Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians

by Huron H. Smith

UMBELLIFERAE (PARSLEY FAMILY)

Musquash Root (Cicuta maculata L.), “apagwasîˈgons”. The Pillager Ojibwe say that this root is used a little in their medicine, but did not know just how. It was smoked in hunting.

Cow Parsnip (Heracleum lanatum Michx.) “piˈ pîgweˈ wanûck” [flute stem].[126] The Pillager Ojibwe pound the fresh root and apply it as a poultice to cure sores. The fresh leaves and root are known to produce vesication or blisters by the whites, and therefore have been used by them as counter-irritants. The root has been used by eclectic practitioners to cure epilepsy. In infusions, it is thought to cure dyspeptic disorders.

Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza longistylis [Torr.] D. C.), “osagaˈ tîkûm” [interlaced twigs]. The same name was applied by the Pillager Ojibwe to O. claytoni, and evidently they did not distinguish between the two species. A tea for making parturition easier is prepared from the roots. The liquorice flavor of the tea is said to be good for a sore throat.

Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa L.), “pigweˈwûnûsk” [flute stem]. The Pillager Ojibwe are quite cautious in using this poisonous root. They claim that a little bit is very powerful, while much is poisonous. They use a very minute quantity mixed with four other kinds of roots to make a medicinal tea for female troubles. There is no record of its medicinal use by the whites.

Black Snakeroot (Sanicula marilandica L.), “masan” [from the woods]. The Flambeau Ojibwe use the root pounded as a poultice to cure rattlesnake bite or any snake bite. Bearskin, chief Flambeau medicine man said that if this root be chewed, it would cause eruptions on the epithelial lining of the mouth. They consider it a very potent remedy. The Pillager Ojibwe call it “gîneˈbîg odjiˈ bîk” [snake root] and make a root tea that is used to cure fevers of various kinds. Eclectic practitioners have accredited it with active aromatic, bitter principles. They have used it in intermittent fevers, sore throat, erysipelas and cutaneous affections. It has been also used for St. Vitus dance and other nervous affections.

URTICACEAE (NETTLE FAMILY)

Hop (Humulus lupulus L.), “jiwîˈcgoniˈbûg”. The Pillager Ojibwe use the common hop to make a tea which acts like saleratus on the system, increasing the excresence of urine and reducing its acidity. It is official in the U. S. pharmacopoeia as a tonic, diuretic, sedative and somewhat anaphrodisiac.

Wood Nettle (Laportea canadensis [L.] Gaud.), “masaˈnatîk” [forest wood]. The Pillager Ojibwe use the root to make a medicinal tea for its diuretic properties. It is said to cure various urinary ailments. Eclectic practitioners have considered it tonic, astringent and diuretic. They use both roots and leaves. The seeds and flowers are given in wine for the ague.

Slippery Elm (Ulmus fulva Michx.), “anib”. The Pillager Ojibwe use the slippery inner bark for sore throat, especially when the throat is apt to be dry. Slippery Elm is official in the U. S. pharmacopoeia as a demulcent, emollient and nutritive. It is considered useful internally for dysentery, diarrhea and bronchitis. Pounded bark for poultices has been used for boils and inflammations, and in compounding suppositories.

Lyall’s Nettle (Urtica lyallii Wats.), “masan” [woods]. The Flambeau Ojibwe use only the leaves as medicine. These are soaked in warm water and used as a poultice for heat rashes. It is something like fighting fire with fire. Among the whites, nettles are known for their powerful and peculiar diuretic properties.

VIOLACEAE (VIOLET FAMILY)

Canada Violet (Viola canadensis L.) Although a common violet in the territory of the Pillager Ojibwe, they claimed to have no name or use for it. It was formerly used by eclectic practitioners as a blood purifier and as a remedy in chronic affections of the lungs, and in skin diseases, but is no longer used.

American Dog Violet (Viola conspersa Reichenb.), “wewaîeˈ bûgûg”. The whole plant is used by the Flambeau Ojibwe to make a tea for heart trouble. The whole plants have been used among the whites as alterative and expectorant remedies. They were said to be useful in skin diseases, scrofula, syphilis and bronchitis.

