Pre-Contact medicine (Native American history)

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: Traditional American Indian cultures had a number of explanations of illness and approaches to healing, including medicinal, ritualistic, and supernatural approaches

During the prehistoric period, Native American groups had adequate medical systems for successfully treating illness and disease, consisting of a corpus of time-tried explanations and therapeutic procedures that were inextricably related to the notion of supernatural and natural causes. The cause, diagnosis, and prognosis of all illnesses and diseases were explained by a definite classification that was usually unique to a particular group.

Medical Systems

Most external injuries, such as fractures, dislocations, wounds, bruises, skin irritations, snake and insect bites, and even occupationally related deaths, were considered to have been caused by natural means. Many internal illnesses and psychological afflictions, however, were diagnosed as being the result of sorcerers who were capable of manipulating supernatural malevolent powers, resulting in maladies that could be treated only by medical practitioners, or shamans, who possessed special benevolent religious powers and abilities.

Indigenous medical systems resulted from a group’s particular adaptation to a certain environment—its wide variety of medicinal as well as noxious plants. It was not unusual for Native Americans to learn medical procedures from the close observation of certain animals. For example, in the early spring, when deer go from browsing to grazing, they will develop diarrhea, and they consume clay to correct this condition. Similarly, clay eating, or geophagy, was universally utilized by Native Americans for curing diarrhea. Clay was also applied externally for certain dermal eruptions, as clay effectively absorbs liquids.

Native American hunters and gatherers were more concerned with illness than with the advent of death because of their need to maintain a high degree of mobility in order to exploit the animal and plant foods that were located in different areas, according to elevation and time of year. Consequently, illness could debilitate a group’s strategies for obtaining food. Because of this concern, Native Americans developed extensive and successful methods of interpreting and treating different afflictions by the use of medical practitioners.

Shamans

The principal medical practitioner was the shaman, a man or woman who had acquired supernatural curing power through a variety of ritualized procedures, but more often through the vision quest, dreaming, receiving a sign, inheritance from a kinsperson, survival of an illness, and less frequently, resurrection after “death.” The supernatural power to cure could be general or specific to certain maladies, and usually one’s tutelary spirit was associated with curing a particular illness. For example, bear power was most effective in treating burns, heron power to retrieve a lost soul.

Shamans maintained their power through frequent renewal rituals such as sweating, dreaming, reciting special curing songs, isolation, fasting, and continually revitalizing their medicines and paraphernalia through purification. Usually, during an annual rite, shamans would publicly demonstrate their powers to the congregation; this was an occasion when one’s power could be stolen by a more powerful individual. The practitioner’s life was further burdened by almost continual stress in observing strict behavioral and dietary taboos, which, if violated, could mean the shaman’s loss of power or even illness and possibly death.

The curing knowledge and skills of a shaman were sometimes acquired through serving an apprenticeship to a known shaman or to an established practitioner of one’s family who would serve as a sponsor and guide during the often long and arduous training period. Shamans tended to work individually but sometimes required the assistance of herbalists, Native American women who usually had a more complete knowledge of local plants and their medicinal uses and properties than did men. Often esoteric medical knowledge was jealously guarded.

Shamans were respected and even feared, for a person who could cure was also believed capable of sorcery. If a patient died, the attending shaman could be accused of being the sorcerer. Medical practitioners were sometimes physically different because of blindness, minor congenital defects, or permanent injuries. They were also considered psychologically different from others because of their ability to perform shamanistic rites such as soul-flight, physical and spiritual transformation, legerdemain, ventriloquism, glossalalia (nonmeaningful speech or “speaking in tongues”), and various prophetic skills.

Causes of Illness

Native Americans were not disease-free. They experienced mostly gastrointestinal disorders, arthritis, pneumonia, and some endemic maladies. Therefore, illnesses and injuries attributable to natural causes were well understood and could be treated by an elderly, more knowledgeable kinsperson. Supernatural maladies and death could be caused by moral transgression, unfulfilled dreams, misusing one’s power, sorcery (as in soul loss, spirit intrusion, or object intrusion), and, in some cases, poisoning.

Spiritual or supernatural illnesses were invariably thought to be caused by a sorcerer who had successfully manipulated an individual’s soul or tutelary spirit because the victim had offended or humiliated someone—or simply because the sorcerer was malicious. A person who was greedy, selfish, boisterous, or malicious was subject to being sorcerized. Consequently, the fear of sorcery was an effective means of social control, not only because of the dire consequences but also because one was not always certain who was a sorcerer.

Illness could be self-induced through breaking a taboo or by not informing a person who was to suffer an illness or some misfortune, as revealed in one’s dream. If one had such a prophetic dream, and if the person in the dream was not properly warned, it was common for the dreamer to experience that specific misfortune. In fact, many Native Americans, upon awakening in the morning, revealed their dreams to an elderly member of the family who would interpret the dream’s significance and prescribe appropriate behavior to prevent misfortune.

It was not unusual for an aged or sick shaman to give up his or her curing power through a special ritual, one that ensured the particular power would be acquired later by another person. It also freed the aged shaman from further responsibilities and possible maladies. Illness or even death could occur if one failed to acknowledge that one possessed curing power and should fulfill the obligations of this responsibility.

