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From 1992 to 1996, I studied the flora of the Oregon Trail. This study was designed to complement my work on John Kennedy Bristow, an Oregon Trail doctor whose manuscript and ledger I transcribed and used to understand more about the migration of medicine to the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Bristow wasn’t your ordinary doctor. That is to say, he wasn’t an allopath, those doctors you normally think of whenever the word doctor comes to mind. . . unless of course you’re referring to your travelling minister.
Dr. Bristow was first trained as an apprentice under Edmund Browning, a minster who attended classes in Cincinnati, Ohio around 1847, and after six weeks of classes received his degree to practice medicine based on the practice known as Botanic medicine, the name for which was developed by the local leader of this medical belief, Alva Curtis. Botanic physicians were essentially a new breed of the New England set of alternatives known as Thomsonians. Back east, the Thomsonians practiced medicine according to the faith of Samuel Thomson, who wrote a small book on this based on the beliefs and techniques he developed for the use of herbal medicines between 1807 and 1811. Thomson’s philosophy in turn came from an old lady he knew, who was part Indian and trained in Indian herbal medicine faith.
Thomson’s practice was somewhat a merger of these two faiths, although significant parts of it were so different from both the European and native American philosophies and traditions that neither discipline nor a perfect hybrid of the two could be used to explain Thomson’s belief system. Thomson claimed his belief came from experience. But in reality it developed as a result of his shenanigans with the neighboring kids, whom he dared to eat parts of the local lobelia plant, after which they would ultimately puke.
As he got older, Thomson belief this was a way to clear the system, enough to make it feel and seem healthier afterwards. In a few years, he transformed this discipline into a form of medical practice. But he wasn’t the first to recommend a vomit every now and then to stay healthy.
The idea of inducing nausea and vomiting was in turn published around 1797 to 1804 by a missionary physician in Europe. This physician wrote a book in which he noticed the Eastern European armies using the philosophy of puke, purge and bleed to treat its soldiers taken ill. This philosophy was fairly easy to remember and stuck in the minds of those who learned it during this time. It was so simple in fact that Thomson took it, and instead of recommended the bloodletting part of this simple trio or remedies, replaced the lancet with the sweat, the use of a blanket held over the head as your body became immersed in the steam coming up from a chamber pot filled with water resting between your knees. To practice the full therapy according to Thomsonianism, you took a lobelia so you would throw up and begin to sweat, and then something that would clean out your bowels, and in between all of this take some time under the blanket with your fire and water brewing into steam.
This remedy seemed fairly simple, and anyone could do it for the most part. It became so popular that soon you could buy an apparatus under which you sat to engage in a much fuller sweat. Another few years later yet another sweating apparatus was made, a wooden hutch of sorts that you stepped into in order to expose yourself completely to the humid vapors. This device came to be known as a vapor bath.
Out west, where Alva Curtis resided, the locals were forced to purchase their medicines from Thomson. In fact, to practice medicine bearing his name you had to pay 20 dollars for the certificate allowing you to engage in such a practice using his remedies. Thomson even had a special offer for families, for several sizeable payments of 20 dollars more, you could purchase the family kit, with all of its numerous remedies he had made including some very special combination formulas described in his pocket book.
Curtis and other out west were not so accepting of Thomson’s claims about the value of his New England and New York herb blends (many of these herbs were grown in New London and vicinity NY, by Shaker Villages, their largest growers of herbal medicines for the time). For example, the New England-New York Lobelia had its Midwest-Great Plain substitute, as did several other region specific remedies recommended by Thomson
Curtis and others knew this, and with time felt that other additions needed to be made to the basic Thomsonian regimens. By 1820, a number of variations of Thomsonianism were developing. By 1830, there were Thomsonians practicing medicine alongside another herbal medicine group favoring Thomson’s teachings, the Eclectic physicians. Curtis decided to do much the same as the founder of Eclectics, Wooster Beach, and his supporters in eastern Ohio. Following his leave from the Thomsonian group in 1832, followed by the Eclectics, he developed plans for his school and named it the Botanic School.
