GILMOBE] ETHNIC BOTANY ' KK 



me and. pointing to the plants I liiul collettoi. said. "Bon pour mauger^i " 

 to wliich I replied. " iN> pas hon." He then said, " Bon pour medicine? " I re- 

 plied, "Oui." He again shook liatids and rode away. . . . On my return 

 through the village I was stopped by a group of squaws, who invited me very 

 kindly into tlieir lodges, calling me ^aknidaya ' (physician). I declined ac- 

 cepting their invitation, showing them that the san was near setting, and that 

 it would he night before I coul.l reach the l)oats. They then invited me to stay 

 all night; this also I declinetl, but suffered them to examine my plants, for all 

 of which I found they had names.' 



ETHNIC BOTANY 



In savage and barbarous life the occupation of first importance 

 is the quest of food. In tiie earliest times people had to possess a 

 practical working knowledge of plants with regard to their utiliza- 

 tion for food: those which were edible, those by which shift could 

 be made at need to avert famine, and those which on account of 

 deleterious properties must be avoided at all times, came to be known 

 by experience of all the people in their range. 



In the process of experiment some plants would be found which, 

 though not proving useful for food, would disclose properties which 

 could be used as correctives of unhealthy conditions of the body; 

 some would be found to allay fevers, some to stimulate certain func- 

 tions, others having the effect to stop hemorrhage, and so on. 



Certain persons in every tribe or social group, from taste and 

 habit, would come to possess a fund of such knowledge, and to the.se 

 all simpler folk, or those more occupied with other things, would 

 resort. These wise ones then would know how to add the weight 

 and dignity of ceremony and circumstance so that the laity should 

 not fail to award due appreciation to the possessors of such knowl- 

 edge; thus arose the rituals connected with the uses and the teach- 

 ing of the same. Persons who desired to acquire such knowledge 

 applied to those who possessed it. and if of approved character and 

 prudence they, upon presentation of the customary fees or gifts, 

 were dtdy instructed. These primitive professors of botany would 

 then conduct their disciples on private excursions to the haimts of 

 the plants and there impart to them the knowledge of the charac- 

 teristics and habits, ecologic relations, and geographic distribution 

 of the plants, together with their uses, methods, and tinK» of gather- 

 ing, preserving, and preparing for medicinal use, and the pro])er 

 way to apply thom. 



^ Bradbury must have been mistaken as to the meaning of the people or have misun- 

 derstood the term used, because the Omaha word for " physician " is wazathe. The 

 word iral-a"d<i!7i means " somethlns supi'rnatural." This may be the word Bradbur.v 

 heard and has given as wakendaija, or he may have misunderstood some other word 

 Xo such word as wakcndapa has been found by rae In the Omaha language. 



- Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of .\merica, p. 75. 



