyote gave the tree top its excellent medicinal properties (ST).

1988 Turner 185. Decoction of the branch or bark was taken internally as a tonic or general medicine. The bark or pitch decoction or the pure pitch was put directly on the chest for colds, coughs, influenza and respiratory ailments. Either the pitch or the decoction of the branch was used as a wash or poultice for wounds, sores, and burns.

            Decoction of the branch was taken postnatal for contraceptive action. This was also used as a wash for babies and young children or as a drink or a wash for breast cancer. The decoction of the branch or the bark was taken for the stomach and digestive tract.

1990 Turner, et. al., 99. Thompson. Mabel Joe confirms Steedman above and adds that sometimes Ribes cereum was added to the wash to make babies strong and healthy. This was also used on bullet or other wounds.

            Annie York tells of using the pitch for a chest poultice or for tuberculosis or other lung problems. The bark or pitch was brewed into a drink (also for dry cough). She also mentioned using the pitch mixed with tallow for sores. Mabel Joe adds that the pitch could be mixed with fat or Vaseline to put on cuts or burns. York continues saying that it is a "valuable bone-setter, for broken bones that would not heal".

            Hilda Austin tells of a young woman with breast cancer. The doctor said that the cancer had spread everywhere and that he could do no more for her. She was loosing weight and knew she would soon die. Her father-in-law collected larch in the mountains for her. He "chopped two potato-sacksful of the tops, and small pieces of the branches in another sack, and chopped ones in another sack. ..." At home he "boiled it, boiled the chopped ones- that's for to drink. He boils the other one (the tops) that's really strong. That's to wash it. The lady, she uses that the whole year and she got better. And she walks around just as good as before ... she's betting better, getting fat". The doctor wondered how she had recovered and she said "Indian medicine".

            Others tell of using a boiled branch (cut the bark and branches off the tree and chop into small pieces with an ax) drink this for any illness. This "makes you eat, makes you fat" (Julia Kilroy).

            Mabel Joe tells of using the above for ulcers or as a contraceptive, drunk postpartum (see Amelanchier alnifolia).

1990 Hunn 354. Sehaptin. An infusion of the young shoots was drunk for tuberculosis and laryngitis.

H61 Picea sp.

(Spruce)

1948 McIlwraith Vol. I 728. A lengthy sweat bath is described here using many herbs, including spruce sapling bark. Please see H92 McIlwraith below for details.

1988 Turner 185-186. Pitch was eaten for colds, coughs, influenza or respiratory ailments. Pitch or ashes of shoots was made into a poultice or wash for wounds, sores, or burns. Decoction of the leaves or pitch was drunk or just the pitch was eaten for cancer. Some taboos or superstitions are attached to this tree.

1990 Hunn 351. Sehaptin. Spruce was used for chest colds.

H61 Picea engelmannii Parry

(Engelmann Spruce)

1929 Steedman 475. Thompson. The ashes from the young shoots are mixed with melted deer's fat and used as a general salve or ointment.

            For purification, the boiled branch tips and needles were made into a wash for hunters, warriors, and young men at puberty.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 27. Bark steeped in hot water made a drink for tuberculosis and respiratory ailments. Also bark boiled in water made a drink for a spring tonic. (Watkins, 1979; 31)

1988 Turner 185-186. Spruce was used as a scent, cleanser or deodorant. A branch decoction was drunk as a tonic or general medicine. For blindness, eyes were rubbed by hands that had been first rubbed on the branches. Decoction of the bark was used in an uncertain manner medicinally. The tree was connected to death and bereavement in ritual or spiritual use.

1990 Turner, et. al., 100-101. Thompson. See P. sitchensis.

1990 Hunn 356. Sehaptin. Spruce was used in a remedy for a high fever.

H62 Picea glauca (Moench) Voss

(White spruce)

1975 Palmer 51. This was used in the same manner as Abies grandis and perhaps as P. engelmannii.

H62 Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.

(Sitka Spruce)

1928 Smith 51-52. "Bella Coola: Tips of small, but not of large, spruces mixed with blue currant (Ribes bracteosum Dougl.), young juneberry (Amelanchier florida Lindl.), and crushed branches (leaves and stems) of garden snowberry (Symphoricarpos racemosa Michs.), boiled and taken internally for gonorrhea. Sap from the peeled trunk taken in doses of from half a cup to a cupful as a laxative from May to August. (51) Ripe cones boiled, and the decoction taken internally for a pain. Neither an emetic nor a laxative.

            A bed consisting of a sack of ripe cones, placed on top of hot stones, used by rheumatics. Cones also burned to fumigate rheumatics. A piece of the bark 5 feet long by 2 feet wide used as a mat in a hot bath for rheumatism. Many stones were heated, a little sand strewn over them, the bark spread above with the inside uppermost, and the patient, naked, lay on the bark, covering himself with one or more blankets. A similar bed, but with the bark covered with a few leaves of devil's club (Fatsia horrida), used for chronic backache.

            Gum applied to small cuts, broken skin, and suppurating sores. Branches used to whip a burned arm or leg until the blood came. Gum boiled and taken internally while hot as a diuretic for gonorrhea."

            See also scrub pine and fern. "The buds or new shoots, with the gum sometimes found around the outside when they are about half an inch long, boiled in water, and the decoction taken internally for tuberculosis.”

            “S. Carrier: New shoots and bark of small branches boiled for about two hours, and the decoction taken internally, one or two cupfuls at a time, for pain in the stomach, but not for vomiting, diarrhea, or constipation. Said to effect a cure in one day, and preferred to the decoction made of scrub pine (p. 49) or aspen (p54). Gum from new shoots and small branches, scraped out with a little stick, placed in the eyes for snow-blindness.”

            “Sikani: Inside bark scraped and chewed for a cough. Needles chewed, and the saliva applied to external sores. Gum, obtained by splitting the tops, applied with a stick to white spots on the eye. The 'flower' boiled and the decoction taken internally for pain in the chest.

            Gitksan: Gum extracted from the wood by boiling in water, added to eulachon oil, salmon oil, bear grease, ground-hog fat, lard, etc., and taken internally before meals for consumption.

Twigs bearing both leaves and bark boiled with entire roots of soopolallie (S. canadensis Nutt.); one cupful of the strong decoction taken internally three times a day for rheumatism."

1966 Boas 386. "For headache, the head is struck with four tips of spruce trees until it bleeds, then the head is washed with the same mixture."

1945 Gunther 17. The pitch made a chewing gum. The bark burned with wild cherry (Prunus emarginata) was made into a powdered charcoal to put on a newborn's navel after the cord comes off. A tea of young inner bark was drunk by the Quinault for "a tickling throat" or the bark was chewed and the saliva swallowed for the same thing.

            The gum was used on wounds. The boughs were rubbed on the body during bathing. Densmore writes of a decoction to drink to "take out bad blood" and to bathe in to strengthen the body. "Spruce is not mentioned in the National Formulary, Bastedo, Norton, or U.S. Dispensatory."

1973 Turner and Bell 269. "Spruce root bark was used to heal kidney swellings (see under Chamaecyparis). Spruce roots were boiled with other plants for a diarrhea medicine (see under Blechnum). An extract from spruce buds was taken for coughs and colds (Willey, 1969). The pitch was put on a clean cloth and used as a poultice for boils, swellings, cuts, and abrasions. For a cough it was taken with oulachen grease every morning (Brown, 1969; Cranmer, 1969; Johnson, 1969). It was used as an adhesive for cedar bark wound dressings (King, 1972)."

            Spruce tips were sacred to the Kwakiutl. Shamans and initiates used them to make their beds and houses. Branches were placed around sick people's houses with the idea that the sharp spruce needles would keep away anything unclean from entering the house. (Boas, 1966) Spruce tips were "rubbed on canoes to purify them, and to cleanse a person contaminated (sic) with menstrual blood (Boas, 1935) "Menstrual blood was thought to be a 'profane' substance. It could take the supernatural powers away from shamans, dancers, and initiates and make them ordinary again (Boas, 1966)."

1982 Turner and Efrat 44. Dried pitch in chunks was placed in a small twig basket which strained out twigs and other debris as the pitch was melted over a fire. A small container caught the cleaned and melted pitch underneath. This, mixed with deer oil, was used as a salve for sores and sunburn.

            A painful but apparently effective skin scrub of branches was used for aches and pains. The skin was rubbed until it bled, but usually cured the original ache. Spruce boughs were also used in a sweeping motion around a potlatch ceremony building of a girl's puberty rite to drive away evil influences.

1983 Turner et. al., 72. "Pitch was inserted into the holes of newly pierced ears of a girl, until the lobes healed (Thomas and Hess, 1978)." Densmore writes that the Makah used a spruce tea as a bath to strengthen the body and drank the tea "to clear the blood".

1990 Turner, et. al., 100. Thompson. The ashes from burned cones were boiled in water to make a tea which was drunk for dysentery. Annie York continued saying that it is also possible to chew the cones and swallow the juice for the same thing.

            Hilda Austin said that spruce like other trees was used for medicine. EJ and MJ tell of making an inner bark tea for some illness. Bough decoctions were used "for any kind of illness". The boughs were dried and stored for use as needed. B. Antoine thought that the tops of any evergreen made good medicine.             Prickly plants were considered protective and were used to protect against "evil or 'witchcraft'". Various uses are described.

            A. York tells how a person with poor or no eyesight would rub the needles then rub their eyes to make their vision better. She tells how the "silver spruce" was used as cancer medicine. "If that wouldn't cure, you know you will never get better". The gum from the blisters and the needles were "brewed" and the liquid drunk or the pitch was drunk from a spoon directly from the pitch blisters. York had done the latter as a cough remedy. She tells of putting the pitch directly on eczema to "kill it". She also thought that sleeping under a tree would bring vivid dreams and Mabel Joe thought that it brought good luck. This above may apply to Picea engelmannii.

            See Steedman under H61 Picea engelmannii.

H63 Pinus albicaulis Engelm

(White bark Pine)

1990 Turner, et. al., 101. Thompson. These seeds are a food. Hilda Austin mentions that if many were eaten raw, they cause constipation, so they are usually roasted.

H62 Pinus contorta Dougl.

(Lodgepole, Jack or Shore Pine)

1928 Smith 49. "Bella Coola: Gum applied to cuts. Gum chewed and applied to broken skin. Gum at the ends of branches, collected in November, December, and January, boiled and the decoction taken internally for 'consumption'. Gum-like that of tideland spruce and western hemlock (both page 51)-mixed with the baked stem and leaves, or the dried and pulverized bulb, of false hellebore (Veratrum viride) (page 53), and applied as a poultice (sometimes spread on red cedar bark) to the chest for heart trouble, and to the arms for rheumatism. Burned the skin within two or three days, but was sometimes left on as long as two weeks.(p. 49).

