We explore more this week about traditional ways that Southern California Native Americans achieved balance and built relationships with their homelands. Kim Marcus (Serrano-Cahuilla) of the Santa Rosa Band reflects on a Cahuilla and Serrano community pulse point, the Ceremonial House:
Nursing Traditions, Indigenous Nursing, 2
Traditional Native American nurses also have a deep connection with the world. As they did in older times, contemporary Native people cherish a relationship with plants and consider them to be sacred, gifts of the Creation.
This is our second excerpt from Clifford E. Trafzer’s upcoming book, Strong Hearts & Healing Hands: Southern California Indians and Field Nurses, 1920-1950, which is scheduled to be published in March 2021 by University of Arizona Press. (Read the first excerpt in the January 27, 2021, News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center .)
Herbal Medicines, Gifts from the Creation
By Clifford E. Trafzer
Native American nurses once had dominion over herbal medicines of their people. Indigenous nurses had broad knowledge of and used herbal medicines within families, villages, and communities. They had intimate knowledge of herbal medicine that fought illnesses and poor health conditions. American Indian nurses understood indigenous pharmaceuticals used in every village in Southern California. (69) “It is also true,” [Katherine Siva] Saubel once explained, “that we cure ourselves with medicinal herbs and other things. As Indians, we have always known how to prepare them (herbal remedies) and how to cure ourselves.” (70) Saubel continued, saying, “Long ago we also used to gather plants to cure ourselves. We knew where to gather medicinal herbs.” (71) Indian nurses gathered creosote in the spring, snapping the dark green ends of the plant and collecting the stems, flowers, and leaves into baskets. The common desert creosote bush provided Indians of Southern California a significant plant medicine. Many Native Americans referred to the plants as greasewood, and Cahuilla people called creosote, átukul. (72)
Dorothy Ramon (Photo by Carolyn Horsman)
When Serrano Dorothy Ramon was a child in the early twentieth century, she remembered: “Long ago one girl gave me some medicine.” Ramon recalled, the girl made a tea from the creosote. (73) After gathering the thin stems and pungent tiny green leaves, nurses boiled the stem and leaves in water. “It was very strong. It really made me feel funny. I felt funny.” Dorothy felt “as if I was going to pass out, almost. But I didn’t. That’s what that strong medicine did.” (74) Like the Cahuilla, Cupeño, Chemehuevi, Kumeyaay, and other indigenous people of Southern California, Serrano people adopted the common English name of “greasewood” when speaking of creosote. Indigenous nurses used creosote because, “it is really strong medicine.” (75)
Creosote (in Cahuilla, átukul) (Akos Kokai Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
In the early 2000s, indigenous nurse Katherine Saubel cured a patient of a raging sore throat and damaged vocal chords. For five months the man had suffered from an injured throat to the point that he could barely speak. Following a meeting of the California Native American Heritage Commission in Redding, California, Saubel told the man, “when we return to the Morongo Indian Reservation, I will cure your sore throat.” (76) The two flew from Sacramento to Ontario, California. Then they drove a car east on Interstate 10 to the Morongo Indian Reservation near present-day Banning, California. Once the man helped Saubel exit the car and enter her home off Malki Road, Saubel told him to continue driving down into the low desert near Palm Springs but to get away from the freeway and approach a plant not contaminated with automobile exhaust. (77) She instructed him to walk into the desert and find a healthy creosote plant with very green leaves. (78)
A large creosote bush in view of San Jacinto Peak (Chris English Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Nurse Saubel instructed the man to approach a green creosote plant with new growth, explain his health problems, and ask the plant for healing. Before gathering the leaves, Saubel instructed him to ask the plant’s permission to pick the newest ends of each stem, which he picked and placed in a paper sack. Saubel had warned the man not to put the creosote into a plastic container as the plastic would take away the plant’s healing power. Once the man took the creosote home, he boiled water and stepped the creosote in the hot water, creating creosote tea. He drank one cup in the morning and one cup in the evening, each time feeling reactions in his throat. After drinking creosote tea a few days, his voice returned to normal. The creosote tea healed his vocal chords. Within days, the man could speak normally once more. (79)
Katherine Saubel also remembered the curing of her earache when she was young. As a child, Katherine remembered that she suffered from chronic earaches in the inner ear. Her mother, an indigenous herbal nurse, boiled various medicinal plants and placed the medicinal fluid into Katherine’s ear. A relative had Katherine lay on her side and blew air into her ear while praying the entire time. They placed a heated rock on a bed and told her to lay quietly on her side, using the rock as a pillow. She remained in a prone position for some time until the rock turned cold. During the procedure, “the heat went into my ear,” Saubel reported. “And then it was all right. My ear never got inflamed again.” The procedure cured her earache, which never reoccurred during her life. (80)
