Beck Cheryl - After the first full moon in April: a sourcebook of herbal medicine from a California Indian elder

Josephine describes the uses of "tea" (yerba buena), which she had previously bundled into a ring, then dried, for storage. Photo by Beverly Ortiz.

For Bryan Colegrove (Hupa/Yurok/Karuk), Kathy McCovey (Karuk), Bradley Marshall (Karuk/Hupa), and Virgil McLaughlin (Karuk/Hupa, 1955-2009), with thanks for the assistance they provide by taking me out to gather plants, and by gathering plants for me.
JOSEPHINE PETERS

For Josephine, whose knowledge, generosity, and patient, good nature, made it all possible.
BEVERLY R. ORTIZ

This book exists because of the strong conviction of herbalist Josephine Grant Peters (Karuk/Shasta/Abenaki) that in order for plants to heal, their medicinal uses must be shared. When Josephine and I first discussed this book, I asked her how much information she wanted to publish about the plants. When I asked that question, I was thinking about the innumerable ethnobotanies that have been published that do not include information about how medicinal plants are gathered and processed, or about the dosages that should be given to treat particular illnesses. When asked about this, Josephine was resolute that preparation details and dosages should indeed be included, with the exception of a handful of plants that she felt were so inherently dangerous to use that the details of their use should only be shared with local tribal people. The focus here is medicinal and food use. The spiritual purposes for which the Karuk use plants will remain with the Karuk community.

Although Josephine's collaboration with me and several other individuals in the creation of this book is certainly an act of tremendous generosity, Josephine herself would not see it in these terms. She wants to preserve plant knowledge for the benefit of future generations, but the level of detail in this book is motivated by something much more profoundJosephine's immutable conviction that unless she shares this information, the ability that she and other people have to heal others with these plants will spiritually die.

In making the decision to share her plant knowledge in a book, Josephine considered the fact that there are many people today who lack the type of restraint that was inherent in the way her people approached the gathering of plants for millennia; today there are people and companies who harvest these plants without any thought of giving back for what they take or of the overall sustainability of the plant populations. Josephine has witnessed the damage that unethical gatherers have done to particular patches of particular plants; but still, the plants will not heal if the knowledge is not shared. So a chapter on gathering ethics has been included in this book to guide people in sustainable plant gathering.

The plant knowledge in this book reflects the whole of Josephine's life. While some readers who seek to find in this book a frozen-in-time explication of ancient Karuk plant uses may be disappointed, the Karuk have never lived a frozen-in-time existence, separated from other people. A considerable portion of the plant uses in this book are based on ancestral practices, as shared with Josephine by members of her extended family and several community elders, but much of it is also based on the type of plant uses that one might come across in any relatively isolated, late 1920s and early 1930s rural community, where doctors trained in modern medicine lived miles away and hospitals were not an option.

When Josephine was young, she heard the dynamite explosions that signaled the conversion of dirt roads suitable for pack trains into paved roads suitable for cars and trucks. Josephine knew a bit of the world that preceded the pack trains, when foot trails linked one distant, small community to another, and river crossings occurred in redwood dugouts, but she never lived in that world.

The larger world began to intrude into Karuk country some seventy years before Josephine was born, in the 1850s during the gold rush, and many of Josephine's plant uses reflect the knowledge and sensibilities about plant use that the newcomers brought with them. They also reflect the knowledge and sensibilities of people Josephine met as she moved throughout California before settling in the Hoopa Valley, and later as she traveled throughout the United States and beyond. For this reason, the plant knowledge shared by Josephine within these pages includes uses of plants she learned from the sons of a Chinese herbalist and American Indian and indigenous doctors she met at conferences and other events throughout the United States and internationally. It also includes Josephine's own sensibilities about how to use particular plants that are based on her own experience trying them herself and later prescribing them to others.