            Southern Carrier: New shoots boiled, and the decoction taken internally for pain in the stomach. Resembled the decoction made from the bark of the aspen (p. 54), or from the new shoots and bark of the tideland spruce (p. 51), but the last-mentioned considered most efficacious.

Northern Carrier: Needle tips mixed with large needle tips of the 'British Columbia pine' (Pinus sp.?), the inside bark of the wild gooseberry (Ribes sp. ?), the bark of the red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera Michx.), the inside pulp of raspberry canes (Rubus sp.), stems of the 'bearberry' (?black twin-berry, Lonicera involucrata Banks?), and the inner bark of the wild rose (Rosa sp.), placed in a vessel holding four gallons of water, boiled down to a thick decoction, strained, and bottled. About two tablespoonfuls taken, at sunrise and sunset, for constitutional weakness or paralysis, or if the body were covered with sores. Gum obtained by heating a green piece of pine (sp.?) painted on the eye to remove white scum and to cure snow-blindness.

            Sikani: Pitch chewed and the saliva swallowed for a cough.

            Gitksan: Inner bark (scraped from the trunk with a bone scraper after the outer bark had been removed) eaten both for food and as a blood purifier. Purged the body in from half an hour to an hour. Shavings of the yellow resinous timber found after removal of the bark boiled, the decoction placed in oil, and taken internally as a purgative and diuretic for many serious ailments, including gonorrhea. Said to produce beneficial results in 'consumption'. Young needles plucked in June and eaten as a purgative and diuretic." Used with a fern see above. (50)

1929 Steedman 461, 504. Thompson. The exudate from the cones and bark was used for many things. It was often used by the European settlers in the 1920's. The pitch was boiled, then mixed with melted deer's fat and rubbed on the body for rheumatic and other pains. By melting it with the "best of animal fats", the pitch was made into an ointment used to rub on the body for relief of all aches and for sore muscles and joints. "The ointment is also applied to the throat, sides of the neck, and sometimes to the back and chest to relieve congestion in those parts. Coughs, colds, and sore throats are also treated with this ointment. It is often applied after sweat bathing or in front of a hot fire by being rubbed into the body vigorously with the hand."

1945 Gunther 17. "The pitch is put on an open sore. The buds are chewed for a sore throat."

1971 Turner and Bell 70. The pitch, "mixed with deer tallow, (was) applied to the skin for psoriasis and other ailments. According to Bancroft (1895), an infusion of young pine cones 'prevented too rapid family increase'"(contraception).

1973 Turner and Bell 269. "The buds and pitch were boiled and taken for stomach ache or a cough (Cranmer, 1969; Willey, 1969). Red pine bark was never burned in the house where a sick person was; the smoke would make his nose dry out (Boas, 1966)"

1975 Palmer 51.

            The inner bark was made into tea for coughs. For tuberculosis it is good to drink pine (Pinus contorta) medicine all the time in place of water. Horizontal cuts in the bark are made at four feet and eight feet from the ground. Then one inch by two foot strips are made bottom up vertical on the tree like skinning an animal. The "fat" is skinned from the tree from the bottom up.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 28-32.

            The cambium layer in lodgepole pine is ready to scrape for food and other uses two weeks later than the ponderosa pine. In June, "the cambium sticks to the bark and can be scraped off in long strips with a deer-rib scraper, after the bark is removed from the tree." Any earlier it has "to be scraped off the wood" When Astragalus miser blooms, it is time for the cambium harvest. "Some people use this plant to wipe the juice from the bark before the cambium is scraped off ." When the pollen ripens in the cones is also another indication that it is time to harvest the cambium.

            While it is sweet and juicy, ponderosa pine cambium is preferred. It is also good for stomach troubles, like ulcers. For this it can be scraped, then dried and kept to eat any time of year. Boiled young tree tops are made into a tonic tea for springtime aches and pains (Watkins, 31).

            Young tree bark sap was boiled for ten minutes and the tea drunk in place of water for an ulcer cure. Watkins (p. 32) writes about how the pitch was made into a salve by mixing it with deer or bear fat for sores and aching muscles.

            "The pitch of one type of pine was sucked, and the juice swallowed, for a sore throat (ML)." A strong needle tea was drunk for abortion (Spier 1938:166). Recipes for charms are included here which were thought to bring and/or stop rain or to summon wind (Ray p. 214).

1983 Turner et. al., 73. John Thomas tells how the pitch was collected directly from a cut in the tree trunk. The pitch was sometimes mixed into a deer tallow for a salve as described under Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa. Pinus monticola was used in a similar fashion.

1988 Turner 185-6. This was used for a deodorant or incense.

            The infusion of the branch was drunk for colds, coughs, influenza or respiratory ailments.

            The pitch was used on the chest or on cuts, sores, burns and a babies' umbilical cord.

1990 Turner, et. al., 103. Thompson. Annie York remembers the nice smell of pitch mixed with bear fat, rose petals and red ochre which was used as a face cream or for blemishes and for a newborn's skin. Teit (1900, p. 389) writes that this boiled gum, mixed with deer fat, was used for pains. Louie Phillips tells how the "pitch was used as a sort of 'cold cream' with disinfectant properties". Annie York keeps dried boughs handy for use as needed. She makes a tea from these (a branch about 10 cm. long) to drink for influenza and as a beverage. (salve)

1990 Hunn 356. Sehaptin. The infusion was drunk as a spring tonic. The pitch was put on boils or swellings.

H63 Pinus lambertiana Dougl.

(Sugar Pine)

1902 Chestnut 306-307. If a tree is partially burned, at the base exudes a substance that is like sugar which acts as a cathartic.

H63 Pinus monticola Dougl. ex D. Don

(Western White Pine)

1945 Gunther 17. The boiled bark tea was drunk for stomach disorders and blood purification, tuberculosis, cuts and sores. The Skagit thought if the above was "unboiled it would draw a sore together too quickly". Young pine shoots boiled were made into a rheumatism bath. This was used recently (in 1945), and successfully, by Gunther's informant. The pitch was used as chewing gum "for pleasure and for coughs".

1973 Turner and Bell 270. Like lodgepole pitch, this also was used "for stomach aches, coughs, and sores (Cranmer, 1969; Johnson, 1969; Willey, 1966). The gum was chewed by women to give them fertility. It was thought to have the power to make girls pregnant, even without sexual intercourse (Boas, 1935)."

1983 Turner et. al., 73. See under Pinus contorta.

1988 Turner 185-6. Infusion of branch was drunk as a tonic or general medicine.

1990 Turner, et. al., 103. Thompson. Julia Kilroy tells that the "old people" drank a tea from the branches of white pine or "any kind of trees" for any illness.

 H62 Pinus ponderosa Dougl.

(Ponderosa Pine)

1902 Chestnut 307. "The gummy exudation is used for chewing, and the pitch for its valuable medicinal and adhesive qualities."

1929 Steedman 466. Thompson. The gum, oozing out along the stem was boiled, mixed with melted bear's fat for an ointment to use on sores and inflamed eyes (p. 508).

            A young girl would stick four pine needle into her armpits until they bleed while she prayed that her armpits and all her skin would always smell sweet. Frequently a girl would use a decoction of pine tops for a face and head wash as a charm to give her smooth, fair skin and thick hair.

            For sores on horses or dogs, a salve was made from the gum. The best gum is white, and was melted and mixed with an equal quantity of good quality animal fat, preferably deer fat. These are slowly cooked and stirred until mixed. While still hot this was poured on sores, especially old running ones, after they were washed with soap and warm water. This was repeated for several days until the sore was partly healed, then other more ordinary ointments and powders were used to complete the healing of the sore. The horse was allowed to rest and kept in a green pasture if possible until healing was well under way.

1975 Palmer 52. Branches were used to hit the body when the sweathouse was the hottest or upon leaving the sweathouse. To remove odor from underarms, the end of any branch was hit lightly under the arms with the bunch of needles.

            Adeline's mother bathed Adeline's first baby, who almost died, in water made from ponderosa pine. While making this medicine, she prayed "God, you made everything. If this will help the child, your will be done." (Dawson, G. 1891. Notes on the Shuswap people of B.C. Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, Section II, Part 1, p. 3-44.)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 29-34. 32. Children would chew on the green buds, but never a pregnant woman for it might cause a miscarriage. " (contraception?)

            The hard, red pitch was used as chewing gum (WA; NF; CP; Elmendorf 1935-36)"

            Pine was considered versatile for medicine. A poultice of the soft, white pitch was used on boils to "suck out the poison" (HR; LA). Mixed with grease, it was rubbed on a baby's skin for a its complexion and for the smell that "made babies sleep soundly" (Lerman 1952-54).

            The new growth at the tops of young trees, after the needles were stripped, was boiled for a "pitchy drink for those with high fever or internal hemorrhaging" (Lerman; ST; WA) This was drunk all the time like water until the bleeding stopped. One time ST's grandfather hemorrhaged internally all summer. His wife made this for him. "The pitch rose to the top and settled around the edge of the pot like grease." He drank this for about a month, the next spring he was "back to normal"

            An eyewash recipe is to steep two or three dried spring buds in boiling water. This was put in the eyes in the evening and "was said to draw out the poison in sore or infected eyes".

            To start the flow of a new mother's milk after childbirth, she drank a hot meat or fowl broth and warmed pine needles were laid on her breasts (Ray 1932: 127).

            Needles were spread on the sweathouse floor to help ward off witchcraft. The lower end of a cone was set on fire. To stop rain the cones were thrown towards rain clouds.

1988 Turner 185-6. Pine was used for its scent. The pitch was used as a poultice or wash for cuts, sores or burns and as a poultice for arthritis, rheumatism, aches, and paralysis.

            The gum mixed with fat was used as an eye ointment for humans and horses. The pitch was used as a sleep-inducing salve for children. The tree was used somehow in puberty rites.

1990 Turner, et. al., 106. Thompson.

            Hilda Austin tells here how her mother used the pitch. Some pitch was white, "like lard", while some lumps were reddish. "She took the white, if we had a real sore that never gets better, she takes that and puts it on a little buckskin and puts it on your sore, especially if we had a boil. That sucks the thing out of there. If you have a sore, never gets better-red and hard-use that. Take any kind of lard, deer fat, take that and mix it with pitch (gum), boils it together, strains it, puts in a little jar, and use on a sore. Fore chapped skin (also). Smells good, too. For earache, just warm that and put it in your ear. Your earache gets better right away." If you use this like "baby oil" on a baby's skin "he sleeps all the time-that's what the old people say-just like aspirin."

            Bernadette Antoine tells here of her grandmother's recipe. "First she heated it (the pitch) in a dish until liquid, then strained it through a cloth into a jar. She applied it to boils or cuts, as well as aching backs, joints, and limbs. It was left on three or four days: 'It sure gets itchy after...' After a while, the pitch comes away with the bandage; 'Then it's supposed to work.' If it still sticks to the skin, it isn't ready to remove."

