=American Dog Violet= (_Viola conspersa_ Reichenb.), “wewaîeˈ bûgûg”.
The whole plant is used by the Flambeau Ojibwe to make a tea for heart
trouble. The whole plants have been used among the whites as alterative
and expectorant remedies. They were said to be useful in skin diseases,
scrofula, syphilis and bronchitis.
VITACEAE (VINE FAMILY)
=River-bank Grape= (_Vitis vulpina_ L.), “ciˈwî mînûn” or “ciwî mînaga
wûnj”, shown in plate 70, fig. 2. The Pillager Ojibwe used a tea of
boiled twigs for women to drink to clear up afterbirth and enable it
to pass easily. They use the sap as a medicine for stomach and bowel
trouble. Among the whites, the tender branchlets and leaves were
sometimes employed for their agreeable acidulous flavor.
OJIBWE VEGETAL FOODS
The Ojibwe have always lived far from the haunts of civilization. They
were too far in the back country to participate in the colonial and
pre-colonial wars. They have always preferred to live where game is
abundant, and even today they are still able to subsist partly on deer
and fish. The products of the hunt were very important to them, and
they possess a very large number of hunting charms, which are roots,
seeds or blossoms that are used as good luck omens or actual lures in
trapping and fishing.
They have always made the greatest use of the edible plants of their
environment, but did not progress very far in an agricultural way
until the last quarter century, when each reservation was furnished
with an Indian or white farmer, preferably an Indian. He has used the
school children to cultivate demonstration farms, and his example
is persisting in some of his former pupils. The older people had
a few simple products from prehistoric days and have not allowed
them to completely run out. The garden patch was always small, and
the caretaker was invariably the woman of the household. Among the
cultivated crops were: Cranberry pole beans, maize or Indian corn,
potatoes of an early variety, squash and tobacco. The last crop has
not been grown by them in fifty years, as they now depend upon the
white men for their source of supply. At the present time, they raise
any of the crops, that the white men raise. In their gardens, one will
find lettuce and onions, radishes, carrots, parsnips, beets, turnips,
cabbage, potatoes of standard varieties, beans and peas, and any other
crop one will find in an up-to-date garden. Stranger still, one may
find garden flowers, and the lady of the house will be quite proud of
them, and usually a little jealous, if her neighbor has some flowers
that she has not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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