The Ethnopharmacology of the Early Americans: An examination of communication concerning medicinal plant usage within and among the Native American, Euro-American, and African-American communities in the southeastern United States
Loeffler, Wisteria F.
Loeffler, Wisteria F.
Abstract
The Native American, Euro-American and African-American medicinal usage of plants in the southeastern United States during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was influenced by each community's established knowledge of medicinal plants and information transferred among the communities. Although there is substantial documentation that these three communities obtained information from one another, the extent of each culture's influence on the others, as well as the direction of information exchanged concerning medicinal plant applications are poorly understood. This study addresses the extent and direction of communication in these three groups by an analysis that compares the medicinal plant applications of 66 species (52 genera). Each of these species is known to be used by at least two of the three cultural groups. Of the three cultural groups m this analysis, the Euro-American community incorporated the largest amount of information from another culture. Thirty-five out of 45 native North American species (77 .7%) were found to be used by the Euro-Americans for purposes similar to those of the southeastern Native Americans. This was interpreted to represent information transferred from the Native Americans to the Euro-Americans. The African-American influence on the Euro-American community is less clearly represented in the data, probably due to the dearth of documentation about medicinal plant application within the African-American community. However, two non-native North American species, Ricinus communis L. and Chenopodium ambrosioides L., serve as examples of species from which medicinal properties were apparently discovered within the African-American community and transferred to the Euro-American and the Native-American communities. Because of the infrequent occurrences of shared medicinal plant applications between the African-American and the Native American communities, these cultural groups appear effectively isolated from the knowledge systems of one another, except for secondary contact via the EuroAmerican community. In addition to acting as an intermediary between the African-American and Native American communities, the Euro-American community also contributed knowledge of several medicinal plants from Europe. These are Allium sativum L., Brassi c a rapa L. , Plantago major L. , and Verbascum thapsus L. These results are discussed in a historical context. Emphasis is placed on the possible mechanisms by which medicinal plant information was exchanged and includes discussion of cultural factors that may have prevented the dissemination of information.
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1995-05-01
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Biology