            Hilda Austin here denies the use of pine branches for scrubbing by girls as described extensively by Teit and Steedman.

1990 Hunn 356. Sehaptin. The pitch or young shoots were used for boils or flu.

H63 Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco

(Douglas Fir)

1902 Chestnut 309. Pseudotsuga mucronata. The leaves are used... in the sweat bath cure for rheumatism". they are thought to be better than wormwood (Artemisia sp.) by a Little Lake medicine woman.

            A decoction of spring buds was used for some venereal diseases.

1909 Teit 618. A bundle of the twigs was used to rub the body during a sweat bath. It was then discarded by throwing it to the west. A decoction from the tree was used for purification in the sweat-houses.

1928 Smith 51. P. taxifolia Britt. "Bella Coola: Gum boiled and taken internally, while warm, as a diuretic for gonorrhea. Gum, spread on red cedar bark, applied to cuts. (One informant said that although gum of scrub pine, hemlock, and tideland spruce, were good, Douglas fir gum made cuts worse.)”

            “Gum mixed with dogfish (shark) oil or, if that were not available, eulachon oil, taken, two spoonfuls at a time, with warm water, as an emetic and purgative for colds, rheumatism, gonorrhea, constipation, intestinal pains, and diarrhea."

1929 Steedman 474-475, 494. P. mucronata. Thompson. A drink from the boiled young shoots preferably, but sometimes the twigs, was drunk for its diuretic and tonic properties.

            The ashes from the young shoots were mixed with good quality melted deer or other animal fat for use as an all-purpose ointment or salve.

            The ashes from the bough tips were used for rheumatism or "moving pains in the bones" as a kind of moxibustion. The burned or half-burned ashes or coals are placed on the affected part, lighted, and allowed to burn slowly into the flesh. Sometimes friends held patients during this difficult treatment. Any body part that has pain was treated similarly in turn. Any tree part was made into charcoal and sometimes used for moxibustion like this.

            The small branches of the young trees or best, the older tree tips, were heated over a fire, then laid on any body part with rheumatic pains, muscle cramps, or similar ailments. Extra branches were kept by the fire ready to replace the cooling ones. It was also popular to do this for colic or bowel and stomach cramps. Very hot branches are first wrapped, sometimes in a thin sack, before laying on the body.

1966 Boas 381. Young fir bark was burned, then powdered and mixed with water. The water was first prepared by rubbing Cicuta douglasii on a stone in it. This solution was drunk for diarrhea. It works according to Boas’ informants because when fir bark falls, it dries up everything.

1945 Gunther 19. The pitch was used on sores. It (or the needles with cedar leaves) was also boiled and the tea drunk as a cold medicine.

            Fir needle tea was used a "general tonic". The needles were heated and applied to a painful chest. "The bark is boiled by the Skagit as an antiseptic-the informant telling of this remedy was using it on a badly infected finger. The bark of young roots is boiled by the Swinomish and drunk as tea for colds, and babies are washed in it. The bud tips are also picked by them and chewed for sore throat or sores in the mouth."

1973 Turner and Bell 270. "When a man had a carbuncle, his younger brother mixed Douglas Fir bark with perch oil and eagle down on a skunk cabbage leaf (L. americanum) and applied it to the sore. It was held on with a cedar bark pad for three days, and then the carbuncle was cut open (Boas, 1930). The pitch was also a good medicine (Cranmer, 1969)."

1975 Palmer 52. Here are quotes from Teit.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 34-35. Interior variety P. menziesii. (Mirb.) Franco var. glauca

            A hair tonic was made of dried , powdered, needles with bone marrow (Lehrman 1952-54).

Fir boughs were used on the floor of the sweathouse, as a body scrub during a sweatbath for the nice smell and for bereaved persons in purification rituals. Boiled fir boughs made a wash water for people in the sweathouse. They were combined with cedar, rose bundles and a little nettle for a wash water for skin and hair or as a drink during the sweat.

            "A medicine for high fever and anaemia, accompanied by loss of weight, energy, and appetite, was made by boiling the first-year growth shoots." The tea was drunk four to five times per day. The action was as an emetic. Boiled bark also was used as medicine (Lerman 1952-54).

            Once, "ML chewed the branch tips as a remedy for an allergy caused by his touching water hemlock (Cicuta douglasii)."

1988 Turner 185-186.

            This was used as a cleansing agent or for its scent.

            The boughs, pitch or ashes of the shoots were used as a poultice or wash for cuts, sores or burns. Infusion of the branch was drunk for a kidney or urinary ailment. A hot branch (sweat bath?) was made into a poultice for the stomach or digestive tract.

Branches were put into shoes for athlete's foot. It was used in birth rituals for twins, puberty rites, times of death and bereavement,  Shaman's ceremonies, training, witchcraft, protection against witchcraft, and hunting and fishing rituals, as well as a charm for luck, wealth, love, and as a magical object in myths.

1990 Turner, et. al., 109-110. Thompson.

            Mabel Joe tells that the top of a young tree was chewed, mostly young people at adolescence as a mouthwash to freshen the breath.

            Turner writes here of a number of purification rites with fir branches for hunters, young girls, following the death of a spouse, or in a sweatlodge.

            Needles in first flush were put into footwear to prevent athlete’s foot and sweating. "It's kind of pitchy ... it's medicating your foot while you're moving around".

            Annie York used the pitch on injured and dislocated bones and B. Antoine on cuts, boils and skin ailments. A. York used it on her injured back and hip after a bus accident. She covered it with gauze and cotton blankets. "This helped her to sleep; she slept for two days afterwards".

            She also writes of boiling the leader of a young fir for a drink for colds. See Steedman above.

1990 Hunn 351; 356. Sehaptin. Douglas fir was used for chest colds. The bark, burned on skin, was used for rheumatism and for warts.

H63 Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.

(Western Hemlock)

1928 Smith 51.

            "Bella Coola: Leaves chewed and applied to burns. See also scrub pine...  Gum warmed and applied to cuts. Not boiled for a diuretic for gonorrhea. Burning twigs applied to the skin for various internal ailments." (moxibustion)

1966 Boas 383-386.

            Hemlock needles chewed and used as a poultice on burns which is covered by shredded yellow cedar bark. It is all held in place by a yellow cedar bark bandage and left on until the pain stops. All women keep a little yellow cedar bark for bandage material.

            Hemlock gum is "smeared on the upper eyelids" for eye inflammation. Burning Hemlock branch tips were used to cauterize warts or moles.

1945 Gunther 18.

            Pitch was put on the face as a paint and to prevent chapping and sunburn. It was put in hair to "remove vermin". It can also be mixed with powdered bark mixed with oil for the same thing (Densmore). The pitch with bark makes a dark brown face paint or is put on a child's chest to cure a cold.

            Hemlock bark, boiled was used as a laxative, a sore skin or eye wash. The Cowlitz and Skagit say the "bark tea will also stop a hemorrhage." or chew the bark to and apply it to a wound to stop bleeding. The Klallam add licorice fern to the same preparation to stop bleeding. "

            The Chehalis pound the bark and boil it in order to use the tea for syphilis and tuberculosis." The Skagit use it for sore throat. "The bark of the roots is dried, rubbed on a stone with saliva, and applied to the face. (Swan)

            According to Densmore, a growth of bark forms on the wound of the tree; this is dipped in water, rubbed on a rock, and used as a poultice for an obstinate sore. The young tips of the hemlock are chewed and spit on a swelling to reduce it, by the Quileute. These same tips the Klallam boil, and drink the infusion to cure tuberculosis and to stimulate appetite." Reagan talks of using hemlock or mountain hemlock bark for an emetic.

1948 McIlwraith Volume I 728.

            For stomach and other internal pains, hemlock gum and a bone taken from a human skeleton near the place of pain, were put on the skin nearest the pain. This medicine was owned by several families and was only used by them. Volume I 734.

            "Hemlock gum" was applied to a fracture and to hold the splints in place. The gum will penetrate the wound, if there is one, and is thought to speed up the knitting of the bones. Vol. I 737-739.

            Hemlock gum was used during a lengthy cure for a "malady caused by a sorcerer" (described here in detail).

1973 Turner 198. See McIlwraith, 1948.

1973 Turner and Bell 270-1. Scraped bark, mashed with a stone, then diluted with water in a clam shell was used externally on sores or burns for women.(Boas, 1930)

            "Boughs from young hemlocks growing on stumps were soaked in warm water” were used as an eye wash (Brown, 1969).

            A medicine made from hemlock bark was taken for diarrhea (see Juniperus sp.)."

            Hemlock was used for spiritual and cleansing ceremonies and thought to be supernatural. These authors describe several such uses.

1975 Palmer 53. The bark was peeled from the north side of a tree, mixed with balsam bark and boiled for a drink that is good for tuberculosis.

1982 Turner and Efrat 45-46.

            "Fur-seal hunters smeared hemlock gum mixed with deer grease on their faces to prevent their skin from cracking and peeling in the sun. This mixture is also good for healing sores on the face.

            Pitch from the outside of a crevice was chewed like gum, and bark from the inside of a crevice was boiled or steeped in hot water and the solution ... drunk for tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, phlebitis and other types of illness. It could be taken alone, but was best when mixed with a solution of red alder bark (Alnus rubra). It is said to taste terrible at first, but becomes sweet after a while.

            When Mike Tom was a small boy, he was sick for over a year. He was taken to hospitals, both locally and at Tacoma. He could not eat anything-he would just vomit. He was very weak, and finally his mother made the hemlock bark medicine, which he started drinking. Soon he got better. In his own words, 'It's a very good medicine'.

            For burns, hemlock needles were chewed and plastered on the skin.

            Girls at puberty were brushed on the arms and face with hemlock boughs, which were bundled together with soft, needled hemlock twigs sticking out from both ends. Before the rubbing ceremony began, the girls would go down to the edge of the water at sunrise and, four separate times, would dip the branches in the water, suck the water from the branches, then blow it out in a fine spray. At the same time, she would dip her face in the water with her eyes open, four times, each time lifting her head and spraying out the water. This was said to prevent eye disease to herself and future children (Alice Paul)." These special hemlock bundles were then placed in a special place.

            Sea-mammal hunters used similar bundles of hemlock and fern, to rub their face and arms before a hunt to keep the animals from noticing the hunters approach.

            A salve of hemlock and deer fat was used to heal the face and arms from the branch rubbing. It was also used for sunburn and sunburn prevention.

1983 Turner et. al., 74. The light, green tips were chewed to keep one from getting too hungry if lost in the woods.

            A tea made of hemlock bark, Abies grandis, and Alnus rubra was drunk for a time in place of other liquids "to heal the body after injuries, such as bruises, broken bones, or internal injuries." For more information see the listing for Alnus rubra.