VITACEAE (VINE FAMILY)

River-bank Grape (Vitis vulpina L.), “ciˈwî mînûn” or “ciwî mînaga wûnj”, shown in [plate 70], fig. 2. The Pillager Ojibwe used a tea of boiled twigs for women to drink to clear up afterbirth and enable it to pass easily. They use the sap as a medicine for stomach and bowel trouble. Among the whites, the tender branchlets and leaves were sometimes employed for their agreeable acidulous flavor.

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OJIBWE VEGETAL FOODS

The Ojibwe have always lived far from the haunts of civilization. They were too far in the back country to participate in the colonial and pre-colonial wars. They have always preferred to live where game is abundant, and even today they are still able to subsist partly on deer and fish. The products of the hunt were very important to them, and they possess a very large number of hunting charms, which are roots, seeds or blossoms that are used as good luck omens or actual lures in trapping and fishing.

They have always made the greatest use of the edible plants of their environment, but did not progress very far in an agricultural way until the last quarter century, when each reservation was furnished with an Indian or white farmer, preferably an Indian. He has used the school children to cultivate demonstration farms, and his example is persisting in some of his former pupils. The older people had a few simple products from prehistoric days and have not allowed them to completely run out. The garden patch was always small, and the caretaker was invariably the woman of the household. Among the cultivated crops were: Cranberry pole beans, maize or Indian corn, potatoes of an early variety, squash and tobacco. The last crop has not been grown by them in fifty years, as they now depend upon the white men for their source of supply. At the present time, they raise any of the crops, that the white men raise. In their gardens, one will find lettuce and onions, radishes, carrots, parsnips, beets, turnips, cabbage, potatoes of standard varieties, beans and peas, and any other crop one will find in an up-to-date garden. Stranger still, one may find garden flowers, and the lady of the house will be quite proud of them, and usually a little jealous, if her neighbor has some flowers that she has not.

Some of the wild crops they gather possess considerable commercial value, such as blueberries and wild rice. The laborious work of preparing wild rice for table use has boosted the price to $1.05 a pound, which those “in the know” gladly pay. Blueberries yield a goodly part of their cash income, for the berries usually sell for about twenty cents a quart, and it is easy for an Indian family to pick eighty quarts in a day. They do not pick them like the white man does, but comb the bushes with their fingers, removing the leaves and twigs later.

The Ojibwe are fond of their native foods, and since they regard all plants as the gift of their deities, and sacred to their uses, they feel that their native foods are medicine to keep them in health as well as foods. While they know nothing about vitamins or chemical constituents, they think that there are some salts or minerals in their native foods that keep them well. We know that they are correct in that. They ascribe many of their present diseases to the abandonment of their native foods and the adoption of white men’s foods. They think that the early failure of their teeth is due to using too much white flour for bread.

From the middle of July to the middle of September, one will find the women busily caring for the various food harvests. Maize will be drying on cloth screens, and blueberries will be drying to tough, inky pellets. Raspberries and dewberries are cooked into jams, cranberries are cooked with maple sugar into a jelly, and circles of squash are strung on a basswood bark string. Men and women are busy at the shallow lake harvesting wild rice, and all are very active. Sundays they will stop for a pow-wow or dream dance, but not if it is the wild rice harvest time. The food plants are listed alphabetically by families.

OJIBWE FOOD PLANTS

ACERACEAE (MAPLE FAMILY)

Box Elder (Acer negundo L.), “adjagobiˈ mûk”. The Pillager Ojibwe collect the sap of the Box Elder and mix it with the sap of the regular Sugar Maple to drink as a beverage.

Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), “înenaˈ tîg” [Indian tree] and “adjagobiˈ mîn”. Both names came from the Pillager Ojibwe,[127] and although the trees were scarce on the Flambeau Reservation, they also call it “înenaˈ tîg”, and gather quantities of the sap somewhere south of the reservation. Maple sugar is one of their most important foods and is used in almost every kind of cookery. Maple sap is saved to drink as it comes from the tree, sometimes with the added sap of the Box Elder or Yellow Birch. Again it is allowed to become sour to make a vinegar “cîwaˈbo” used in their cookery of venison, which, when afterwards sweetened with maple sugar, corresponds to the German fashion of sweet-sour meat. Before they had the salt of the white man, maple sugar took its place and still does when they can get it. All kinds of meats were seasoned with it. There are many interesting legends about the tree, its discovery and sugar making, as related in Mr. Alanson Skinner’s “Material Culture of the Menomini”.[128] The Ojibwe garner their sugar crop much the same way as they did years ago, except that they have used large iron kettles since the coming of the white man. The sugar camps are rather permanent affairs, and the framework of the boiling house with its upright poles around the fire place to hold the kettles is left intact. A bark-covered wigwam is used to store the tools of sugar sap gathering, and granulation. Most of the sap vessels and storage vessels are made of birch bark, sewed with boiled basswood fiber or the core of the Jack Pine root. The vessels are rendered waterproof by the application of pitch secured by boiling Jack Pine cones.