Native American nurses knew a number of other medical techniques to cure illnesses and conditions common among Indian communities. Nurses had in-depth knowledge of plant medicine and every community had nurses with knowledge of plant medicine. Nurses understood the spiritual qualities of and use of plant medicine. Native nurses had various degrees of knowledge and experience. Native Americans of Southern California considered plants to be sacred, gifts of the creation. Plants originated from the bodies of the “first people or beings.” The Cahuilla called these first beings nukatem, and the people believed the spirits still influence actions on earth, such as the power of plant medicines. (81)
White sage (qas’ily in Cahuilla) (Dionysia Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
According to Serrano elder Dorothy Ramon, plants “were made out of people’s bodies.” They were made at the time of indigenous creation when people “transformed themselves into plants” and “they called it medicine.” (82) American Indian nurses of Southern California believed that all plants were personified. They had life and spiritual power for the benefit of the people. Plants were a gift of creation. Native nurses believed that the power of the plant to cure stemmed from their spiritual origins, and they could be effective if asked to intervene in a person’s ill health. For this reason, Native nurses gave thanks to plants before picking and applying them. Nurses also sang to or prayed for patients when they administered herbal medicines. (83) “The medicines are very beneficial,” Dorothy Ramon once explained, “If you drink it, it will heal you. It’s good.” In the past, Ramon reported, many Indian “people could heal themselves with them herbs.” (84)
According to the Native American belief system, plant and spiritual medicine was most effective when patients had faith in their curative power and efficacy of treatments. (85) Dorothy Ramon reported, “Long ago the Indians used to have all those things they would heal themselves with.” (86) Indian nurses relied on plant medicines, prayers, and songs to heal patients. They regularly prayed and sang over the plants and patients. Nurses also possessed knowledge of sacred places where nurses obtained healing power or conducted healing ceremony. At times, indigenous nurses used sacred objects to support their healing practices. Ramon related this concept, saying “They would sing over it first.” In addition, indigenous nurses “would do all sorts of things [in dealing with plant medicines] because they were sacred.” (87) Tribal people believed that in taking plant medicines from their local environments, the plants literally sacrificed themselves — gave their lives — for the benefit of humans. In reciprocity, humans had to give thanks and gratitude for this gift of life. American Indian nurses understood this reciprocal relationship and conducted songs and prayers before taking the medicine plant, and they sang and prayed while administering plant medicines to patients. As Dorothy Ramon stated, “If you believe in it, you will be healed.” (88)
Yerba santa (tanwivel in Cahuilla) sprouting upward on February 3, 2021. (Pat Murkland Photo)
Ramon reported that within the Serrano communities, very powerful and insightful women existed known as hunatanqam. (89) These individuals were not shaman but were “special people … who were born with special talents.” Such talents included serving others as nurses and treating “people well.” In English, people would have designated some as nurses. The hunatanqam gave people sage advice and educated tribal members about how to treat mentally, physically, and spiritually-caused ailments. “They would give people advice,” Ramon reported, and “they knew how to do things” such as heal others. (90) The hunatanqam had advanced knowledge of herbal medicines, or nursing expertise such as knowledge of dietary deficiencies as causes of illnesses. They intuitively knew what a person needed, and they would provide specific treatment to individuals on a case-by-case basis. (91)
(Explore more about Strong Hearts & Healing Hands.)
Notes by C. Trafzer
(Ed. note: Notes are numbered as they are in the chapter, “Nursing Traditions, Indigenous Nursing.”)
70. Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1 (Banning, Ca.: Malki Museum Press, 2004), 229.
71. Ibid., 214.
72. Ibid., 229.
73. Dorothy Ramon and Eric Elliott, Wayta’Yawa’: Always Believe (Banning, Ca.: Malki Museum, 2000), 166.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Clifford E. Trafzer, Fighting Invisible Enemies: Health and Medical Transitions Among Southern California Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), 49
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Saubel and Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1, 240.
81. Lowell John Bean, Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 166-168.
82. Ramon and Elliott, Wayta’Yawa’: Always Believe, 387-388; Saubel and Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 2, 1156.
83. Wyandot-Huron elder Eleonore Sioui from Wendake, Quebec, once explained to the author that the plant has power through its creation but medicine women ask the Creator to put healing power into the plant through song and prayer to do the needed work necessary to heal a patient. Indigenous nurses and doctors of Southern California believed the same way and used song and prayer to enhance and ensure the healing power of plant medicine.
84. Ramon and Elliott, Wayta’Yawa’: Always Believe, 387.
85. Western medical providers explained that the psychological belief of a Native patient could heal patients. Native nurses believed medicinal plants had life and spirit and nurses could infused spiritual power into plant medicines, making them potent and able to cure.
86. Ramon and Elliott, Wayta’Yawa’: Always Believe, 387.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., 388.
89. Ibid., 293.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
Qas’ily (Pat Murkland Photo)
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