Fever and chills.
ROSA GALLICA
(Ind. Mal-va-pol)
American Malva rosa. This rose tree has to some extent been the subject of discussion among some of our botanical explorers and the result was always one of indecision.
Now let us look back a few years before the founding of the California Missions, and thus settle the dispute for all time. Twelve miles eastward of the Santa Barbara Mission is a small village by the name of Carpenteria, and at one time, this village was one of the largest Indian settlements in existence.
Before the arrival of the mission friars this place was a dense forest of the giant elm, Ulmus pubescens, a tree which is very soft and easy to work and the Indian settlement became the scene of great boat-building activity. The biggest and best trees were selected, hewed out and shaped into boats, and their boats were later used to navigate from Santa Barbara across the channel to Santa Rosa Island and other points. The Indians traded with the inhabitants of these islands, and thus they attained a great deal of magnetic iron in exchange for the wild products of the Pacific coast mainland. The magnetic iron was of general use among the Indians, being made into hammers, axes, scraping and cutting knives, fighting weapons, etc., all made in true Indian mechanical design.
Other valuable rock materials were also traded for, such as obsidian for arrowheads and small mortars, metates made of the volcanic rock found on the islands, and also ironwood. These were all materials much preferred by the Indians to those of the mainland, which were rather unfit to shape into stone utensils because they did not have the proper cleavage. The Santa Barbara mountain ranges offered none of these materials—only the minerals, Ullmannite, Oligocene rock and red jasper which sometimes served as passably fair substitutes.
Referring again to the trade articles of the island of Santa Rosa, the Indians, like their white brothers, liked to change and use different medicines. While navigating the rough sea across the Santa Barbara channel in their little boats, some of them would sometimes catch cold from getting wet and being exposed to cold winds. When reaching the islands some would have a high fever and chills, and then aid was given them in the form of Malva rosa, this being the plant used to break up the fever. And it will do so if properly administered. The Indians had so much faith in its value that they brought some of the seeds to the mainland where they were planted.
Later, on its introduction among other Indian tribes of the coastal belt, the plant found its way north- and southward until the coming of the California mission founders. They learned of the plant’s medicinal value through Indian information, and were only too glad to adopt it for their own use—that plant and many others which proved superior to those brought by them from Europe and which they then discarded.
Thereupon the friars adapted themselves to the care and use of the herbs of the Indians.
This is the story of the Malva rosa after which the island of Santa Barbara bears its name Santa Rosa, or “Holy Rose,” and botanically Rosa gallica.