508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



the demons, and to render his remedies more efficacious. This prescription con- 

 sisted in talking the bark of the ash, the spruce, the hemlock, and the wild cherry, 

 boiling them together well in a great kettle, and washing the whole body there- 

 with. He added that his remedies were not for women in their courses, and that 

 care should be taken not to go out of their cabins barefooted, in the evening.* 



Similar decoctions were in use among the Mohawk of Caughnawaga 

 in cases of colds, coughs, and rheumatism as recently as 1912, and the 

 tabu is characteristic of later Iroquois belief. 



In the face of these circumstances the French missionaries were 

 naturally slow to adopt new remedies when the supply that they 

 had brought with them ended, while in the tiny center of French 

 culture at Quebec European medicines were used almost exclusively. 

 After 1640 we read long lists of medical necessities required by the 

 hospital nuns of Quebec who were treating Indian patients for 

 smallpox that had come to them from Europe. Into the Ursuline 

 hospital willing Indian patients brought some folkways of the 

 forest. The Mother Superior speaks of them in Le Jeune's Relation 

 of 1640: 



The remedies that we brought from Europe are very good for the Savages, 

 who have no difficulty in taking our medicines, nor in having themselves bled. 

 The love of the mothers toward their children is very great, for they take in 

 their own mouths the medicine intended for their children, and then pass it into 

 the mouths of their little ones.* 



Two years later they dispensed over 450 medicines and their supply 

 was exhausted. The long list of necessaries of which they suffered a 

 great lack in the year 1665, for the relief of the patients then there 

 in large numbers, pleads for senna, rhubarb, jalap, and theriac, 

 among others; and for succeeding years there are similar, shorter 

 lists.^" 



However soon these deficiencies were corrected by cultivating herbs 

 in Quebec, as early as 1641 Charles Garnier in a letter thanking his 

 brother for a memorandum of the easiest remedies, which were never- 

 theless difficult because the ingredients were scarce in Canada, begged 

 for some medicinal seeds useful as purgatives and for information 

 concerning their growth which he contemplated at the mission of Ste. 

 Marie in the Huron country." 



A generation later, Lamberville, among the Onondaga near Syra- 

 cuse, bemoans the lack of a quantity of medicines as an aid to 

 converting the sick. 



It would be a bait wherewith to secure nearly all The dying. There are 

 some who, when they find that They are given no medicine, turn Their backs 



«Idem., p. 261. 



• Jesuit Relations, vol. 19, p. 21. 



"» Ibid., vol. 22, p. 173 ; vol. 49, pp. 205-207 ; vol. 50, p. 161 ; vol. 51, p. 113 ; vol. 52, pp. 

 107-109. 



" Ibid., vol, 20, p. 101. 



