Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians

by Huron H. Smith

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.