ABORIGINAL USE OF WOOD IN NEW YORK 



195 



One universal Indian remedy for ill health was the sweating- 

 house, already mentioned. Another was vomiting, and songs, dances 

 and charms were largely employed, but they had many good vege- 

 table remedies. The fruits of trees will not be noticed here, nor 

 the use of herbaceous plants, but some reference to the use of wood 

 and bark may not be out of place. Loskiel and Kalm have described 

 most of these. 



The first mention of one of these remedies was by Cartier, when 

 spending the winter of 1535-36 at Quebec. His crew were smitten 

 by the scurvy, a disease to which the Indians there were also sub- 

 ject. One of these told him of a remedy, and two women brought 

 him several branches of a very large tree. He was " to boil the 

 bark and the leaves ; to drink of the liquor every other day ; and to 

 put the dregs on the legs of the sick." This was effectual, and 

 Cartier was extravagant in its praise. 



This tree the Indians called haneda or ameda. Hakluyt thought 

 it the sassafras, and Schoolcraft the box elder. Oddly enough 

 Champlain called it an herb. Belknap properly said it was an ever- 

 green, having leaves in the winter, adding: 



I am inclined to think that it was the spruce pine (Pinus 

 canadensis), which is used in the same manner by the Indians, 

 and such as have learned of them. Spruce beer is well known to 

 be a powerful anti-scorbutic ; and the bark of this and the white 

 pine serves as a cataplasm for wounds and sores. Belknap, p.47 



Pinus canadensis of Linnaeus is the hemlock spruce, and 

 Morgan shared in this opinion, which seems correct for another 

 reason. The Onondaga name for this tree is o-ne-tah, the common 

 Iroquois term, and it was the Iroquois language which Cartier heard 

 most on the St Lawrence, the names closely corresponding. 



Loskiel described several vegetable remedies, and among them 

 some obtained from trees. A decoction of the buds or bark of the 

 white ash was taken to cure a rattlesnake bite: 



A decoction of the roots and bark of the thorny ash ( A r a 1 i a 

 s p i n o s a) is used as a purifier of the blood. The Toothach-tree 

 (Zanthoxylum clava Herculis) resembles the ash, and is 

 thus called, because the Indians use its wood as a remedy against 

 tooth-ach. 



