Page 10 RAIN July/August 1984 Itching to Learn about ^ Ethnobotany? by Cathy Baker The Chehalis Indians once warmed Douglas fir cones over a fire as a prayer for sunshine. Sahaptin myth has it that Coyote, the preeminent character of Northwest coast Indian mythology, used the goldstar flower (Croci- dium multicaule) to replace the eyes Raven, the mythological trickster, poked out of the unsuspecting victim. The Nuxalk enjoyed the boiled cambium from the cottonwood tree as a "snack." To protect the young of the tribe, the Yakima made cradleboards for their babies using a "fender" made out of wood from the wild rose plant, since rose protects against ghosts. Quileute seal hunters would rub themselves with stinging nettles before going on seal hunts in order to stay awake, alert, and warm. These examples give insight into the place of plants in culture and into the interrelations between plants and aboriginal peoples—the focus of a discipline generally called ethnobotany. Its history dates back to the exploration of the New World, when explorers catalogued the botanical inventory of the North American continent in an attempt to discover its economic potential. Their observations of native plants, and the uses indigenous people made of them, provided the "first" natural history of the continent, and the bases for the beginnings of ethnobotany. Today, ethnobotany is far less utilitarian in its aims. Ethnobotanists now study native languages to see how people classify and conceptualize the plant (and animal) world; they look at references to plants in mythology, and study the effects human populations can have on the ecosystem; and, recently, ethnobotanists have been working with native groups in an effort to reintegrate indigenous plant foods into the diet. At the Seventh Annual Ethnobiology Conference held in Seattle in April, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, botanists, linguists, nutritionists, and health- service workers gathered to address these topics and present their recent work. This year's three-day conference culminated in a banquet of native foods, beginning with an array of hors d'oeuvres that included cow parsnip stalks, salmonberry "sprouts," and fish eggs clustered on kelp. The main course featured baked salmon and was followed by a demonstration by a Nuxalk elder, "On Making Ooligan Grease." Ooligans, also known by the name caiidlefish, are small oily fish found in the waters of the North Pacific. When dried, this fish can be burned as a candle. (Last year, when the conference was held in the plains region, conference-goers feasted on fresh bison.) The many topics covered at the conference included medicinal plant use, folk classification and naming, paleoethnobiology, nutritional values of native foods. Pacific coast ethnobotany, and Chinese nutritional and herbal medicine. Two of the most interesting presentations dealt with Mayan agroforestry and traditional Nuxalk foods. Fred Wiseman from M.I.T. discussed the history of and prospects for agroforestry in the Mayan lowlands. Recent findings suggest that the Mayan Indians of the late classic era (around 700 A.D.) relied much more on an agronomic system composed of a mix of tree, shrub, and herbaceous crops than scholars had previously thought. This agroforestry system provided a stable subsistence base, required minimal maintenance, and due to its great stability, could have supported the high population and prosperity that the Maya enjoyed during this period. As to why this magnificent culture collapsed, Wiseman suggested that the clue lay in changing subsistence patterns. After contact with the Spanish, the Maya replaced the forest-based system with intensive cultivation of maize. This single crop system depleted soil nutrients and offered less mobility, two factors that could have made the Maya more vulnerable to Spanish manipulation. What are the prospects for the renewal of agroforestry in the Mayan lowlands? Most of the present lowland forest is intact and suitable for an agroforestry system. In an area of the world that is so politically volatile, such a system might have many advantages, including a greater immunity from terrorist attacks. Living things, particularly plants, are at the interface of human needs and thought with nature. What happens when this vital link is severed? Much of the conference focused on the nutritional and cultural values of native foods for native groups today. Nutritionists have been discovering that traditional foods from the Southwest and Northwest have a much lower fat and salt content, and a higher calcium content when compared to commercial foods. In 1983 Health and Welfare Canada, a government agency, funded a program to enhance the health status and use of traditional foods among the people of the Nuxalk Nation of Bella Coola, British Columbia. As part of this program, agency-sponsored botanists and ecologists conducted a study to determine the availability of traditional plant foods in the environment, while program coordinators held nutrition classes and food excursions, with the help of elders, to teach people when, where, and how to collect native foods. In addition, the program continues to sponsor traditional food feasts and has started a traditional plant food garden in the
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