            Densmore writes that the Makah used a bark tea for internal injury. They powdered the bark and mixed it with oil to get rid of lice in the hair. A poultice, made from the bark that formed over a wounded part of the tree then moistened and rubbed on a rock, was put directly on an unhealing sore.

1988 Turner 185-6. Decoction of branch was drunk for colds, coughs, influenza, or respiratory ailments. This plant was also used in puberty rites.

1990 Turner, et. al., 111.

            These branches were used at puberty rites for purification or as a "disinfectant". Some branches are put in a can with water on the stove and steamed into the room for deodorizing or the branches are rubbed on furniture.

            "The bark was gathered from the sunrise side of a tree and boiled to make a 'tea' for colds and influenza. Hilda Austin tells of using the branches to scrub the skin like a bath brush.

H63 Tsuga mertensiana Carr.

(Mountain Hemlock)

1928 Smith 51. Synonymous with western hemlock.

H64 SAURURACEAE

(Lizard-tail Family)

H64 Anemopsis californica Hook.

(Yerba Mansa)

1957 Train 21. The liquid from the boiled leaves made liquid to bathe muscular pains and sore feet. Roots, mashed and boiled, were used as a poultice on swellings. The water from this brew was used for an antiseptic wash or drunk for stomach-ache or a "tonic for general debility following colds".

            One woman's special preparation consisted of drying the roots, roasting and browning them, then decocting them. The dosage was one-half to a whole cup drunk daily. One report was of using the whole boiled plant for a tea to drink for a gonorrhea treatment.

(There was a moderate bactericidal action and a 5.5% ascorbic acid content  p. 113).

1959 Murphy 38. "Tea from plant for cold."

H65 Populus tremuloides Michx.

(Quaking Aspen)

1928 Smith 54. "Bella Coola: A quantity of bark from the roots boiled, and the decoction taken internally from seven to ten times a day for gonorrhea with hemorrhage from the urethra. A very bitter decoction, said to be a good remedy that stopped the hemorrhage.

            S. Carrier: Bark used instead of tideland spruce bark ... to made a decoction for pain in the stomach. Considered inferior to the spruce bark.                    Sikani: Bark pulverized by pounding, moistened with water, and applied as a paste to wounds. Bark scraped, scrapings steeped in hot water, and the decoction taken internally for worms. Caused a stool immediately.

            Gitksan: Bark of roots chewed or mashed and put on cuts. Bark alone boiled, and the decoction taken internally as a purgative. Not an emetic."

1957 Train 80. All information collected here was for venereal disease treatment. A boiled bark tea was used for a long period of time. Daily dosages varied from half-cupfuls to three half-cupfuls with one recommendation to drink no water during treatment period.

            More information that may apply to this species as well is listed under Populus trichocarpa. Some Shoshone people always select aspen, others, cottonwood, to use and insist that the other plant has no value. Some information was directly related to Populus trichocarpa, so all information is listed there.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 134. A deodorant and anti-perspirant put on underarms and feet, was made from "the white powder from the bark".

            An eye wash for an eye hit with a stick was made with young aspen growth. The inner bark was soaked overnight in cold water, to bathe the eye morning and night over several days. "This eliminates any discoloration"

            A branch tea was used as bath water for people with rheumatism. A tea of branches and rootlets was drunk for indigestion and syphilis (Teit 1930:294)

1990 Turner, et. al., 277-278. With Teit's notes there is some confusion over whether he refers to this plant or to Populus trichocarpa. Teit 1900:389 writes that a ?branch decoction was used as a wash. A stem and branch decoction was drunk for syphilis or used for a sitzbath for several hours for syphilis (p. 368). On p. 389 he writes that the wood ashes alone were rubbed on a running sore or mixed with grease and used on swellings.             Steedman (1930:464) writes on the syphilis medicine: "A number of stems or branches of very young trees are boiled slowly for about forty hours. When (the decoction is) cool, the patient sits in (it)... for several hours at a time and washes his body with it. He also drinks several cupfuls of the fresh decoction each day. This is continued for two to four days... The drinking of the decoction is continued for a much longer period, and if the patient has pains in his bones or any swellings the bathing is continued for a much longer period at intervals. A decoction of the roots is drunk for the same disease and also for another unascertained purpose. The ashes of the wood when mixed with water are used for rubbing on swellings or mixed with grease and used for the same purpose..." P. 278. Steedman continues on p. 504 saying that the bark decoction was "rubbed on the body of adolescents".

            Hilda Austin remembered that at the time of her first menstrual period, her grandmother had her rub the "powdery substance from the bark of aspen into her armpits so that she would not grow underarm hair." Young men also used it or the wood ashes under their arms and on their faces to keep hair from growing.             Annie York said that the decoction from ? was drunk by people suffering "from insanity through excessive drinking". The branch decoction was also used in various protective charms, from "witches" and to protect hunting equipment.

H65 Populus trichocarpa T. & G.

(Black Cottonwood)

1928 Smith 54. "Bella Coola: Leaves, ten to fifteen years old, from the lower layers lying rotting on the ground, boiled, and the decoction used as a bath, the patient sitting in it up to his neck for about two hours to cure pain in the body, not rheumatism. A hot stone added from time to time, and the bath repeated the next day. The buds with their resin boiled and the decoction used as a hair wash. ... Half a cupful of buds, picked some time between December and March, mixed with two roots of cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum), a half cupful of buds of mountain alder (Alnus tenuifolia), and a little water, mashed, and applied warm, but uncooked, as a poultice for pains in the lungs or hips like rheumatism. Said to effect a cure in two days, but harmful if left on longer.

            S. Carrier: Buds with their resin boiled for one or two hours, and the decoction taken internally for coughs and lung affections. Resin from the buds applied to the face as a cosmetic, or, with the addition of oil, to repel mosquitoes, black flies, and gadflies. ...

            N. Carrier: Green roots chewed to a pulp and applied to wounds to stop bleeding. Inside bark boiled and the decoction used as an eye-wash.

            Gitksan: Gummy buds boiled and the resin mixed with bear grease for a hair perfume."

1945 Gunther 26. The tea from the boiled bark was gargled for a sore throat. The bruised leaves were soaked to make an antiseptic for cuts. The buds were used to prepare an eye wash. The gum from burls was used on cuts and wounds. The bark found at the ground level next to the soil was to make a tea for tuberculosis.

1957 Train 81. Some Shoshones insist on using Populus tremuloides, others this species, for venereal disease treatment. Sometimes it was uncertain as to which species data related to, so all is written under this species, though may also apple to Populus tremuloides. The VD treatment preparation listed under Populus tremuloides also was used with cottonwood bark. One report said to add bark of Cercocarpus ledifolius to the brew.

            Boiled roots resulted in a lotion used for headaches. Boiled cottonwood bark with Rosa woodsii and Urtica gracilis roots, was drunk as a tonic and for general debility. One cupful was taken at each meal. One reported Paiute remedy was to cut the tree bark in many places, than collect the exudate, boil and take as a tea for stomach disorders.

1971 Turner and Bell 89. "The Songish pulverized the fruit and mixed it with fish oil for a hair tonic to make the hair grow long (Boas, 1890)."

1973 Turner 210. "A face cream was made from the buds by mixing them with chewed warmed kidney fat of the mountain goat (MS). They were boiled, and the extracted gum was mixed with eulachon grease or sockeye salmon oil, which was rubbed on the scalp for baldness. The buds were mixed with balsam sap ... to make a syrup for tuberculosis, and were boiled in dogfish oil which was taken by the spoonful for sore throats. For whooping-cough, the buds were boiled in water with the fat of any animal, and this mixture was drunk in large quantities (McIlwraith, 1948; MS).

            The buds were mixed with red alder and cow parsnip to make a hair tonic (Smith, 1928). ... for lung and hip pains."

1973 Turner and Bell 292. The buds mixed with ratfish oil were used as a hair tonic and on "women's faces to prevent sunburn".

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 134.

            Ashes used as soap to clean buckskin clothing (Gabriel)1954:27) and hair. (Lerman 1952-4). For gonorrhea, 12 buds soaked in 500 mls. (2 c.) hot or cold water until the liquid turned dark brown. A little of this was drunk in the a.m. and p.m. for six days. Considered very strong, but effective. A dosage rule to make this recipe, is to use one bud per each day it is to be taken.

1982 Turner and Efrat 75. A salve from young buds, mixed with deer fat, and boiled was poured into a bull kelp mold. When it hardened it was removed and stored for use. The elders laughed about this which they called "Indian Noxema".

1983 Turner et. al., 126. The bud resin was a scent melted into a salve made of the fat around the stomach of a deer. The deer lard while melted had cottonwood resin added as scent, them was poured into "dried and cured bull kelp floats ... which were set into the ground." After the fat solidified, the kelp was peeled off and the salve was used as a conditioner or to prevent chapping and drying. Ida Jones still makes this, but adds talcum powder for scent and not cottonwood buds.

            John Thomas and Ida Jones also said that the bud resin was used as a wound and cut salve.

1990 Hunn 356. The buds were used for sores and hands and face. The inner bark was used for fever.

1990 Turner, et. al., 276. Here is a lengthy description of the use of the ashes or inner bark as soap. Annie York tells how the buds were mashed and mixed with pitch for a ringworm poultice. Also that "four strips (each about 2 X 15 cm) of the white inner bark" were simmered for a tea that women drank postpartum. It was also used as a wash for sores and itchy skin.

            Mabel Joe also mentions that the bark decoction was drunk "for your health" after a child was born or if someone like your mother or father or other person very close to you had died.

            Julie Kilroy notes that a mixture of this, with Salix sp. Shepherdia canadensis branches and "'anything, weeds' (such as Erigeron sp.)" were boiled together, then used as a poultice for bone injuries, especially broken bones.

            Mabel Joe also said a bud decoction was drunk for "some kind of disease" but it must be used cautiously. "If you drink too much it'll kill you, because it's kind of oil. It's strong. I think you don't drink lots, just a little bit."

H65 Salix sp.

(Willow)

1928 Smith 54.

            "Sikani: Young willow chewed and the saliva applied to external sores. White powdery tops chewed for a cough."

1945 Gunther 26. Klallam boiled bark to make a tea for sore throat and tuberculosis remedy.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 136. See Salix scouleriana.

1990 Hunn 357.

            The "leaves and new growth" were used for bleeding and "pain of insect bites". The inner bark was used for coughs and colds. the root was considered a hair tonic. Willow was cooked with acorns for diarrhea.

1990 Turner, et. al., 281.

            Annie York "said that branches of 'wild weeping willow' were used as splints for broken limbs, and were rubbed on compound fractures. Also, for broken bones, bark from the large, tree-sized willow (Salix lasiandra) was boiled and the decoction used for bathing the injury. The boiled bark itself could be tied on as a poultice and left for a period of time. 'It heals fast.'" Mabel Joe regretted that no one uses this today.