Being of Bible Belt influence, the locals took to both the Thomsonian beliefs and the teachings of the Botanic School. In 1837, this program was well underway, and several years later some of its earliest graduates formed similar schools in the nearby towns of Ohio and the adjacent hamlets just outisde of where Curtis’s school sat. Reverend Edmund Browning attended one of these schools, and then returned to his home town in Adams County, along the eastern edge of Illinois.
In 1847, a winter epidemic of typhus came to the region, taking the life of John Kennedy Bristow’s first wife that winter. Following his recovery from this tragic event, he had a decision to make regarding his career and health. Around the age of 9 to 15 he had suffered a fever as a kid. It ended up this was rheumatic fever, the long term side effects of which were rheumatoid arthritis, knee joint arthritis or geniculitis, and heart failure. John decided to change his career from that of a yoke bender and carpenter, to a physician. He spent his next two years learning botanic medicine from Edmund G. Browning, and kept a record of all his patients. After two years of service, using Thomson’s formulas for the most part, he removed to Oregon in 1853.
These are some of the medicinal plants he passed along the trail to Oregon. Apparently, unlike another herbal practitioner I reviewed elsewhere on this site, William Dain, Bristow made limited use of these herbs, until he reached Oregon and became more familiar with them. Dain’s and Bristow’s materia medica reviews were used to define the most important herbal medicine on the Oregon Trail, due either to evidence for their use locally, or soonafter as told by the medical journals.
The Great Plains Flora Atlas was released in two parts by the Great Plains Flora Association. The first part came out around 1990. It consisted just of the more that 3000 maps produced by the Association depicting the distribution of flora across the Great Plains. These maps numbers about 20 per page, measuring about 2 x 3 in. Each map depicted a different species. At the time, this was the only book out there of the flora of the Great Plains. The reason for the lack of a Great Plain flora book was primarily related to past habits that ecologists had when producing flora books–the Great Plains covered a large region and in essence was represented by books of each state, each climatic region, each section of the country where we were most interested in our local weeds and yard plants.
The Great Plains Flora came out around 1993, a few months into my initiating this research of Great Plains ethnobotany and the Oregon Trail experience. About this same time two books were published focused on Great Plains ethnobotany: one delved into edible flora of the Great Plains and the other into medicinal plants. These books finalized the work of a naturalist/botany expert residing in the southern half of this part of the United States, and provided me and many other readers into some of the unique insights needed into plants and their potential uses for the time.
By 1994, I was pretty much versed in the Oregon Trail flora research and writings, everything from Lewis and Clarke’s travels to the years the government was surveying the Midwest in order to lay train tracks. There were a number of governmentally sponsored expeditions that reviewed different parts of the Great Plains and places further west of the plains into the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. While reviewing these documents, I was searching for where certain medicinal plants naturally grew, especially those of importance to the regular and alternative medicine pharmaceutical companies then being established.
The Great Plains flora made their way into the material medicas of the inner continent schools by the 1840s. During the 1830s, many of the flora were still somewhat foreign in nature, or imported via Great Britain, but there were a number of east coast plants that became standards to the medical and herbal medical industry. The equivalents of these east coast species growing in the Midwest naturally found their way into the physicians material medica, but physicians in the Midwest were still trying to cultivate east coast wildcrafted products in their herb gardens. A few examples of equivalents found in the Midwest included the Cypripedium species used as substitutes for the C. pubescens growing in New York and on Long Island, and the local Lobelias, so common that Thomsonianism, the medicine which relied so heavily upon this particular herb, was able to grow tremendously fast in that part of the country where it had its greatest support–the Bible Belt. Some plants resided on both sides of the Adirondacks such as Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). Others were unique to the northeastern corner of Great Plain territory or the deep wilderness on the west face of Appalachia, such as Wild Ginseng (Panax sp.) and Golden Seal (Hydrastis canadensis). Likewise there were a few plants with similar and the like residing in the Midwest. There were even some plants that looked so much like other expensive imports that they became prime materials for eclectic doctors to make use of during the late 1840s and 1850s, for example the wild cucumbers which served as equally effective substitutes for the imported Bitter Po (Columbo). Then there were these plants with uses seemingly ubiquitous to the United States, such as the resinous Cottonwood buds serving as substitutes for the Bible herb manna, or willow bark serving as a tanning-reddish toned substitutes for the Middle Eastern oak apple gall, the western Pennsylvanian Chestnut and Oak tree barks, and numerous other east coast tanning sources.
