Myth, Magic, Fable & Folklore
Perhaps the best place to start this chapter is to describe an Indian tale about arrowhead.
Years ago, there was a young woman from a peaceful tribe out gathering plants when she spotted a band of warriors from a nearby warring tribe sneaking up on her village to attack it. She shouted out a warning to her people, who rushed to arm themselves.
Since the attacking band was fairly small, it aborted the ambush, but took the young Gatherer hostage. Several times on their multi-day journey home, the warriors punished her by holding her fingers in the campfire in the evening, burning them severely.
During the night, she secretly rubbed her wounds with arrowhead root that she had smuggled in her skirt. By morning, her burned fingers had healed. When her captors searched her to see what magic potion she was using, they found nothing, because she had swallowed the root.
This unexplained magic frightened the tribe, who declared that her fingers were tough like arrowheads. They decided to let her fate decided by the entire band later.
But the next day, it was clear that she was pregnant, with her bulging tummy.
She remained a captive of the tribe for months, until the child was born. On the night after his birth, the tribe built a huge bonfire on which to set her alight.
In her tent, she turned when she heard a young man’s voice. It was her baby, now a teenager.
He told her that he was the root she had gathered and, because she had always respected the plants of the forest, he would protect her. He told her to flee into the woods and he would point the way home.
When the warriors approached the tent, looking for Gatherer, they encountered the son, who warned them against going after his mother. When they tried to attack him, he made them all ill, providing them with a cure only after they had promised not to ever make war again, and to respect every living thing.
The number of elements in this story that reveal details about the uses and risks associated with arrowhead root are many.
First, arrowroot is used as a pain reliever, to treat burns and an astringent. Using a poultice or tincture on wounds helps to heal the injuries rapidly. The Gatherer healed her burns using arrowroot.
Second, arrowroot, when consumed in large quantities, causes severe stomach distress, including stomach distension. Gatherer appeared pregnant after consuming the root, and the warriors became ill when her son filled them with arrowroot.
Third, arrowhead plants are distinctive because of their leaves shaped like arrow tips. It grows only in forested areas. They pointed the way home for Gatherer.
In this one story, the natives incorporate the uses, the warnings, methods of use and the description of the plant. But there is more.
Permeating all First Nations beliefs is respect for the natural world around them and using only what is needed. Those who disrespect nature do not understand it and will suffer. Because Gatherer respected nature, she was protected by it, while the warring tribe, who showed no such respect, were punished for their overindulgence.
The Reason for Indigenous Myths and Tales
In the same way that Aesop’s Fables told a children’s story but also imparted a moral lesson, the fables of the indigenous tribes of North America also reveal knowledge that is critical to survival in the wild. They do more than that, though. They act as mnemonics, creating a vivid and unforgettable image in the mind, making them easy to remember.
Without a written language, the natives were able to pass vital knowledge on from generation to generation.
While it seems that the Indian stories are primarily about magic and mystical religious beliefs, they go well beyond theta, whether they are stories involving the Great Spirit or stories about ravens and bears and coyotes.
The following stories highlight important lessons about some of the most common and valuable edible plants in the Pacific Northwest.
The Story of Bitterroot
A Salish tribe, ages ago, lived in what is now the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, where winters are particularly harsh. As the severe winter wore on, their store of game ran lower and lower, until they were on their final meal.
An elderly woman from the band wandered up into the hills, despondent. She had used the last of her food, too, and she was heartbroken that her family was starving.
She prayed to the Great Spirit, pleading for help. As she prayed, with her long grey hair cascading about her, she cried. The tears ran down her hair, freezing as they hit the ground, forming tall spires like stalagmites, and turning a silvery green as they peered up through the thin layer of snow.
The Great Spirit told her to harvest this plant and bring it to her family. He told her that only she, or other women from the tribe should harvest, because only they knew when and where to pick.
The bitterroot helped the tribe survive the winter and became a staple part of the Salish diet.
This story has several important elements.
Bitterroot remains green throughout the harsh winter, growing in a whorl-like fashion from its root crown. It does not have a single stem. The leaves or elemental stems look like the leaves of a succulent, long and tapering to a smooth point. These were the old woman’s tears.
Bitterroot grows in gravel and rocky areas of the mountain regions in the Pacific Northwest, as high as 10,000 feet. The woman had retreated to the hills to plead for help from the Great Spirit.
Bitterroot is used to treat the heart and increase stamina. Because the woman was heartbroken, the plant is associated with the heart. Because the Salish were able to survive the winter on this plant, it is associated with endurance.
Only the women of the tribe, or men accompanied by one of the women can harvest. This is because the plant is only at its best after a few years of growth, and the women were the gatherers of the tribe, knowing where to find various plants.
Like most of the native myths, the fable carries fact within it.
The Legend of Fireweed
This legend has a more practical application. The connections to facts are obvious.
One day, a young warrior is wounded and captured by a rival tribe. His girlfriend comes to rescue him and, to distract his captors, she sets fires at one end of the village.
As the two flee, they are discovered and the tribe gives chase.
The Great Spirit notes their plight and takes pity on them. As the girl runs, flames shoot up from her footsteps, setting the grass on fire behind her and facilitating their escape.
