Native American Herbal, Plant Knowledge

All this seems to me more important than the chemical components of this

biological organism. In comparison, I feel those are true but trivial.

Katsi discusses, without giving the botannical name that would zero in on it, a

Navajo and Zuni usage of a cedar-juniper plant she ID's by the Navajo name of

Gad. In searching the big databases, I found many more Navajo women's and

childbirth uses of a species called Juniperus monosperma. Oneseed Juniper is its

common name. But I don't go just by old ethnobotany reports, especially when

they didn't record the Native names of plants (no native names are recoverable

from either the AGIS or University of Michigan databases, even if they might

have been mentioned in the reports cited).

Rough Rock Tribal Demonstration School was the first Native-controlled

cultural survival school. It was started by parents (with a lot of opposition from

the BIA) around 1969, at Chinle, AZ on the big Navajo rez. In 1986, Rough Rock

School put out a cultural cookbook, edited by Regina Lynch. It includes

traditional recipes for an infusion (tea) of new branchlets and twigs of the

Oneseed juniper to strengthen mothers after childbirth, and several recipes that

include grinding its seeds into meal and using them in bread and corncake

doughs, as well as using this juniper's leaf ash to make lye water to turn corn

and corn meal into hominy. So this species of juniper -- which doesn't grow

around here and which I've been uable to find a picture of -- is most probably

the Navajo Gad whose berries and foliage Katsi discusses. Its berries and foliage

probably contain the same vitamins, minerals, and numerous oils and

compounds of the species that is analyzed on the USDA Phytochem database,

which you can look at by choosing Juniper ANALYSIS on the menu above..

As yet, I've been unable to find an ID picture of this species of juniper. If and

when I do, I'll post it here. Right now, I wouldn't know what one looks like if I

tripped over it! I think this -- photographed in mountainous desert by some

University of Wisconsin faculty member -- might be a Oneseed juniper.

Juniper berries were used for flavoring in cooking, especially venison and fish,

by many tribes. Ojibwe people used many such flavorings during the period

when they had little or no salt, and southwestern cooking still favors their

aromatic additions to venison. Juniper is probably best known as a flavoring for

its use in gin alcohol, which gets its name from the Dutch word ginever for these

berries.

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Juniper -- Tribes who use

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/food/juniptri.html (5 of 6) [5/17/2004 11:48:05 AM]