In early April, the Ojibwe visit their camps, the men to repair the camps and the storage vats of hollowed logs, and to cut fire wood, the women to see that the sap buckets and mokoks are scrupulously clean and watertight. If some can not be repaired, rolls of birchbark are there to make new ones. The whole family then move to the camp and live in the large wigwam, while they make sugar for a month. During the sap flow, a man can chop holes and set taps into from two to three hundred trees in a day. The first flow of sap is the best, and it gets to be of a rather poor quality by the end of the flow. The Ojibwe will not use the night flow of the sap, which they say is bitter, so they cease collecting an hour before dark. Gathered sap is stored in hollowed basswood log vats, and covered over with birch bark to keep it clean. Boiling in the iron kettles is done much as the white man does it, except that foam is dissipated by stirring with a fresh brush of a spruce branch. The syrup is strained through a cloth and recooked in two or three quart quantities until it is ready to sugar. Then, while still warm, it is poured into a wooden trough, where it is pounded and crushed with a heavy wooden paddle as it hardens. It is stored in covered birch bark baskets called mokoks, of from twenty-five to seventy-five pounds capacity. The sugar is graded according to its whiteness and stored away. Sap is often added to the dregs in the kettles and a second grade sugar is secured. To waste or spill any of the sap is considered an affront to their deities, who punish such an act by causing the sugar to shrink after it is made.

ALISMACEAE (WATER-PLANTAIN FAMILY)

Arum-leaved Arrowhead (Sagittaria arifolia Nutt.) “wabasiˈ pîn” [white potato].[129] Both the Flambeau and the Pillager Ojibwe call this by the same name and use it exactly alike as far as its food value is concerned. The Pillager Ojibwe also use it as a medicine for man and horse. The Flambeau Ojibwe recognize that it is also a favorite food of ducks and geese. A similar species found in California is used by the Indians there as a potato under the name “wappate” or “wapatoo”, and is called by the whites there “Tule root.”[130] The corms are a most valued food source to the Ojibwe. They will dig them if they cannot get them more easily. Muskrat and beavers store them in large caches, which the Indians have learned to recognize and appropriate. It is difficult to dig them out still attached to the plant, because the connection between the roots and the corm is so fragile and small. The round corms are attached by a tiny rootlet to the main mass of fibrous roots, and are capable of reproducing the plant in a vegetative manner, just as the Irish Potato does. They are from one-half to an inch and a half in diameter and about three-quarters to two inches long. They are pure white inside, sweet and quite starchy. The Indian does not differentiate between this species and the Broad-leaved Arrowhead. For winter use, the potato is boiled, then sliced and strung on a piece of basswood bark fiber and hung up overhead for storage. They also use the fresh corms, cooking them with deer meat, and maple sugar. Some of the potatoes are kept over after cooking and the maple sugar is thickened until they might almost be called candied sweet potatoes.

ANACARDIACEAE (SUMAC FAMILY)

Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra L.), “bakwaˈ nak” [binding tree]. The Flambeau Ojibwe gather the berries to make a pleasant beverage much like lemonade. The berries are tart and are sweetened with maple sugar, soaked in water until required for use. They also gather and dry them for winter use. The dried berries are cooked in water with maple sugar, and form a hot drink, instead of a cooling one, as used in the summer and fall.

Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina L.), “bakwaˈ natîg” [binding tree].[131] The Pillager Ojibwe use the berries in the same way as the Flambeau Ojibwe use this species, and under the same name. They also store up the dried seed heads for winter use.

ARISTOLOCHIACEAE (BIRTHWORT FAMILY)

Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense L. var. acuminatum Ashe), “nameˈ pîn”, [sturgeon potato].[132] The Pillager Ojibwe often use this root in cookery to season the food. They claim it takes away any muddy taste from fish, and will render any meat dish digestible by anyone, even if they are sick. The roots are processed in lye water for cookery on a large scale.