In sum, many of the plants on the Overland trails had value to the settlers in general, and especially to the Overland trail doctors. For this reason, I decided it was important to take a look at the medicines that resided naturally along the trail, related this to those we know were being used or taught as potentially useful back east, and then review the diaries and journals to learn what kinds of ethnobotany practices actually took place along the overland trails. A few examples of what I uncovered are presented here.
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The plant that inspired me to do this was this particular species, Polygonum aviculare, known colloquially as lady’s thumb. This plant had a photo once presented of the trail which displayed its tendency to be what we call “metropolitan” in its dispersal. Normally, this term refers to plants which depended heavily on man’s impact on the environment to thrive and exist near peoples’ properties and dwelling. The best example of this is the Matricaria matriculoides, the pineappleweed, a plant which thrives on bar soil trodden upon daily be hikers. This is the sold plant that we find growing on its own often on hardpack soil, light brown and too compressed to be able to put a gardener’s spade into, much less a pitchfork or yard pick. Whereas Matricaria resides on barren soil waiting to be trodden upon in order for its seeds to be released from the flowerhead and dispersed by wind, gravity and friction, this Oregon Trail plant Lady’s Thumb, was a weed for the most part, but one with a very small, but pretty flower. This plant was often picked to form bouquets, decorate a hat, or by daughters to serve as a present to their mothers and grandmothers. So this is how this weed managed to make its way so far west out of its normal distribution during the 1850s, to become one of the most people and trail dependent species noted in the Great Plains flora book.
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Lady’s Thumb had minimal applications to medicine at the time, although it was useful by some doctors. When we review its uses in the major dictionaries of ethnobotany, we find it is respected mostly for its tannin content like all of its close relatives, and that due to its appearances, its phytognomics or doctrine of signatures, did have some value to traditional herbalists employing it for use in treating whatever these signatures revealed to you.
One of the important aspects of Oregon Trail medicine is that Oregon Trail plant medicines, due to ecological differences, were often going to be different from what choices the east coast and Great Plains herbal medicines provided us with. For this reason, a number of Oregon Trail medicines noted at the jump off points are not trailbound or produced medicinal plants. They are east coast and Midwestern products, sometimes grown successfully further west by the mountainmen and wilderness men residing out in the Great Plains on west to the Rockies. Next, once you left the great Plains and made you way into the Rockies, your selection of medicine was again changed. So anything you did go through extensive efforts to learn about Great Plains flora, for purposes of making your away across the Plains without much health related incidence, was no longer applicable once you made it through Wyoming and began to ascend the mountains. Another materia medica had to discovered and learned once you were this far away from the homelands. Some of these medicines first show their face along the eastern edge of the Great Plains.
Examples of East Coast medicine brought onto the trail, and even tried as cultivars out west and into the Far West, include the cohoshes, the standard European introduced species such as dandelion, plantain and coltsfoot, and even some inner Eastern States medicines like Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) (below) and American Ginseng (Panax quinquefolia) (not pictured here).
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This plant, known as squaw root, was traditionally used by women for various menstrual and childbearing related problems or conditions. Again notice that it is primarily an eastern plant along the great plains, and not something found further westward on the trail. Curiously, William Dain mentioned it in his details on medicine to Solomon Tetherow’s team in 1845. The problem is that this team had no women included. Its purpose was to head westward, make their stay for the winter at Fort Sumter, and then in the Spring go where ever it was you intended to go, to claim lands for you and your family. In 1845, John Bristow’s father Elijah was on this team, and claimed land in Oregon in an area he named Pleasant Hill. John and his oldest son Elijah made it to Oregon in 1853, but with the loss of John’s second wife Josephine, and surprisingly the loss of their youngest daughter Suzannah, named after John’s mother, in the western part of Nebraska. (due to milksickness, developed by oxen/cattle eating a local plant, is my contention).
