Native American Herbal, Plant Knowledge

JUNIPER BERRY: Gad (Navajo name)

The Navajo name is given for this evergreen shrub because it is widely used in the

southwest mountain areas as a stimulant and emetic. The needles are boiled and used for

diarrhea and as a postpartum stimulant. Juniper berries can be dried and used for tea

which has a laxative effect. Traditional Navajos use juniper as an emetic (causes vomiting)

to purify the system of both adults and newborns. For adults, they say to put the leaves in

warm water when you get up in the morning, before you have breakfast. Then go and run,

and when you return, drink the liquid. It will make you throw up and purify your body.

Curly Mustache, a Navajo medicine man, in his account of the First Navajo Birth in Ruth

Roessel's book Women in Navajo Society, tells of the instructions given by the Holy people to

the Dine in childbearing. In the traditional way, a newborn baby is given the juice of the

inner white skin of the juniper bark. Usually, a woman goes out and peels the bark off the

juniper trees. The white inside bark is peeled off and put into warm water until it turns

reddish. A teaspoon of this juice is given to the baby to drink. This makes the child vomit

the mucus and birthwaters it may have swallowed and cleanses its insides. (N.B. I mention

this information for ethnographic purposes only.)

Matilda Coxe Stevenson, a sensitive female anthropologist who attended several births

among the Zuni in the late 1800's, reports that juniper twigs and berries were steeped in

boiled water by the Zuni and drunk by the expectant mother as a tea throughout labor and

delivery and afterwards to relax her system and cleanse the uterus. She mentions, too, that

the People believed that if they drank the tea in the earlier stages of pregnancy, the child

would be very dark.

The Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin C during pregnancy and breastfeeding is

80-100 mg. This daily dietary requirement is necessary for the formation of strong cell walls

and blood vessels, and it is therefore essential to the growth of the fetus and the placenta.

Mohawk people would prepare a tea high in vitamin C for pregnant mothers which

included white pine, cranberry and sumac branch bark.

During pregnancy or oral contraceptive use, a woman faces increased susceptibility to

urinary tract infection because of rising blood levels of a reproductive hormone called

progesterone. Progesterone causes smooth muscle tissues, such as the bladder, to relax. It

also causes the ureters, the ducts leading from the kidneys to the bladder to dilate. This

action, in addition to the pressure of the growing uterus during pregnancy on the ureters

Native Foods -- Katsi Cook on Women's Uses of Berries

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