In all the poetic conceptions of the Zuñi one great object is paramount-food to support the physical man.

Thus-May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may be made beautiful to look upon. May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may become fruitful and give to her children and to all the world the fruits of her being, that we may have food in abundance. May the Sun Father embrace our Earth Mother that she may become fruitful, that food may be bountiful, and that our children may live the span of life, not die, but sleep to awake with their gods.

While it was generally observed by early travelers among the Indians that they employed plants for medicinal purposes, it was long believed, even by scientific students, that the practices of Indian doctors were purely shamanistic. The late Dr. Washington Matthews, however, declared from the beginning of his ethnological investigations that the Indians employed many plants of real value in medicine. Mr. Stevenson made the same assertion, and the writer discovered in the beginning of her researches among the Zuñi Indians in 1879 that they had many legitimate plant medicines, among which was a narcotic, of which more will be said later.

In addition to their use in medicine and for food, plants are employed by the Zuñi in weaving and dyeing, in making basketry, mats, brushes, rope and cords of various kinds, and also in pottery decoration, in the toilet, and in ceremonies. Clans, individuals, and localities are named for plants.

In this memoir medicinal plants will be first considered. Where a common name is known, it is given; where the native name or its derivation is omitted, it is because the writer did not succeed in recording the data.

The specimens of plants dealt with in the following pages were collected largely by the writer and Me'she, the late younger-brother Bow-Priest of Zuñi, who gave his heart not only to the collecting of the plants, but to their classification according to the Zuñi system and to their use by his people. After careful study of the plants with Me'she, the writer at various times verified the information through others, both men and women, especially versed in plant lore.

Usually the Zuñi have a name for each species of a genus of plants, but in some cases they employ the same name for different genera. This is not due to their lack of appreciation of the botanical difference, but to the fact that two or more plants may serve the same purpose or have similar characteristics. Some plants are curiously associated in name with animals, others are named from the medicinal qualities attributed to them, while others receive their names from those of animals to which they are believed to belong. Of the last-mentioned class there are, for example, the cougar, the bear, the badger, the wolf, the eagle, and the shrew medicine, these animals being assigned

to the six cosmic regions-north, west, south, east, zenith, and nadir. There are also medicines belonging to the hummingbird and others of the feathered kingdom.1

The plants herein noted are probably only a portion of those employed by the Zuñi, and it is probable also that the medicinal plants may be used in the treatment of a greater number of diseases than it has been possible to determine even after a long period of close study. This memoir is presented as preliminary therefore to more extended comparative ethnobotanical researches among the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest.

The writer is pleased to make acknowledgment to the following gentlemen for courtesies extended during the preparation of this paper: Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist-in-charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology; Mr. W. H. Holmes, head curator of anthropology, United States National Museum; Dr. Walter Hough, curator of ethnology, United States National Museum; Dr. Frederick V. Coville, curator, United States National Herbarium; Dr. J. N. Rose, associate curator, division of plants, United States National Museum; Mr. Paul C. Standley, assistant curator, division of plants, United States National Museum (who kindly furnished a complete classification of the plants mentioned in the paper); Mr. E. S. Steele, editorial assistant, division of plants, United States National Museum; Dr. Rodney H. True, in charge of drug-plant investigation, Department of Agriculture; Miss Alice Henkel, assistant in drug-plant investigation, Department of Agriculture; Dr. George Tully Vaughan and Dr. Henry Krogstad, of Washington; and Mr. John P. Harrington, of the School of American Archæology, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The writer desires to express her indebtedness also to her Zuñi friends, especially the late Nai'uchì, elder-brother Bow-Priest, and the most renowned medicine-man of his time, if not of any period, among his people; his son, Halian, an associate rain priest; the high priest, also a prominent medicine-man, and his son Hun'ki, the two being members of the medicine order of the Galaxy fraternity, one of the original organizations of the Zuñi; Cantina, a member of the Eagle-down fraternity; Zuñi Nick, a member of the Great Fire fraternity; Tsi'nahe, a member of the Sword Swallowers fraternity, and his wife, a member of the Shu'maakwe, and others to all these she owes a debt of gratitude for their friendly interest and for their earnest, conscientious, and voluntary aid.

1 The association of plant medicines with animals has caused some students erroneously to believe that these medicines are part of, or are prepared from, the animals or birds which bear their respective names.

MEDICAL PRACTICES AND MEDICINAL PLANTS

Medical treatment is older than intelligence in man. The dog hunts the fields for his special grass medicine; the bear dresses the wound of her cub or fellow-bear with perhaps as much intelligence as primitive man observes in his empirical practice. Primitive man does not know why his medicine cures; he simply knows that it does cure. He believes disease to be the result of malign influence, including that of his fellow man, to whom he attributes the power of sorcery which he himself is unable to overcome; hence he must summon the aid of the beast gods, who alone possess the power of combating the malevolent practices of the sorcerer, while he administers their medicine.. The plants of the gods could not effect a cure, however, by the mere use of the medicines concocted from them; during the treatment of the patient prayers and supplications must be offered to the gods to whom the medicine belongs.

Although the therapeutics of the Indians is largely associated with occultism, these people have discovered through the ages and brought into practical use numerous valuable plant medicines; but in the first stages in the use of plants it was not understood that they were endowed with healing properties, except as they were associated with the gods, and the old conception is still adhered to. The plants regarded as the sole property of man no doubt were discovered at a later period.

The Gods of War and other anthropic deities have their particular medicines, which are employed by those privileged to administer them. The rain priests possess medicines of celestial bodies, and of sacred birds, and they also make use of Datura meteloides (see pp. 89, 90). This precious plant, which is believed to have been once a boy and a girl, may be used only by the rain priests and by the directors of the Little Fire and Cimex fraternities.

There are other plant medicines belonging to medicine orders of the secret fraternities that are not the property of the gods. While all legitimate medicines have come into use by accident or through experiment, there is a great difference in the Zuñi mind between the medicines of the gods and those that have become known to the fraternities through members who have given the secrets of their immediate ancestors one to another or to the fraternity at large. A high ethical standard is recognized by the members of the fraternities.

1 The beast gods were originally human beings who preceded the Zuñi to this world. They brought with them the knowledge of mystery medicine (healing of ills produced by witchcraft) from the undermost world. See 23d Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 49.