514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



in particular, content themselves with being sprinkled with cool water. It 

 seems as if the contrast of an extreme heat with the cold of the water ought 

 to seize them and cause their death * * * ; but they have the experience that 

 it does them good which is worth more than all the arguments that one could 

 make.** 



Plant remedies passed between Indians and the colonists of New 

 France, New England, New Netherlands, and New Sweden to an 

 extent that is difficult to estimate, and frequently the direction of bor- 

 rowing is uncertain. Seventeenth-century explorers were on the 

 lookout for plants which had been reported as sovereign remedies 

 against maladies that were current in Europe, and the rapid spread 

 from country to country of certain species like tobacco and sassafras, 

 the history of which is known, attests their wide acceptance into 

 European medical practice. Inadequately described at first, some 

 were to remain unknown botanically until the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, when collecting was stimulated in America to 

 furnish seeds for exotic gardens that were becoming fashionable in 

 England, and systematic botany was coming into being under Linne 

 in Sweden. The latter's student, Peter Kalm, and John Bartram, 

 Philadelphia botanist, were often hard put to decide which plants 

 a century after contact were native and whether Indians or colonists 

 first used them medicinally. 



The first plants reported by whites and adapted to their use were 

 those which Indians used most effectively. In New France, follow- 

 ing the mystery of Cartier's Annedda, Champlain (1615) and Sagard 

 (1623) reported several medicinal plants which were long known 

 only by their Huron names that sometimes enable us to identify 

 them. There are two poisonous plants, for which there is a long 

 subsequent literature relating to their use in Huron and Iroquois 

 suicides :^^ mayapple {Podophyllwm 'peltatwm L.), which has an ed- 

 ible fruit but a poisonous root, was clearly described by Champlain ; 

 and Sagard discovered Ondachiera, the deadly waterhemlock {Cicuta 

 maculata L.) (pi. 3, fig. 1). When individuals accidentally ate of 

 these, the Indians employed powerful emetics as antidotes; but they 

 also understood that mayapple furnished a reasonably safe cathartic 

 if they first baked the poisonous podophyllin from the roots; and 

 of waterhemlock and its relatives their physicians used the roots in 

 poultices for reducing sprains and inflammations. The plant known 

 as Oscar, "which does wonders in healing all kinds of wounds, 

 ulcers, and other sores," ^^ might possibly be bloodroot, basswood, or 

 sassafras; but phonetically, it more closely resembles onaahra'ge'ha 



» Lafltau, J. F., op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 371-372. 



^"'Fenton, William N., Iroquois suicide • • • Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 128, Anthrop. 

 Pap.. No. 14, pp. 80-137, 1941. 



*" Sagard, Father Gabriel, The long journey to the country of the Hurons, p. 195, George 

 M. Wrong, ed., Champlain Soc, Toronto, 1939. 



