Yana used poultices of roots of bracken fern, pounded and warmed for application to burns. The bulbs of false solomon seal were pounded fine and also hot soap-root poultices were applied to swellings, pains, or boils. Peeled California angelica roots were crushed and laid on aching heads.
Ground squirrel grease was used to soften rough hands and to relieve cracking of the skin from chapping.
Atsugewi employed green leaves of chokecherry, pounded as poultices, for cuts, sores, and bruises. The boiled liquor of pounded chokecherry bark was used for bathing wounds to promote healing.
They employed decoctions of wormwood to prevent blood poisoning and to treat cuts. Decoctions of greenleaf manzanita leaves were good for cuts and burns. Both oak bark and oak gall decoctions were drunk to prevent infection and catching colds and were given to women in childbirth. Atsugewi also chewed raw juniper berries as a treatment for colds.
Obviously there was a host of other treatments as we know of a large variety of other plants, roots, and fruits which were used medicinally.
Broken bones were set as best they could be set, and were bound up in simple but effective splints.
For general good health Garth states that an Atsugewi “... man chewed the top shoot off a young pine tree. Especially was this done by a father after his wife bore a child.”
In Yana sweat houses and probably in those of other tribes too, veins were cut with obsidian chips to “let the bad blood out” if a person felt ill.
Chapter XXXV
SPIRITS AND GHOSTS
Ghosts and spirits were one and the same, and were to local Indians as souls are conceived by white man, yet the Indian conception was more variable. Some spirits were good and others were evil, but all were feared and avoided whenever possible. They were frequently associated with omens and had somewhat the appearance of human beings. Among Atsugewi they were visible only to shamans, but were heard by nearly all persons. Yana commoners both saw and heard spirits, but only very rarely.