By Jason Mancini
Mr. Mancini is Senior Researcher at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
Editor’s Note: The following article, the first of a two-part series, was excerpted from a paper that Mr. Mancini presented at a history conference at the Museum and Research Center. The paper examines the presence and absence of Native medicinal remedies in the historical record and seeks to explain how Native medicine evolved from the seventeenth century colonial accounts of devil worship into the robust corpus of European-style “folk medicine” documented by anthropologists in the early twentieth century. The Pequot Society Gallery in the Museum’s permanent exhibits addresses Native American medicine and the role of powwows, displaying plants used in specific traditional remedies. Part II will appear in the summer issue of Cross Paths.
Indigenous medicine is one part of our regional culture that has historically received a great deal of attention, while paradoxically being poorly understood. European perceptions of and responses to Native American medicinal practices during the colonial period were determined principally by their Christian religious convictions and neo-classical construction of reality.
At the time of European contact with the peoples of the “New World,” European medicine was heavily influenced by both “humoral pathology” and the scientific empiricism that emerged from the ancient Greek works of Hippocrates and Galen. This represented a paradigm shift: disease was no longer attributed to acts of the gods, but rather it could be evaluated through clinical observation and treated accordingly. This medical framework drew connections between the physical world, bodily composition and relative health.
The humors were bodily fluids associated with particular human temperaments, and the predominance of a particular behavior or the presence of a specific disease was indicative of an excess of one of the humors. Diseases, according to the ancient Greek physicians, were cured by their “contraries.” Physicians relied on poultices, bloodletting, purgation and various medicines, often plant derived, to counteract the imbalance among the humors. Medicines were evaluated and classified according to their basic qualities and applied based on their ability to bring balance to the humors.
The Devil’s Work
The earliest European accounts of Native religion and healing practices (1624-1674) are quite typically ethnocentric, often describing the rituals and the tribal healers, or powwows, in the context of the devil. Recorded by individuals with little knowledge of botany or medicine, these descriptions focused less on the Native use of plants than on the religious rituals that accompanied the healing process. This preoccupation with describing the unfamiliar tended to overshadow possible similarities between the two cultures in the use of herbal remedies. It was the Native rituals that were both unfamiliar and unclassifiable with respect to European humoral theory. The following account, published in 1674 by Rev. Daniel Gookin, reflects the collision course Native medicine was on with respect to Christian ideology:
There are among them certain men and women, whom they call powows. These are partly wizards and witches, holding familiarity with Satan, that evil one; and partly are physicians, and make use, at least in show, of herbs and roots, for curing the sick and diseased. These are sent for by the sick and wounded; and by their diabolical spells, mutterings, exorcisms, they seem to do wonders. They use extraordinary strange motions of their bodies, insomuch that they will sweat until they foam; and thus continue for some hours together, stroking and hovering over the sick. Sometimes broken bones have been set, wounds healed, sick recovered; but together therewith they sometimes use external applications of herbs, roots, splintering and binding up the wounds. These powows are reputed, and I conceive justly, to hold familiarity with the devil; and therefore are by the English laws, prohibited the exercise of their diabolical practices within the English jurisdiction, under penalty of five pounds, - and the procurer, five pounds, -and every person present, twenty pence. Satan doth strongly endeavor to keep up this practice among the Indians: and these powows are factors of the devil, and great hinderers of the Indians embracing the gospel. It is no small discouragement unto the Indians in yielding obedience unto the gospel, for then, say they, if we once pray to God, we must abandon our powows; and then, when we are sick and wounded, who shall heal our maladies?
Such examples of Native medicine must have been quite disturbing to English and Dutch observers who were familiar with physicians who quietly observed, diagnosed and treated illnesses. Furthermore, while Native medicine clearly involved the synthesis of magical/religious rituals, ceremonies, and curative practices, the Greeks (and, by extension, colonizing Europeans) had largely separated religion and medicine, abandoning such practices about 2000 years earlier. Dancing, chanting, yelling and polytheistic idolatry, especially communication or interaction with “bad gods” and snakes, were misconstrued by European observers as devil worship and in clear contrast to Christian monotheism and its polarization of good and evil. Perhaps fear, misunderstanding, and subsequent mischaracterization of Native beliefs might explain why so few written examples of Native medicine survive from these earliest documents.
In 1646, the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a law that prohibited the powwow from participating in religious, ceremonial and healing rituals.
As the English continued to solidify control and establish settlements in the southern New England region, similar laws were enacted elsewhere, most likely to protect the nascent colonies from Indian uprisings and to foster the conversion of Natives to Christianity. Thus, in 1655 the Commissioners of the United Colonies (Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven), having appointed Pequot governors to oversee the affairs of their respective communities, laid out the following “orders and Instructions[:] They shall not Blaspheame the name of God the Creator of Heaven and earth nor prophane the Sabbath day[.] They shall not Comitt wilfull Murder Nor practice witchcraft upon paine of death.”