York recalled that an inner bark decoction of Salix lasiandra was drunk by Stalo Indians for pneumonia and other sicknesses.

Steedman 1930:471 writes that fresh bark from Salix rigida (she says Salix cordata) "was used for bruises and eruptions of the skin." She continues, A decoction of "dwarf willow with yellow catkins" made a hot body wash or for a sitzbath to help reduce pain and swellings. and for a soak for sore or swollen feet.      Esther John said that willow leaves were put in shoes or moccasins for padding, perhaps "to relieve tiredness or soreness of the feet." The bark was chewed for a toothache. A bark decoction was used as a wash for sores.

            Steedman p. 465 mentions that the roots of Salix exigua were used for medicine, but she gives no details.

H66 Salix amygdaloides Anderss.

(Peach-leaf Willow)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 135. Wild weeping. See Salix lasiandra.

H71 Salix bebbiana Sarg.

(Bebb Willow)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 136. See Salix scouleriana.

H67 Salix exigua Nutt.

(Coyote Willow)

1957 Train 89.

            This is the most common Nevada species so was the most frequently used, but there is uncertainty over whether or not other species were used interchangeably.

            A boiled twig sitzbath was used for venereal disease. Remedies for venereal disease varied from community to community. One area used a boiled root and bark tea, in another only root tea was used for venereal disease. Burned stem ash, mixed with water, were made into a "potion" for gonorrhea. Powdered, dried roots were used to dry up syphilitic or 'running' sores. Root tea was used as a "good 'blood purifier'". Boiled root bark tea was used as a "regular spring tonic".

            One Paiute woman tells how her tribe was often sick with the “bloody flux" or dysentery which often brought the victim close to death. She had used this remedy frequently for dysentery and felt it was reliable. Roots were burned to charcoal, then powdered. Roots of another plant, "kun-nid-yuh", unidentified, but said to be a “jointed grass, growing in sand dunes" are mixed with the charcoal and are rolled into pills, one-half inch in diameter. Three of these are taken daily for several days. It was believed that the charcoal lined the gut wall, promoting a soothing and healing action. If 'kun-nid-yuh' is not available, wheat flour is a substitute ingredient. The flour is first browned in a heavy skillet then mixed with the willow root charcoal. Children take one teaspoonful three times a day for several days, then one a day for a week. This is also used for intestinal influenza and for failure to urinate. p. 90.

            Young, upright, stems were burned to make charcoal, then “a half-cupful of the material was taken in water". See Chamaebatiaria millefolium for a lumbago treatment.

            A tea made from “young twigs steeped in a quart of water with a teaspoonful of salt" was drunk as a laxative. The boiled woody part of the stem was considered an "excellent physic". "A root decoction was taken for stomach-aches." Dried, powdered stem bark was used to heal babies navels.  Mashed root made a poultice to put on gums when suffering from a toothache. Boiled leaf and young twig tea was used as a wash to rub “vigorously into the scalp" which was thought to be an effective way to control dandruff.

1990 Hunn 357. Salix exigua. The leaf and shoot were mashed for dandruff and sores.

H70 Salix hookeriana Barratt

(Hooker Willow)

1945 Gunther 27.

            The leaves were used as "an antidote for shell-fish poisoning" by the Makah. The water from soaked roots was used as a hair wash.

H66 Salix lasiandra Benth.

(Pacific Willow)

1928 Smith 53.

            "Bella Coola: Six sticks about a foot long charred, and pulverized on a stone. A teaspoonful of the powder taken in a cupful of cold water for diarrhea. Said to effect a cure in two or three hours. A piece of the inner bark folded once and the folded edge inserted in a knife cut; other edges then separated and flattened down, and the wound covered with eagle down. Thought to make the pus come out. Same process used to heal incisions in the abdomen made by those who tried to cure pain in the stomach."

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 135.

            Boiled branch tips made a strong solution for soaking feet and legs to relieve cramps (ML).

H68 Salix lasiolepis Benth.

(Arrow Willow)

1902 Chestnut 331.

            "A strong decoction is used externally as a wash for the itch; internally it is used as a tea to cure the chills and fever, and in large quantities to cause profuse sweating in almost any disease. The root bark is preferred in the latter case. An infusion of the leaves is said to be useful in checking diarrhea."

H69 Salix piperi Bebb

(Piper's Willow)

1945 Gunther 26.

            The roots were rubbed on an athlete's body when in training.

H70 Salix scouleriana Barratt

(Scouler Willow)

1928 Smith 54.

            "Bella Coola: Folder inner bark used like that of Salix lasiandra Benth. for cuts; but charcoal from the stick not used for diarrhea."

1975 Palmer 68.

            The tough bark strips were poked through Lomatium dissectum roots to hang them for drying.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 136.

            Shredded inner bark, which is like cotton, was used for diapers, as bandages, and sanitary napkins during menstruation and after childbirth. ST said it helped "heal a woman's insides". Boiled branches made a tea used "several months after childbirth to increase the blood flow and hence speed her recovery." This was also good for the baby. (ST; Lerman 1952-54) and drunk for diarrhea (Ray 1932:220). ST said the willow inner bark contains the medicine.

            An inner bark poultice kept damp was put on the skin over a broken bone to heal the break. (HR) Outer bark and sap scraped from young branches, dampened, put on as a “wad" poultice to stop bleeding from an open wound. It took time to work, but would. (ML) The inner bark with "powdered tree fungus" was applied with caution on a serious cut.(AL)

H70 Salix sitchensis Sanson

(Sitka Willow)

1945 Gunther 26-7.

            Boiled bark was used for a tonic.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 136.

            Stalks steeped in hot water was used as a tea for stomach ailments (Martin Louie).

H72 MYRICACEAE

(Sweet gale Family)

H72 Myrica gale L.

(Sweet gale)

1928 Smith 55. "Bella coola: Branches, secured at any time of the year, pounded with their bark, boiled, and the decoction taken internally for gonorrhea. A diuretic. The decoction, which was kept in a box made of red cedar wood with a little cover to keep out the dust, soured in two or three days and became useless."

1973 Turner 206. Dave Moody tells of using this as Smith describes above.

H72 BETULACEAE

(Birch Family)

H72 Alnus sp.

(Alder)

1909 Teit 618. A bunch of alder twigs used for rubbing the body during a sweat bath was thrown away to the west.

H73 Alnus incana (L.) Moench

(Mountain Alder)

1928 Smith 55. Alnus tenuifolia Nutt. "Bella Coola: Cones used as a remedy for some unspecified complaint. ...

            Gitksan: Pistillate catkins crushed, and the mass eaten raw as a laxative. Pistillate catkins and shavings eaten raw, or else boiled in water and the decoction taken internally three times a day, as a diuretic for gonorrhea. Said to effect a cure in one week.... a decoction of this tree ... acted as an emetic, purgative, and diuretic, and was used for poisoning caused by eating sea-urchins."

1975 Palmer 59. Boiled bark make a wash water for sores. For general body health, "if you drink it, you sweat everything out".

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 87-89. Alnus crispa (Ait.) Pursh and Alnus tenuifolia Nutt.) Green and Mountain Alder. Young Alders, up to one meter high, were used for childbirth medicine. When the baby is due, the mother does not eat. Her grandmother or mother, boils the alder tops, with the leaves, which she drinks as a tea. “It has a bad, bitter taste, but she drinks a big cupful to help ‘clean her out' after the baby is born. Afterwards, she drinks a brew of alder boiled with 'red willow' (Cornus stolonifera) or gray willow (Salix spp.). She takes as much of this as she can for 10 days after the baby is born. After that, she can drink other kinds of medicine (ST). Children with a poor appetite were given a tonic made by steeping the top of a young alder in water (ML). The bark was boiled and the liquid used to wash sores, and the 'sap wood' was dried and powdered and applied to sores (Ray 1932:220)."

1990 Hunn 351. A bark infusion was drunk to purify blood.

1990 Turner, et. al., 188. Alnus crispa. Green or Sitka Alder. also Alnus tenuifolia or synonym, Alnus incana. Steedman refers to Alnus rhombifolia, but this probably does not occur in British Columbia. Steedman 1930:503 comments the "white alder" stems are fragrant and were used as a scent.

            Teit, 1896-1918, writes that a drink from the boiled stems was used for colds. Sometimes dried stems were put in the nose or chewed for colds. Sometimes the plant was used for a scent. Perhaps this refers to Alnus crispa, a high mountain, British Columbia, alder that never gets very big, but has sticky, glandular leaves.

            Annie York knew of no use for the plant. Mabel Joe had record of general folk remedies for the plant, but nothing specific to the Thompson people. She writes that the tree was used for “burns, wounds and inflammations, stomach troubles, sore eyes, toothache and colds."

H73 Alnus rhombifolia Nutt.

(White Alder)

1902 Chestnut 332-3. "The dry rot from the wood when mixed with the powdered bark of the Bigelow willow (Salix lasiolepis), is considered to be an excellent poultice for burns."

1990 Hunn 351. It was used for "female problems".

H72 Alnus rubra Bong.

(Red Alder)

1928 Smith 55. "Bella Coola: Bark boiled, and a cupful of the decoction taken internally as a purgative.

            S. Carrier: Sap applied to cuts. ...

            N. Carrier: Inside bark ground, steeped in water, and injected with a syringe made from the crop of a bird, for biliousness.

Gitksan: Bark and roots boiled for about six hours and the decoction drunk in the morning for a cough. Bark from the stem, but not from the roots, scraped, mixed with water, and the infusion taken internally, as an emetic and purgative, for headache and many other maladies."

1945 Gunther 27. Alnus oregana. The tea from boiled bark was “drunk for colds, stomach trouble, and scrofula sores." Rotten alder wood was rubbed on aching bones. The raw cones or catkins were eaten to stop diarrhea.

1971 Turner and Bell 79. "The sap was used as a tonic by old Saanich people. It was thought to be good for the stomach (Suttles, 1951). The Songish soaked the sap in water and drank it to purify the blood (Mitchell, 1968). The bark was used by the Kwakiutl, and perhaps by the Coast Salish also, as a cure for tuberculosis (Boas, 1935). The alder buds were chewed and rubbed into sores and wounds by the Songish. They also burned the fruits to a powder and spread it over burns (Boas, 1890)."

1973 Turner 202. FW says the boiled bark of young alders was used as a purgative. The steeped bark was chewed by children with mouth sores (MS).

1973 Turner and Bell 279. An important medicine, the bark "was peeled from the young trees in the spring, scrubbed, cleaned, and dried in the sun, and stored for future use (Brown, 1969; Johnson, 1969).

            If a woman had tuberculosis and spat blood, she would suck four pieces of alder bark in her mouth. She usually got well after this (Boas, 1930). An extract of the bark, made by pouring boiling water over it, was drunk for tuberculosis and asthma, and was rubbed on the skin for sores and eczema (Brown, 1969; Roberts, 1969).

