PLANTS AND MEDICINE 
As with most Indians of North America, the Flatheads had two 
kinds of doctors: shamans and herb doctors. Shamans did not 
normally use plants to cure, but relied on magic and ritual to treat 
diseases stemming from supernatural causes; outward and visible 
shamanistic acts of curing included blowing and sucking noxious 
materials from the place affected, songs, etc. They were often 
called in when the naturalistic treatment of herb doctors did not 
work, and their work was considered more supplementary than 
antagonistic to that of the herb doctors. Some even learned to use 
herbal remedies (Turney-High, 1937). 
For diseases stemming from naturalistic causes, doctors well- 
versed in herbal lore were called in. These were just as often 
women as men. In fact most everyone in the tribe was aware of the 
more common medicinal plants, and many were household reme- 
dies (Turney-High, 1937). 
Flatheads used at least 67 species of plants for medicinal pur- 
poses. Plant medicines were administered in several ways, 
depending upon the illness. For cuts, burns, sores and other 
external problems, poultices from various plants and plant parts 
were employed. For fevers, colds, stomach aches, diarrhea and 
other internal problems, infusions made by boiling the plants or 
parts of plants were drunk. 
RELIGION AND BELIEFS ABOUT PLANTS 
As with most Indian tribes, the Flatheads had an animistic 
viewpoint of the world. Spirit beings were very important; that 
these were generally animals and not plants is probably because 
animals personified spirits more readily than plants. None-the- 
less, because plants figured significantly in the economics of 
living, especially food and medicine, they did enter into their 
religious and mythological world. 
The spring search for food was initiated with the First Roots 
Ceremony, a ritual common throughout the plateau region. It 
was necessary before any woman was allowed to search for food. 
To fail to do so, it was believed, resulted in a scarcity of roots. It 
was a tribal affair, and when the tribe still had access to the 
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