IROQUOIS HERBALISM — ^FENTON 519 



house. To his dismay, a Mohawk woman, whom he had been employ- 

 ing to search for it on her own, recognized it as one of their ordinary 

 remedies, but on the strength of his account of the regard the 

 Chinese had for it, she cured herself next day of an intermittent 

 fever which had been plaguing her several months. She had pre- 

 pared a simple infusion by soaking in water the root which she 

 crushed between two stones. Moreover, at the sight of Jartoux's 

 plate, which was sent up from Quebec at Lafitau's request, the 

 savages recognized their plant of Canada. "And as we had in hand 

 the different species, we had the pleasure of seeing a description so 

 exact and in such just proportions with the plant, that it did not 

 lack the least detail of which we had the proof before our eyes." 



Lafitau published 2 years later his discovery of the American gin- 

 seng species, Panax quinquefolium L., in the now rare "Memoire 

 * * * concernant la precieuse plante du Ginseng, decouverte en 

 Canada," Paris, 1718. Dwarf ginseng or groundnut, Panax tri- 

 folium L., which is still collected by the Seneca of western New York, 

 has the same Iroquois name. Both the Iroquois and the Chinese 

 singled out the same feature, the bifid root, for naming their respec- 

 tive species. Lafitau held that the Iroquois (Mohawk) word Gar- 

 ent-oguen, composed of orenta, hips and legs, plus -oguen, bifid, and 

 Ginseng derived from the Chinese, "looks like a man," were demon- 

 strable parallels in evidence of the Asiatic origin of Indians, and he 

 attributed their similarity to diffusion. Recent recordings of various 

 dialects— degar^do'g^i (M.), degai^'do'g? (Oa.), diaif'do'gf' (C). 

 dj^', = , or djai" dog?' (S.) — also mean "crotched body," the spindled 

 root resembling the hips and legs of a man. 



In the same report Lafitau observed how easy it is, even for the 

 Mohawks who distinguish between them, to confuse ginseng with its 

 relatives of the Aralia family. The Mohawks of his day called wild 

 sarsaparilla {Aralia nudicaulis L.), Tsioterese, "long root," and their 

 descendants, djohde'rise. A third member he did not name but 

 described; the modern Mohawks call it djohde'risegoowa, "great long 

 root"; it is spikenard {Aralia nudicaulis L.) The latter two are gen- 

 erally used among the Iroquois in blood remedies and for colds, but 

 the Caughnawagas of Lafitau's day ranked sarsaparilla among their 

 vulneraries. Besides, like the modern Seneca, they used ginseng to 

 purge babies on the cradleboard and as a stomachic; and the Huron 

 and Abenaki, whom he says were one culturally, employed it for 

 dysentary. 



If the report of Lafitau's discovery and the arrival of the botanical 

 specimen in Paris created a furore in the Royal Academy, at least 

 in Canada there was no question about the value of the plant. 