            A poultice for sores and aches was made by mixing broken-up alder bark with Fucus sp., black twinberry bark (Lonicera involucrata), and tobacco (Nicotiana sp.)(Cranmer, 1969)".

1982 Turner and Efrat 62. The bark, gathered on the river side of a tree, then mixed with hemlock bark (see Tsuga heterophylla) and decocted to make a drink for tuberculosis and other internal ailments.

1983 Turner et. al., 99. The bark was crushed with equal amounts of Tsuga heterophylla and Abies grandis and perhaps Abies amabilis, then steeped in hot water, cooled, and drunk exclusively and freely for "any type of internal injuries, including broken bones, such as ribs, bruises, or undiagnosed injuries from falls and other accidents. It was also taken as a cure for tuberculosis and other lung ailments. (John Thomas) It was said to be very effective and would heal a person quickly. (John Thomas)" It is high in tannins and would have an astringent action and be at least part of the therapeutic basis of this remedy.

            Densmore writes of the Makah making a crushed bark tea to treat a person with severe back pain. The dosage was to drink this tea freely.

1990 Turner, et. al., 188. Annie York and Mabel Joe tell how a simmered or boiled extract from the bark was used as a wash for scabby skin, eczema and skin sores. Hilda Austin used a concentrated extract as a wash for her uncle with an severe allergic reaction to hops when working in the harvest. See Lycoperdon, puffballs. Nora Jimmie, as a small child, had sores all over her face. An Indian doctor told her granny to take her to the river every day and pray for the scabs to go away and to wash her face in an alder bark extract. "Eventually her sores went away."

            Mabel Joe said that immature catkins, of this and Alnus crispa, were put on an aching tooth.

H72 Alnus sinuata (Regel) Rydb.

(Sitka Alder)

1928 Smith 55. Alnus sitchensis (Reg.) Sarg. (Green alder not in Hitchcock.) Cones used by Bella Coola for unknown remedy.

H73 Betula sp.

(Birch)

1975 Palmer 36. Soap was made with birch or mock orange leaves mixed with children's urine.

H73 Betula occidentalis Hook.

(Water Birch)

1990 Hunn 352. It was used for pimples and sores.

H73 Betula papyrifera Marsh

(Paper Birch)

1973 Turner 202. "The Bella Coola made a potent love charm by tying up the hair of the person whose love was sought and of the seeker with a piece of octopus skin in a folder of birch bark (McIlwraith, 1948)."

1975 Palmer 60. On this gray colored tree grows a fungus, Fomes fomentarius, that is used hot and dark for burning pain.

1990 Turner, et. al., 190. Western Paper Birch. In early spring the sap was tapped from the trees for use as a cold medicine. Annie York describes the process:  “They use birch (syrup), but they don't use that to eat, they use that as medicine. The birch is for cough syrup. And you have to use very little of it... They just bore a hole on it (the trunk of the tree), and they collect it with a little birch basket... (they use it as) spring tonic. But birch is totally used for colds, but they clean you out... it's very strong. You can get sick with it. I tried it... "

            York remembered a woman, who during childbirth said that she wanted no more children. An old woman told Annie York to take the placenta, "stick it with an old bone awl, wrap it in fishnet, and then in a piece of birch bark, and place it high up in a particular kind of tree. ..." The woman was given a tea from Prunus emarginata or perhaps from Amelanchier alnifolia and after that "she never had any more children". (Contraception?)

H74 Corylus cornuta Marsh

(Hazelnut; Filbert)

1990 Turner, et. al., 191. A. York writes that if you want to sing well, chew on hazelnut buds. She describes that making of a blue dye from the roots.

H74 FAGACEAE

(Beech Family)

H74 Quercus garryana Dougl.

(Oregon White Oak)

1902 Chestnut 343. No mention is made of medicinal use of this oak, but Quercus lobata bark was used for diarrhea and the fresh galls were used diluted, as a wash for sore eyes.

1945 Gunther 27-8. The boiled bark was used to cure tuberculosis.

1990 Hunn 356. The acorns were cooked with willow and eaten for diarrhea.

H75 MORACEAE

(Mulberry Family)

H75 Humulus lupulus L.

(Hop)

1902 Chestnut 344. "The hops are soaked in warm water and applied as a poultice for swellings or bruises."

H76 URTICACEAE

(Nettle Family)

H76 Urtica dioica L.

(Stinging Nettle)

1909 Teit 618. A bundle of nettles was rubbed and hit on the body during a sweat bath, then  thrown away towards the west.

1928 Smith 55. Urtica lyallii. "Bella Coola: Used for a form of paralysis where the patient had been unable to walk for a long time. Limbs stung daily, causing sores and gradual revival of sensation. In one case said to have effected a cure in ten days.

             ... Gitksan: Entire plant boiled, and the decoction taken internally for many illnesses, including hemorrhage and bladder troubles. Stinging not used."

1945 Gunther 28. Urtica lyallii. Nettles were used as irritants for rheumatism and paralysis. A person was whipped with a whole plant of nettles or the young shoots were crushed and applied as poultices.             Supposedly this treatment is also good for colds. A tea was made and used as bath water from pounded nettle and white fir (Abies grandis) plants for a general tonic or colds.

            A hair wash, "especially for girls", was made from boiled roots. For women in labor the leaves were crushed and put "in water as a drink for a woman having difficulties in childbirth. This 'scares the baby out,' for the nettles are after him" The Lummi drink nettle tea to relax the muscles during childbirth. The nettle tips were chewed during labor.”

            The stalk was soaked in water, then rubbed on the body, for soreness or stiffness." Nettle teas are also drunk for the same things. The roots were pounded and boiled for a tea for rheumatism, "a small Chinese teacup full being the dosage. This is one of the few" dosages given.

            A nettle tea was drunk for colds. Peeled bark was boiled and used for headaches and nosebleeds to purify the body after handling a corpse, the Makah would rub themselves with nettles.

1957 Train 97-98. Urtica gracilis. p. 98. The liquid from boiling the root in water was used as a wash for rheumatism. Hot, mashed leaves were applied as poultices for rheumatism. The plants were whipped on an afflicted body part as counter- irritant, but the ailment so treated "could not be ascertained".

            A boiled leaf tea was drunk for colds. See Populus trichocarpa for a tonic recipe. Paiutes suggested using this nettle in the sweat bath for "grippe or pneumonia" apparently by deriving benefit from "inhaling the fumes of the plants". (See Juniperus for details of the sweat bath.)

1966 Boas 379. Sometimes chest pains were treated with cauterization after rubbing the chest first with nettles, or cleavers (Galium triflorum), then hellebore (Veratrum viride). The cauterizing was done "at four places with nettle fiber or with a piece of an old rope ... from the grave box of twins. It is believed that the sickness will flow out of the burn".

1966 Boas 384-7. Nettles were used to cauterize bleeding skin. For severe headache, nettle fiber and wasps' nests in a small ignited ball were held in small tongs to the nape of the neck, the two temples, and the head crown to cauterize. Blowing on the flame keeps ball burning. After the ashes form, these are also pressed to the skin. Blisters should form and run, and the patient must also groan for the treatment to have success. Snowberry tips were also used to cauterize as above. (Moxibustion)

            The Kwakiutl believe that Locomotor Ataxia is caused by people standing knee-deep in Knight Inlet during olachen fishing. Tribes that do not fish in Knight Inlet are believed not to get Locomotor ataxia. Contact with jellyfish is also thought to cause this numbing of the feet and legs. Boas describes here a long sequence of treatments for this. In short, first, bathe in sea water and urine, then rub the body with the “small slippery kelp" (Fucus sp.?) growing on the beach. Then rub with maggots and skeleton bones. If none of this works, spruce twigs are used to beat the body until it bleeds, which is said to remove the "bad blood" causing the disease. If any of this helps, so that the patient can walk, they should walk to the beach, cut their feet with mussel shells, and rub the small kelp into the cuts. If this helps, then "he uses the points of nettles and rubs his feet with these. After this, the places that have been rubbed with nettles are rubbed over with blue hellebore (Veratrum viride). He also drinks a decoction of water hemlock." (Editor: This is very toxic). He also take a purgative, only if he is (walking), and sweat baths. As he improves, he does not cut himself anymore. The cutting is done only if the legs and feet are numb. He does bathe in salt water, but not right after a sweatbath.

1971 Turner and Bell 90. "Nettles were often used as counter-irritants for bruises, aches, rheumatism, and in some rituals, bundles of them were rubbed on the body (Drucker, 1951)."

1973 Turner 211. The stem fibers were used to cauterize sores and swellings. These stem fibers were touched to the skin near by the affected area.

            McIlwraith writes in detail about a treatment for stomach trouble and rheumatism: In short, first dig a hole six inches deep by six feet, fill it with hot rocks, and then cover with sand and gravel. Put as many herbs as possible on top. These may include nettles, devil's club bark, western dock, cottonwood leaves, "green moss-like growths from water-covered stones", young spruce bark, or cone debris (from squirrels breaking the cones apart for the  nutritious seed). Then put mats on top, and have the patient lie down on top. Sprinkle the patient with water when getting too hot. Take care that the patient does not sleep and get burned.

1973 Turner and Bell 293. "Nettle roots were washed, pounded, and the juice was extracted to make a drink for pregnant women who were overdue to make the baby come faster. According to Mrs. Cranmer, it 'really works'. The same juice was also rubbed into the scalp to keep one's hair from falling out (Cranmer, 1969)."

1975 Palmer 70. Also Urtica urens L. When you are almost out of breath after sweating two or three times, have someone beat you all over with nettles in the places where the rheumatism hurts. The boiled stems and roots are good for drinking and bathing water. Ray writes that to keep a boy from getting rheumatism, he was rubbed with nettles at puberty.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 140-142. After a sweatbath, fresh nettles were used to beat the skin for the pain of rheumatism and arthritis. (Selina Timoyakin; Larry Pierre; Harry Robinson; Ray 1932:219) Selina Timoyakin's grandmother with a bad hip pain, bathed in a creek, then had her daughter hit her back with a bundle of about 10 nettle plants. After cooling off in the creek water, she repeated the bathing and beating three times with new nettle plants. After this she felt pain "going right into her bones" and was red all over. On the third day, after much pain, the pain left. Selina says "This medicine is so strong, it kills all the 'germs'."

            “A 'tea', made by boiling stinging nettle, the branches and leaves of wild rose, and the boughs of Douglas-fir and red cedar, was drunk during 'sweathousing' and also used to 'wash' the skin and hair (Martin Louie; Willie Armstrong)."