The lessons here are clear. Fireweed grows in the plains and intermountain regions across the Pacific Northwest. Shortly after a brush or grass fire burns through an area, fireweed is the first to sprout. The flowers are a beautiful magenta or flame color and grow in the shape of a flame that blooms from the bottom up. Of course, since the young man was wounded, fireweed has uses as a treatment for wounds and blisters.
The Origins of Violets and Strawberries
Many of the legends told by First Nations people simply seek to explain the origins of a particular item or occurrence in nature. Some can be quite graphic, such as the story of Coyote’s Strawberry (https://www.gusd.net/cms/lib/CA01000648/Centricity/Domain/2027/AmericanIndianMythsAndLegends.pdf p314). Others clearly emerged after the arrival of the Spanish and white people, like The Well-Baked Man (https://www.gusd.net/cms/lib/CA01000648/Centricity/Domain/2027/AmericanIndianMythsAndLegends.pdf Page 46).
Others seem only to want to explain why certain plants grow in specific areas. Many of these stories evolve and change from region to region and era to era, as many oral records do. This is the case with two separate stories, from two separate tribes and regions of North America—one on the plains, the other in intermountain areas.
Violets
This story also has roots in the Iroquois of the east.
A warrior once encountered a young woman from another tribe. The girl was so beautiful that he could not get her out of his mind, but he could not afford to buy her from the other tribe. All he could think of was her beautiful eyes.
This warrior was well-liked and well-respected by all, including the animals of the forest. Many times, as he slept under the stars in the woods, the animals would hear him talking in his sleep about the girl. They decided to help him win her. The birds, hearing his song of love, took up the tune and lured the girl into the woods, where she and her suitor fell in love.
As they made their way back to his village, the other band took up their weapons and pursued them. They caught them in the forest but were enraged when they saw that she had braided her hair around his neck. This was a symbol that she was his willing captive.
The tribe killed them both, leaving their bodies lying there. The girl, dead, gazed skyward with her beautiful violet eyes, tears dripping from the lashes.
The Great Spirit, seeing their great love and sacrifice, turned her eyes to flowers. The birds and animals carried the seeds to every part of the earth, so that the world could witness this great love.
This is why violets grow in every forest but will also visit fields and open areas.
Strawberries
My father told me a variation of this story that he had learned from a Cree friend, in the 1920s, on the prairies. Other versions come from bands further west, in the foothills.
Instead of violets, the Great Spirit turned the whites of the girl’s eyes into the flowers of the strawberry and her long hair into the strawberry runners that grow every season, seemingly reaching toward the forests and bushes. The red fruit is, alternately, her lips, or other blood-engorged body parts. Since strawberry prefers to grow at the margins of fields and waterways, but thrives in open fields, the runners offer a mystical explanation.
Stinging Nettle: The Trickster
Other legends appear to have been modified from the original, often at the expense of the white man. This is the case with the story of the stinging nettle. It provides a lesson for those who do not respect nature.
Nettle is a very valuable medicinal herb with a wide variety of applications. It is also a culinary herb, quite edible or used as a tea. However, it must be cooked to rid it of the sting of the very fine hairs on the leaves and parts of the stem.
Nettle, like the coyote, often is portrayed as a trickster in native mythology.
The modern variation of the story takes aim at the white man’s foolishness in labelling this plant as a weed.
According to the myth, nettle once was a shimmering gold color, with distinct thorns and barbs to make it easily identifiable. When human beings failed to respect nature and the Great Spirit’s gifts, the plant changed to a non-descript green with almost invisible poisonous hairs, to blend in with the other plants and punish man for his foolishness.
Other versions of the story do not identify white men as the problem, but wasteful human beings, in general.
The Douglas Fir Cones
Some tales simply are stories, with no moral, no lesson and only a cursory connection to reality. This is the case with the story of the Douglas fir cone.
The tale begins with a mouse with the ability to climb the tallest trees in the forest. One day, a fire swept through the forest. To escape the flames, the mouse climbed up the Douglas fire, barely ahead of the fire. As it reached a branch, it dived into a cone that hung downward on the tree, unlike other evergreens with upward-turned cones.
The fire burned the hair off his tail. But did not burn his body and he survived.
That is why today we see Douglas fir cones with little shields and what appears to be the hind quarters of mice with singed tails hanging from the layers of the cone.
The Gold-haired and Blue-Eyed Girls
The last story appears to be taken from white settler’s lore, since there were few blue-eyed people among the indigenous tribes. Still, the tale seeks to explain why certain plants grow together.
Two little girls, one blue-eyed and the other with golden hair, decided to visit a wise old woman on the hilltop a short distance from their village. They wanted the old lady to reveal the secret as to how to make everyone happy.
They played with all the creatures and living things in the woods and meadows along the way, arriving just before dark. They offered a basket of goodies that they had picked along the way.
When they asked her how to make everyone happy, the woman simply smiled and said, “I will show you.”
That night, the two girls, who always played together, did not return home. When the villager set out to search for them, all they found was a bright beautiful goldenrod and a blue aster growing next to it at the foot of the hill.
But after that, whenever the people saw the two flowers, always together, they smiled and were happy, for they knew the Great Spirit had taken care of them.