The Reticent Powwow
Despite the association of powwows with the devil, their ability in some cases to cure illnesses where European-trained physicians failed caught the attention of some colonial doctors. By the final quarter of the seventeenth century, a few physicians had attempted to extract medicinal knowledge from powwows. The first recorded attempt was in a 1674 account by Dr. John Lederer, who wrote about “an Old Indian Doctor [from Connecticut]…hee is very privy with it [the remedy for sore eyes] but upon certain Conditions, with much adoe hee communicated it unto me.” Lederer was successful in obtaining information, but noted the reluctance of the Indian doctor in providing details of this cure. Similar reticence, though not specific to the southern New England area, was noted elsewhere.
Historical sources indicate that there were two levels of medicinal knowledge among the Native people. The first were highly protected and concealed uses known only to the powwow, and the second were remedies familiar to the remaining Native community. Based on the clear difficulty experienced by the English in obtaining this information from a known powwow, it is likely that the remedies documented up to this point originated from the reservoir of common knowledge among the Natives.
The persistent reticence of the powwows frustrated attempts by colonial physicians to collect information on Native cures, which raises an important question as to the reason for their silence. Were they unwilling to communicate because they wanted to maintain a tradition of privileged access to these cures? Communicating secret information might jeopardize their function and authority within Native society. Did they fear being persecuted for violating English laws forbidding their practice? This last explanation could suggest competing interests between the medical practitioners who sought information from the powwows and religious zealots bent on converting Indians to Christianity.
Were English Laws Ineffective?
Indirect evidence within various historical accounts suggests that the traditional knowledge of the powwow was being maintained and that the colonial laws imposed on the Indians of the southern New England region had limited efficacy. If the 1655 “Orders and Instructions” established by the Commissioners of the United Colonies had any effect, lawmakers would have had no need to restate the provisions concerning the practice of the powwow for the Pequots 20 years later, in 1675. Even in 1714, during a visit among the Pequots at Mashantucket, Rev. Experience Mayhew reported that “an old Indian stood up who is Counted a Pawau among the Indians, and speaking in broken English I perceived that he desined to discourage the Indians as much as he could…” (Ford 1896: 124). This would indicate that the powwow persisted, in spite of the 1675 law purportedly abolishing the practice among the Pequots. The imposition of such laws may have simply forced the powwows to perform their rituals covertly or terminate the ritual portion of their practice.
Despite the laws prohibiting powwow activity, no record indicates that any powwow was ever tried or fined by a colonial court. Even the hyperbolic fear surrounding New England’s seventeenth century witch scare failed to result in any Indians being tried for witchcraft. One scholar writes that “the English assumed that the devil behind Indian culture was a different and weaker devil than their own.
Sampson Occom’s “Herbs & Roots”
After 1714, no references exist concerning Native powwows or medicinal practices until Sampson Occom documented them from a Montauk Indian named Ocus in 1754. In his diary under the heading “Herbs & Roots,” Occom recorded a series of remedies that identify specific ingredients and how they were used. Occom, a Mohegan schoolteacher and missionary, spent many years among the Montauk community of eastern Long Island. The Native communities of Long Island had continued to maintain close social and cultural ties with the tribes of southern New England. His “Herbs & Roots” and “Account of the Montauk Indians” offer significant insights into the persistence of the powwow, the continuity and adaptation of medicinal practices, resistance of Natives to colonial laws, and the view of English medicine on “witchcraft.” In his 1761 “Account of the Montauk Indians, on Long Island,” he writes:
As for the Powaws, they say they get their art from dreams; and one has told me they got their art from the devil, but then partly by dreams or night visions, and partly by the devil’s immediate appearance to them by various shapes; sometimes in the shape of one creature, sometimes in another, sometimes by a voice, &c. and their poisoning one another, and taking out poison, they say is no imaginary thing, but real. I have heard some say, that have been poisoned, it puts them into great pain, and when a powaw takes out the poison they have found immediate relief; at other times they feel no manner of pain, but feel strangely by degrees, till they are senseless, and they will run mad. Sometimes they would run into the water; sometimes into the fire; and at other times run up to the top of high trees and tumble down headlong to the ground, yet receive no hurt by all these. And I don’t see for my part, why it is not as true, as the English or other nation’s witchcraft, but is a great mystery of darkness, &c.
At the conclusion of “Herbs & Roots,” Occom writes, “Ocus has now learnt me 52 roots & I have on this day paid him in all 27 York money.” Sampson Occom may have achieved what no European trained physician could - collecting medicinal remedies from a powwow. Occom’s work is unique because the information is conveyed from Native to Native, without the presence, intervention, or urging of colonists. All prior documents are colonial observations of Indian medicine and the information may not be willingly conveyed or accurately interpreted.