Women sometimes became shamans after menopause, when they could receive obstetrical power for assisting as midwives in difficult deliveries, prolapse, uterine hemorrhaging, or cases of malposition. Female shamans were knowledgeable about abortives and contraceptives, and they instructed the new mother about postnatal dietary and behavioral taboos. They often instructed a menarcheal girl about pertinent taboos associated with being a woman. They administered decoctions, roots, powders, and other medicines for dysmenorrhea and other female disorders, even when fecundity was thought to be a problem. Female shamans were, on occasion, sought for empowering courting flutes or providing love incantations or medicines.

Universal to Native Americans was the strict observance of dietary and behavioral taboos that surrounded an individual’s death, for if the survivors violated purification rites intended to prevent spiritual contamination, failed to accord the deceased certain respect, mentioned the name of the deceased, or dreamed improperly of the dead person, or if the widow or widower married too soon, then a specific illness would beset the offender, inflicted by the dead person’s ghost. Tribes followed their own death and mortuary customs.

Nor was it unusual for a person who had not accorded proper respect through the strict observance of taboos associated with killing an animal to become ill. For example, a man who killed a bear had to sing the death song of the creature and, for a prescribed period, abstain from sexual relationships and eat a restricted diet. If the hunter was remiss, the dead bear might appear in the man’s dream and pull back its scalp, which could result in the hunter losing his mind and being condemned to endless wandering and continual hunger.

Curing Rituals

Treatment of supernatural illnesses depended upon an impressive array of medicines, cures, and ritual therapies that required the intervention of a shaman. These rituals were shamanistic performances that included dancing, singing, drumming, and the use of religious paraphernalia that were personal and power-associated. Medical knowledge was jealously guarded, for it was feared that a shaman could lose his or her power if the knowledge were divulged.

An important aspect of treating supernatural illnesses was the group medical inquest, or therapeutic interview, a collective ceremony in which the patient and shaman were joined by family and friends, and on occasion the entire village. This collective psychodrama functioned to integrate the group and to reinstate a moral order. It was an effective therapeutic session that publicly permitted shamans to demonstrate their power and ability. Shamans were sometimes attended by a medical chorus who chanted curing songs and played percussion and wind instruments which were believed to facilitate a shaman’s power flight in seeking a vision or recovering a lost soul.

The group medical inquest also afforded the patient a managerial role, expiated guilt through oral catharsis, facilitated group confession of moral transgressions, and provided an opportunity for others to make confessions of transgressions that would prevent them from becoming ill. These rituals invariably lasted until the patient was completely rehabilitated, which meant that the practitioner and his or her entourage would reside temporarily with the patient, noting reasons for illness and anxiety.

Shamans effectively utilized various prophetic rituals and interpreted signs to ascertain the diagnosis and prognosis of illness, and even the specific cause. The offending sorcerer could be identified and might later participate in removing the malevolent power that was causing the affliction. Often a shaman’s prophetic abilities in foreseeing medical problems were enhanced by the use of drugs, tobacco, fasting, spiritual transformation, hypnosis, dreaming, trances, and the use of musical instruments and singing. Some groups had prophetic devices such as special tule mats, sand paintings, smoke, or a container of water, or they had tutelary spirits that would communicate the needed information.

Prior to a curing ceremony, it was not uncommon to tie a shaman’s hands and feet securely with rawhide and place him behind a hide screen. Immediately he would throw the loose rawhide over the screen. To demonstrate their power before curing, shamans might also perform different proofs of ordeal, such as withstanding excruciating pain or demonstrating unusual manipulative skills. For example, shamans might dramatically plunge an arm into boiling water or hold a hot stone to show the patient and group they were impervious to pain because of their power.

During curing ritual shamans often had to be protected as their personal powers might be elsewhere seeking the cause of a patient’s malady. Temporarily without power, shamans were believed susceptible to danger, since their power could be lost or taken by a more powerful person. On occasion, the shaman may have been required to have a power duel with the malevolent power, a struggle which was evident by the practitioner’s unusual behavior when he or she was thrown about or lifted into the air. A shaman of lesser power could be killed by the illness when it was removed from the patient, particularly if the shaman used a sucking tube.

Medicines

Through continual observation and long use, Native Americans developed an extensive materia medica, estimated to have been approximately 54 percent chemically active. It was constituted from geological, floral, and faunal substances. These compounds and simple medicaments were administered to most internal and external afflictions by shamans who were knowledgeable of the intended effect.

Medicines were administered in the form of poultices, salves, expectorants, vermifuges, emetics, cathartics, astringents, febrifuges, poisons, anesthetics, stimulants, narcotics, diuretics, and infusions. Most medicines were acquired locally, but some were obtained through trade.

Bibliography

Corlett, William Thomas. The Medicine-Man of the American Indian and His Cultural Background. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1935. A book that explains the cultural significance of medicines and their ritual application, particularly the role of the shaman.

Radin, Paul. The Story of the American Indian. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927. An early but significant recognition of Native American medical systems that explains the role of ritual in treating psychosomatic illnesses.

Ross, John Alan. “Indian Shamans of the Plateau: Past and Present.” Medical Journal 62, no. 3 (1989). An article dealing with aboriginal and syncretic medicine in the Plateau, which is representative of many Native American groups.

Stone, Eric. Medicine Among the American Indians. Clio Medicia 7. New York: Hafner, 1962. A comprehensive text explaining indigenous Native American medical systems that contains an extensive bibliography.

Vogel, Virgil J. American Indian Medicine. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. This excellent book is the most definitive study of Native American medicine because of extensive research, references, and readability for the nonspecialist. It is illustrated and stresses the significance of medicinal plants. Contains a comprehensive bibliography.