            Boil a bundle of 4-6 plants, then allow the plants to float away in a creek, after which bathe in the creek water to combat witchcraft and jinxes that may have been put on you by "some evil person". "When it burns, that is when it (the jinx) is going to bounce off you and go back to the person who did it". (Selina Timoyakin)

1982 Turner and Efrat 76. For any ache or pain, stomach, back, rub nettles over the area. At first, they sting, "then kill the pain and cause a general numbness. " Steam the leaves and roots, and use them in a hot poultice on arthritic swollen joints of old people. Dry plants and use as needed.

1983 Turner et. al., 131. "John Thomas said the young shoots of stinging nettle were chewed and swallowed as a tonic, to keep one from getting sick, but warned that one must be careful to get the very youngest plants, that are not yet 'fuzzy', or he would get a rash in his mouth.

            Lena Johnson recalled that those suffering from rheumatism and arthritis were beaten all over their bodies with stinging nettle, until their skin was covered by a rash. This was said to cause the pain of the arthritis or rheumatism to 'come out'." The same thing was done to ensure the faithfulness and affection of a spouse. The wife of a whaler would also do this before he left on a hunt for cleansing to ensure the success of the hunt. She also said that nettles had many medicinal uses, but most were secret and known only to a few and were not in general use.

            Ellis and Turner, 1976, (Nootka Plant Notes-From Manhousat (Hot spring Cove); made with Luke Swan. (transcriptions by Randy Bouchard, British Columbia Indian Language Project, Victoria). unpublished manuscript at B.C.I.L.P., Victoria.) and Fenn, et. al., write that "Nootka whalers, seal hunters, and fisherman rubbed nettles on their arms to give them strength, and also used them as a poultice for arthritis and other types of sores and aches."

1990 Hunn 358. Nettles were used as counterirritants for arthritis, rheumatism, backache and paralysis.

1990 Turner, et. al., 289. Synonym Urtica lyallii. American Stinging nettle. Annie York writes that the "leaves and stalks were used as a counter-irritant poultice for paralyzed limbs". Steedman p. 471 writes that "the plant was 'teased up,' dipped in water, and rubbed on stiff and sore joints and muscles."

            "Any of the nettles" (but not poison-ivy, these two plants were thought related by the Thompson because of the skin irritation they cause) "were made into a wash which was poured on the body after a sweatbath" Steedman p. 505.

            Annie York said a boiled root extract was used on the hair as a tonic for "growing long, silky hair or as a sitzbath for bleeding hemorrhoids in a similar fashion to how Philadelphus lewisii stems were used.             Louie Phillips "said that nettle tops were used to cure skin disease".

            Mabel Joe said a neighbor of hers recently went to a place with lots of stinging nettles. She "hit her skin all over with nettles." Her hands and legs were so stiff she could scarcely move the joints. Within two months after this treatment "she was getting strong and healthy again". Julie Kilroy also described how when "her grandmother was young, her legs were so stiff and sore that she had to use crutches. she could hardly walk. " Another young girl collected as many nettles as she could carry and brought them to a sweathouse. They put hot rocks inside. Then they told JK's grandmother, "Go in now. Bath with warm water first before you go in." Then she was to go into the sweathouse with the nettles tied in four bundles. she was to "Rub your bone all over, over here, and shake it on your back, over here, your legs. But you finish this before you come out." When she came out of the sweatlodge, she was red and spotted all over. Then she bathed in warm water for awhile and then was to go in the sweat lodge again. This she repeated four times with the four bundles of stinging nettles. After the last time she bathed and then went home. By the next morning she said, “Gee, I feel good!" In a few days she was walking better and soon no longer needed the crutches. Julie Kilroy's mother told her this story as she had watched the whole treatment.

H77 LORANTHACEAE (Mistletoe Family)

H77 Arceuthobium americanum Nutt.

(American Dwarf Mistletoe)

1928 Smith 56. Small mistletoe. "Bella Coola: Boiled, and decoction taken as a potent medicine for hemorrhage of the lungs.

            S. Carrier: Boiled, and decoction taken freely for hemorrhage from the mouth, tuberculosis of the lungs, and emaciation."

H77 Arceuthobium campylopodum Engelm.

(Dwarf Mistletoe)

1990 Hunn 351. An infusion was used as a wash for dandruff.

H77 Phoradendron flavescens (Pursh) Nutt.

(American Mistletoe)

1902 Chestnut 344. The leaves "are chewed 'all day long' to relieve toothache, and a tea is made of them to produce abortion. Those from certain trees are regarded as poisonous both of man and to cattle."

H78 SANTALACEAE

(Sandalwood Family)

H78 Comandra umbellata

(Bastard Toad-flax)

1990 Turner, et. al., 281.

            Steedman 1930:459 writes that washed fresh roots, mixed with woman's milk and used for inflamed eyes or as a general eye wash or salve.

            Julie Kilroy said it was used on sores. When her mother had a hand that would not heal and neck sores a lady boiled this plant to make a wash for her. "I think they get better after ... fix that up".

H78 ARISTOLOCHIACEAE

(Birthwort Family)

H78 Asarum caudatum Lindl.

(Wild Ginger)

1928 Smith 56.

            "Bella Coola: Boiled, and the decoction taken internally for pain in the stomach, but not for diarrhea or vomiting. Boiled, and applied externally for headache, intestinal pains, and pain in the knees."

1945 Gunther 28.

            The leaves were "dried with another plant and used for tuberculosis." The leaves eaten were considered to give appetite or could be boiled for a tonic tea.

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 74.

            A root tea was drunk for colds and laxative effects.

1990 Turner, et. al., 165.

            Annie York tells how "the Thompson people used to dry the leaves, powder them, and rub the powder on the hands as a deodorant. She said the local Chinese people used the leaves as a poultice for cuts and sprains, hence her third name for the plant ("Chinaman's medicine").

            Steedman, 1930:496 writes that the whole plant or sometimes just the stems were tucked in a restless or ill baby's bed to help quiet the child or make them well. A rhizome decoction was drunk as a stomach tonic. It was used as an indigestion or colic remedy.

H78 POLYGONACEAE

(Buckwheat Family)

H79 Eriogonum sp.

(Buckwheat)

1979 Sweet 60.

            A leaf tea was used for pain in the head and stomach. A flower tea was used for an eyewash, for hypertension, and for bronchial problems. A stem and leaf tea was used for bladder ailments.

H80 Eriogonum heracleoides Nutt.

(Parsnip-flowered Eriogonum)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 112. Also Eriogonum  niveum and Eriogonum compositum. Boiled root of Eriogonum compositum used for a diarrhea tea (Ray 218). Boiled roots and stems made a wash for infected cuts and drunk for colds (ML and Lerman), blood poisoning, tuberculosis, cancer, or all sicknesses (Lerman). The mashed leaves used as poultice for cuts, or steeped to make a wash for cuts and sores .

1990 Turner, et. al., 238. Parsnip-flowered umbrella plant. Annie York thinks that this is the plant used for a cold medicine. "The plant was gathered before the first snowfall and spread out to dry in the sun. It could then be stored for future use." The leaves were boiled to make a tea for colds.

            Julie Kilroy remembers an old woman who long ago had gathered a sackful of this to use for one of her children, but she did not remember if it was to make a wash or a drink or what it was for.

            Mabel Joe shares that the plant tea was used as a wash for sores or was drunk in large quantity for tuberculosis. Nora Jimmie "was told by Ada Mike that the entire plant was used. It was washed clean, boiled, and the decoction drunk for tuberculosis or sickness on the lung."

            Janet Charter's "mother boiled the leaves and used the decoction as a wash for sore eyes. Janet Charter said that it was very similar to "Anemone multifida and at first said the information she gave was for this plant, but later said it was for Eriogonum.

            Teit (1900:389) writes that the whole plant was "roasted, powdered, mixed with grease, and applied as an ointment" for running sores and swellings. Steedman 1930:470 writes of a similar use and for Eriogonum androsaceum and other species. She also writes that a "mild or medium-strength decoction of the whole plant, including roots ... was drunk for general indisposition. A stronger decoction was drunk for syphilis." Some used the drink for any internal pains, especially for stomach pains. The whole plant was used to steam the body of a sick person in a manner similar to Artemisia dracunculus. The brew was also used as a ceremonial wash (Steedman, 505)

H82 Eriogonum microthecum Nutt.

Slow colds and to stop diarrhea.

H80 Eriogonum umbellatum Torr.

(Sulfurflower)

1957 Train 48.

            "Leaves, sometimes combined with the boiled roots, are mashed for poultices which are used for lameness or rheumatism." A root decoction is drunk hot for colds or stomach-aches.

1959 Murphy 37. In Nevada, people made a root tea was used for colds.

H90 Polygonum amphibium L.

(Water Smartweed)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 113. Water knotweed.

            The dried, pounded roots, steeped in hot or cold water, made a drink for chest colds. The roots were also eaten raw, a little at a time, for the same thing.

H89 Polygonum aviculare L.

(Knotweed or doorweed)

1902 Chestnut 345. The plant, decocted with oak bark, was used by white settlers and Indians as an astringent.

1990 Hunn 356. The infusion was used as a hair tonic. The infusion was drunk for venereal disease and backache.

1990 Turner, et. al., 238. Ester John and Bernadette Antoine (who said it was her grandpa’s medicine) said a whole plant tea was drunk for diarrhea, especially for children.

H86 Polygonum bistortoides Pursh

(American bistort)

1990 Hunn 356. The boiled root was used as a wash for eye problems.

H89 Polygonum phytolaccaefolium Neisn.

(Alpine knotweed)

1990 Hunn 356. It was made into a poultice for swellings.

H90 Rumex sp.

(Dock or Sorrel)

1945 Gunther 29. The stem was boiled to make "an antiseptic wash for leg sores."

H91 Rumex acetosella L.

(Sheep sorrel; sour weed)

1945 Gunther 29. Sheep-sorrel Dock. The raw leaves were eaten for tuberculosis.

H92 Rumex crispus L.

(Curly or Yellow Dock)

1959 Murphy 43. "Root mashed into pulp and applied to sores and swellings."

1957 Train 87-8. Curly Dock. Indian Rhubarb. The pulped root was used as a "palliative for rheumatic swellings or pains". Usually the raw root was applied as a wet poultice. Sometimes the root or the pulped root was boiled before use. Some people rubbed the root, similarly to the use of a liniment, directly on the sore area. This was also used for bruises, burns, and other swellings.

            The boiled root tea was used for a wide variety of ailments such as venereal disease (less than cup daily dose), liver problems ( cup several times per day), blood purifier (unspecified amount), physic or general tonic (several cups daily).

            To stop diarrhea the ripe seeds were ground, then boiled in a small amount of water, and then eaten or finely ground, ripe seed, burned in a pan and mixed with Pinus monophylla resin and then eaten.

