North American Indigenous Herbal Medicines

[bat_hawk]

Setting: Not exactly Earth, but a region with great similarities to the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains. Time period is indeterminate, but pre modern medicine

Comments

[tersa]

I would have added 'herbs' or 'plants' to your search terms. I searched on "medicinal herbs of the Rocky Mountains" and got a few links that may be of interest:

Medicinal plants of the Rocky Mountains (at Squidoo)

Rocky Mountains: Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants part 1 (Wordpress blog)

Native American ethnobotany (Wikipedia) has a list of Native American medicinal plants, some with details

Annie's Remedy contains a list of North American medicinal herb chart with links to the individual herbs which outlines what part is used and for what

[bat_hawk]

That would be smart, wouldn't it... Sometimes I'm just bad at googling. ;) Thanks for the help and the links!

[malnpudl]

If you can find a copy, Charlotte Bringle Clarke's Edible and Useful Plants of California would be a good resource, since a lot of the plants are also found in other parts of North America. For each plant there's a description, geographical distribution, and info on past and present use. For some, there are also recipes. Cool book.

[bat_hawk]

Thats useful, I will look into that, thanks!

[inuki42]

I'm not sure how common they'd be in the area you're writing about, but willow trees are something I've known about for a long time. Willow bark can be steeped in a tea, and used as you'd use aspirin - because the salicylic acid in the bark and sap is a key ingredient in aspirin.

I don't have a lot of specifics, but it'll give you something else to search, and a fairly broad-spectrum fever-reducer and pain-reliever.

Good luck! Sounds like a neat story.

[bat_hawk]

Awesome, thanks much!

[ficklepig]

I like A Field Guide to Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs (Peterson Guides)

As noted in a comment above, including the terms "ethnobotany" and/or "traditional medicine" will yield some interesting material. Also try researching the practices of specific peoples - Ute, Shoshone, Paiute and others. Different tribes make somewhat different uses of things.

[ficklepig]

You might actually be best off finding plant lists for your area and exploring the uses people made of them. Granted, medicine is not going to be based entirely on plants, but it's a place to start.

Off the top of my head: stinging nettle, big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) as well as the other sages, plants in the willow (Salix) family (incl. cottonwoods (Populus)), juniper, wild onions, roses, anything in the mint family, Oregon grape (I think creeping Oregon grape, Mahonia repens, is the Great Basin species), ephedra, oak species, cattails, milkweeds and hawkweeds, sumac (Rhus) species, evening primrose (Oenothera) species.

Oh look, here's some of the field guide online. It's not going to be comprehensive, but it's a place to start finding plants to follow up on.

[bat_hawk]

Thanks so much! They have a copy of the book at my library, happily, so I'll be sure to check that out.

[khemlab]

The specific one I know of is osha (pronounced o-SHAH) root used as a tea, particularly for chest congestion. That would be Rocky Mountain region - Ute and Navajo both use it, as far as I know. It's a relative of celery and has a very strong flavor. I always joke that it only works because it tastes so nasty it scares the cold out of you.

[bat_hawk]

Cool, thanks for the info!

[khemlab]

And can I just say I adore your plethora of Tom Hardy icons?

[bat_hawk]

Why thanks! They're the best kind to have, imo. ;)