Garrett - The Cherokee herbal : native plant medicine from the four directions

A Note on Cherokee Language and Pronunciation

The use of Cherokee words in The Cherokee Herbal is intended to add a cultural and historical dimension to this book. Although some direct translations of Cherokee words have been lost over the past several hundred years, I wanted to preserve words in the original language as provided by the elders themselves, and by old documents that otherwise end up collecting dust in some archive. Common names of plants in the Cherokee vernacular local to North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Arkansas would be based on the plants use in a formula, so some plants would be referred to by more than one name.

This book is not intended to teach the Cherokee language or to record every Cherokee word. I simply want to offer the reader a taste of this unique cultural dimension to the plant world and the uses of plants as helpers from a Cherokee perspective. A Cherokee language dictionary can be used to find many words not mentioned in this book. I also realize the importance of keeping certain words and plant uses sacred. Some of what I learned from the elders therefore does not appear in this book.

A list of syllables from the Cherokee syllabary follows, along with the corresponding sound in English that will assist in the Cherokee pronunciations.

The Medicine Way of Life

A Cherokee elder puts his hand on a plant at the edge of the Oconaluftee River at Toe String on a cool fall morning. This is a plant that the old ones used for thrush in the mouth and sore throat, he says. This is the one you can take for that hoarseness that keeps bothering you. He is pointing to yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima) as he continues. Some of the old people used this in a formula for easing childbirth. Here, scratch the bark with your knife. You see the yellow stem? Thats how you recognize it. He cuts a piece. Just chew on this, and it will help your throat.

As I write the plants Cherokee name in my notebook the old man asks, Why are you writing that down? I replied that I could not remember all he was telling me about the plants. In the old days you had to remember because you didnt have paper to write on. Besides, some folks would wonder why you are writing it down. You just gotta remember and learn the hard way.

It is with the support of several Cherokee and other elders that I share the plant-healing teachings I am putting forth in this book. As with my elder guide at the river, others have encouraged me not to write teachings down on paper, nor to use my computer to sort and store this information. Said one elder: It is anothers way to share with words; it is the Indian way to share with feelings.

Others have recorded these things and they were not respectednor were we for our way, as another elder put it. It was like when Mooney was doing the work here in Big Cove. He was taking the stuff he learned back to Washington. Why did the government need to know about the story of Rabbit, or about how we used the plants for Medicine? Since the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Cherokees forced relocation on the Trail of Tears, in which the U.S. Army transported the Cherokee to Oklahoma Territory, there has been a deep mistrust of the U.S. government on the part of the Cherokee for all the broken treaties and promises.

Only a couple of elders were willing to have their names referenced in this book. One of those elders was Doc Amoneeta Sequoyah, a Cherokee Medicine Man of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. I highly respected Doc for his willingness and determination that others should see and learn respect for the old ways. Doc, one of my teachers of Cherokee Medicine, did not mind speaking out to the non-Indian public. He was always curious about what was written in what he called my black book. He even warned me that others would steal everything and call it theirs, like so many have done in the past to Cherokees. Docs wife, Ella Sequoyah, and his children were very encouraging to me.

My mother, Ruth Garrett (nee Rogers), was concerned that my writing would be an issue with those tribal members who believe that we should just keep things the way they are, because people would not understand the way of things on the boundary (the boundary being the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina). My promise to the elders was to not share those things that were considered sacred and meant to be kept secret for the keepers of the way, the teachings of the ancestors.

LEARNING FROM OUR ELDERS

Like many others of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, I am a mixed blood: White and Cherokee. I felt fortunate to be chosen to learn the way of Cherokee Indian Medicine. I share Doc Amoneeta Sequoyahs vision that others will appreciate the teachings and the values of the old wisdom.

This book is about the teachings in Indian Medicine related to the plants and natural Medicine of the Cherokee and other southeastern American Indian tribes. Unless otherwise mentioned, notes on the plants and their use are from Cherokee Medicine men and women. There is reference to a Natchez-Cherokee, Archie Sams from Oklahoma, who I met in the 1980s when I was administrator of the Cherokee Indian Hospital in Cherokee, North Carolina. Reference to mountain folks in this book is in keeping with the way Cherokee refer to the friends of the Cherokee, those people of European descent who settled in the Appalachian and Smoky Mountains of eastern North America. These were hardy people respected by the tribes for their values and for their willingness to live in harmonious cohabitation with the environment. There is a wonderful body of knowledge and understanding in communities in Appalachia and along the Blue Ridge Mountains, from New York down to North Carolina. This knowledge also extends into Canada, where I have friends who helped me verify indigenous uses of plants in the north.