1990 Turner, et. al., 239. Julie Kilroy said that this plant made “a good medicine for a cough".

H91 Rumex obtusifolius

(Bitter Dock)

1945 Gunther 29.

            The Quinault women sometimes burned dock leaves with the menstrual blood on napkins to stop the flow.

1971 Turner and Bell 85.

            Like rhubarb, the young stems were eaten. "The Songish boiled the roots and applied them as a poultice to swellings (Boas, 1890)."

1990 Hunn 357. Wild dock.

            The roasted root was applied to a toothache.

H92 Rumex occidentalis Wats.

(Western Dock)

1928 Smith 56.

            "Bella Coola: Roots roasted for a short time in a hole in the earth among the ashes of a fire, covered with earth, mashed, and applied in quantity as a poultice for boils. Both leaves and roots used, according to another informant, and the poultice applied to wounds as well as boils.

            Leaves used for a sweat bath for pains similar to rheumatism all over the body. Stones were heated, a little cold sand spread over them, and leaves spread on the sand; or else the leaves were spread on hot ashes. The patient sat or lay naked directly on the leaves, and was covered with blankets. Western nettles (Urtica lyallii), small branches of black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) with the leaves on them, or the small kelp found on rocks were sometimes used when leaves of the western dock could not by obtained."

1973 Turner 207.

            "The long, yellowish roots were mixed with ‘klondike soap' and used to poultice boils, cuts, and scrapes." The young spring leaves were eaten like spinach.

1973 Turner and Bell 287.

            "An extract made by pounding the roots in water was used to wash sores and swellings. It could also be stored for future use (Boas, 1930; Cranmer, 1969). When a woman ate the boiled roots with a spoon, the strained roots were put on her stomach (Boas, 1930)."

H91 Rumex venosus Pursh

(Winged Dock or Wild Begonia)

1957 Train 88.

            The Shoshones give this plant three names, though the most common means burn medicine.             The dried, ground root is "a standard treatment for burns, wounds, sores, and sometimes swellings". Sometimes the mashed raw root is put on as a poultice or the liquid from the boiled root is used as an antiseptic wash. This last was used to dry up persistent sores such as those from syphilis. Boiled root tea is drunk for venereal disease.

            See also under Lomatium dissectum. This tea is also used as blood purifier or tonic in doses of a half-cupful taken daily for two weeks. It is also drunk for rheumatism, pneumonia, influenza, coughs, colds, kidney ailments, gall bladder inflammation, stomach-ache or troubles, or to stop diarrhea.

H93 CHENOPODIACEAE

(Goosefoot Family)

H95 Atriplex canescens (Pursh) Nutt.

(Wingscale)

1957 Train 32. Saltbrush.

            Boiled fresh roots, with a little salt, and the tea drunk in a half-cupful dose as a "physic".

H99 Chenopodium album L.

(Lamb's quarters or pigweed)

1902 Chestnut 346.

            "One Indian informed me that the old leaves were good to relieve stomach ache". Others spoke of eating the young leaves for greens after throwing away the water of the first boiling.

H97 Chenopodium botrys L.

(Jerusalem-oak)

1990 Turner, et. al., 203.

            Steedman (1930: page 503) writes of how this was used as a scent. It was often stuffed in pillows, bags, pouches or baskets. Sometimes it was worn wound in necklaces.

H99 Eurotia lanata (Pursh.) Moq.

(Winterfat)

1957 Train 49-50.

            One Paiute name for this is "head lice plant". A plant decoction in early times was used to rid hair of lice.

            When this study was done, it was still used as a hair and scalp tonic to prevent and slow hair loss, keep hair from graying, and to restore hair in baldness.

            A boiled leaf (or leaf and stem) solution, was made for an eyewash or compress for sore eyes.

H101 Sarcobatus vermiculatus (Hook.) Torr.

(Black Greasewood)

1957 Train 92.

            Only two Indians, both Paiute, in Nevada knew of a medicinal use for this plant. They said "it was a remedy plant of the past generation". One told of burning the whole plant to make charcoal. The charcoal was "powdered, mixed with water, and taken three times daily to stop diarrhea." The other person told of using only the branch to make charcoal. This was then used to make "the drink for diarrhea and particularly for rectal bleeding".

H102 NYCTAGINACEAE

(Four-o'clock Family)

H103 Abronia turbinata Torr.

(Sand verbena)

1957 Train 19. The mashed leaves were used as a poultice for swellings.

H104 PORTULACACEAE

(Purslane Family)

H106 Lewisia pygmaea (Gray) Robinson

(Alpine Bitterroot)

1990 Turner, et. al., 242. Steedman,(1930, page 479) writes that some people ate the roots, others thought that it would cause insanity to eat them. On page 507 Steedman writes that the plant "was thought to bring luck in gambling".

H106 Lewisia rediviva Pursh

(Bitter root)

1959 Murphy 38. "Pound dry root and chew it for sore throat. Old peoples' remedy. Pounded for medicine, general alterative".

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 116. The raw root was used as a poultice on sores. HR was told that eating a large amount of the roots would cure a poison ivy rash.

            Eating the dried or fresh roots was thought to help someone with diabetes.

            Lerman tells of a woman with four children who did not want more, ate this in the spring and had no more babies (contraceptive?).

H108 Montia perfoliata (Donn) Howell

(Miner's Lettuce)

1957 Train 38-9. Claytonia perfoliata. Plants soaked in water, were "mashed to make poultices for rheumatic pain". It was said to penetrate and burn like a mustard plaster and act as a counter-irritant.

1990 Turner, et. al., 241. Claytonia perfoliata Donn ex Willd. Annie York "said that it was used as an eye medicine, for sore eyes, and for 'helping someone to see the right'." This may have been for Claytonia sibirica.

H108 Montia sibirica (L.) Howell.

(Siberian Miner's lettuce)

1945 Gunther 29. (Claytonia sibirica) A tea of this plant was drunk as a “urinative”.

            The stem was squeezed and the juice used to soothe the eyes.

            Some women chewed the plant during pregnancy to ensure that the baby would be soft when born.             A tea of the plant was used as a general tonic and to cure sore throat.

            The stem was rubbed between the hands, then under cold water, finally into the hair as a tonic to make the hair glossy and to prevent dandruff.

1971 Turner and Bell 85. "The Songish macerated the leaves and applied them to the head as a remedy for a headache (Boas, 1890)."

1982 Turner and Efrat 71. Considered a good medicine by the Hesquiats, the leaves were chewed and used as a poultice on cuts and sores.

            The juice was squeezed from the leaves into sore, red eyes. If something was in the eye, the juice was used as an eye wash.

H109 CARYOPHYLLACEAE

(Pink Family)

H109 Arenaria sp.

(Sandwort)

1959 Murphy 39. "Roots for eye-wash, tea."

H113 Arenaria aculeata Wats.

(Prickly Sandwort)

1957 Train 24. Boiled roots makes a liquid for eyewash.

H112 Arenaria congesta Nutt.

(Ballhead Sandwort)

1959 Murphy 42. "For dropsy or the swells...apply poultices of steeped leaves to swellings, used hot, patient lies down, as movement may bring on nosebleed."

H118 Silene menziesii Hook.

(Menzies' Silene)

1980 Turner, Bouchard, & Kennedy 95. Catchfly. The pounded root, steeped, to obtain a liquid to use as a strong eyewash medicine for cataracts “when they first appear. It stings the eyes, but is said to be very effective. It should be used only every other day because it is so strong.

H118 Silene noctiflora L.

(Night-flowering Silene)

1990 Turner, et. al., 202. Night-flowering Catchfly. Teit 1896-1918 writes that this plant was "used as a charm for procuring wealth and health and as a charm in gambling to obtain good luck" or as a "charm to obtain wealth and women". The latter may refer to other species in the Pink family.

H122 NYMPHAEACEAE

(Water Lily Family)

H123 Nuphar polysepalum Engelm.

(Yellow Water-lily)

1928 Smith 56. Nymphaea polysepala (Engelm.) Greene. Yellow pond lily. "Bella Coola, old custom: used in a magical way for pain in all parts of the body. A root in many cases as large as a man's leg was cut free from the bed of a pool with a hemlock pole sharpened like a shovel. A hollow was made in it, water placed in the receptacle, and hot stones added. The stones were changed four times, after which the patient drank one or two cupfuls of the water. He repeated the dose each day for four days. To be effective the root had to be thrown back into the water, not on the ground.

            Present custom: Root boiled twelve hours, and decoction taken internally for pain in any part of the body, such as ‘consumption’, rheumatism, heart disease, and gonorrhea. Considered good for the blood. Not used as a diuretic, or for diarhoea, constipation, or vomiting.

            Gitksan: Infusion of scrapings of toasted root (or according to another informant, heart of root, boiled) taken internally for hemorrhage of the lungs and as a contraceptive."

1966 Boas 379. Water lily leaves are "heated in ashes and applied externally" for chest pains. The liquid from ground roots, mixed with water, is drunk for chest pains and asthma.

1945 Gunther 29. Widely used in Northwest for medicine. Some would “steam a patient over the roots... or heat the roots and apply them to the seat of the pain, especially for rheumatism.”

            “The Quinault believe that some roots look like men and some like women, so they always pick one appropriate to the patient.”

1973 Turner and Bell 287. Since this plant grew in inland fresh water, often long trips were made to gather it. "The large fleshy rhizomes, covered with hot ashes, were used as a medicine for a man with swelling in the body or sickness in the bones (Boas, 1930).

1973 Turner 207.

            The rhizomes were used to make a medicine for tuberculosis" also "to make a tonic for the blood, as long as certain precautions were taken in collecting and administering the medicine."

            McIlwraith notes correct collecting procedures: “They (rhizomes) can be collected by anyone, and the places where they grow are well known ... Before reaching the pond the gatherer must find four spruce saplings, each cut from a bough projecting eastward, and lay these two by two, beside the water, with a space between. After plucking the lily roots he must place them on the ground between the spruce branches and tie the whole into a bundle with strips of dyed and undyed cedar bark. He must be careful to wind these wrapping clockwise. On arriving at the house where the tonic is to be prepared, the bundle must be thrown in through the smoke-vent, never through the door.

            After these precautions the medicine can be prepared with safety. The roots are cut into thin slices and boiled for four days; a sick person then drinks several cupful of the brew, which is particularly good for the blood. The remedy is especially effective if the patient is observing ceremonial chastity. The person administering the potion sees to it that the one being treated conforms to certain regulations for forty days. He must not eat fresh meat, fresh salmon, or any food prepared by a widow or a catamenial woman; he must not approach too closely a girl who is secluded following puberty, and he must observe absolute continence, not even sleeping with his wife. Death follows the breaking of any of these taboos."

1975 Palmer 64.

            One tablespoon of the liquid made from the mashed root, mixed with a little water, was drunk for sores. One root will last for a long time. This heated, was put on a cloth and applied directly on the painful area of a sore back or joint with rheumatism.