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The Great Plains was lacking in some very important medicines that had effects upon women’s problems. But trillium did have some therapeutic activities probably due to its moderately toxic steroidal content (called uterotoxic by some books). The trillium is also known as Scapoose or Papoose root back east due to its chemicals that cause uterine contraction. To east coast Native American herbalists as well as colonial and post-colonial Euro-American herbalists, this use was highly valued promoted heavily during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the north end of the Great Plains we can find trillium available for similar use, as well as along the east and west ends of the trail. In the Midwesternmost portion of the trail, close to Forts Kearney and Laramie, there were other sources for this medicine however. Whether or not they were used is uncertain. These examples include the Apocynum (dogbanes) and Asclepias (milkweeds) species.
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An example of a medicine that had its Midwestern and Far Western equivalents along the Great Plains routes were the bugleweeds (Lycopus spp.). These species had different regions they resided in, with one species of potential value as a medicine replaced by another as the trail headed further west. The traditional Lycopus in American medicine in Lycopus virginiana, but as those individual learned in herbal medicine headed west, the Lycopus asperula became of potential available for use. Along the westernmost part of the Great Plains trail setting, there was the very unique Lycopus uniflorum, which like the L. asperula species was probably used very little due to the abundance of the highly favored Lycopus americanus located all along the trail setting.
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Croton capitatus – Croton
The Croton has a very important local ethnobotany not yet noted in many of the writings on this trail history. The alternative medical field of Eclectic medicine developed a use for this plant that was not so much used by the regular physicians. In the early 1800s, plants like Dirca palustris (Leatherwood) of the east coast were used as plasters due to their burning, highly irritating effects upon the skin, much like a mustard plaster. The Croton species had the same effects upon people. This plant is severely toxic, in part due to its relationship with a very successful plant family, evolutionarily speaking, the Euphorbiaceae. The Euphorbs or spurges are known for their toxicity, which when misused is also noted to be co-carcinogenic (they increase the effectiveness of other carcinogens when present).
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Croton texenis – Texas Croton
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In the book on Oregon trail foodways, this plant is mentioned being gathered for its leaves, the author of which inferred was due to its palatability as a leafy green. It is more likely this physician gathered such a large amount of this plant due to its value to him and his comrades practicing Eclectic Medicine. The same can be said about the other euphorbs noted to grow along the trail, especially the Texas Croton or Croton texenis.
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The single most important “trail medicine” around 1845 seemed to be the local wildcrafted equivalent for Jacob’s Ladder–Polymnia uvedalia. This plant was emphasized in a description of herbal medicines provide to Captain Solomon Tetherow’s train in 1844. The members of this train planned to make their way westward on horseback to the Forts in California, for continued travel the following spring into unexplored territory about this region. This was years before the idea of searching for gold in California became popular. These people were out there for the fame and the name it gave them, as mountainmen scoping out new lands to lay claim to as part of a new government plan that was established. Tetherow’s scout was married to a western Indian and professed in botanic medicine. His recipes provide us with details that suggest he was a bit Thomsonian in his philosophy and orientation, focused mostly on eastern Midwest to East Coast and Appalachian herbalism, with just a little knowledge of west coast herbal medicine. His recommendations for the elusive Polymnia uvedalia refer to this state of familiarity with western herbs that I claim he has. Along the Kansas Route to California and the Santa Fe, we do see evidence for this plant residing naturally along the first two days of travel along this route. It is lacking along the northern route westward, the trails leading to Oregon and Salt Lake City.
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Notes entered on Cypripedium or Lady’s Slippers . . .
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The Ratibida species were the first Echinacea of the herbal medicine profession. These plants were very popular for their uses in tonifying the body and strengthening its ability to deal with all forms of illness. This popularity of the plant led to its overharvesting between 1840 and 1850, and by the 1860s, it had become a rarity in many parts of the Great Plains. Even later, its scarceness to herbal medicine industry manufacturers led some of the leaders in this field to find a substitute for it, which is how Echinacea first came to become so popular. Few people promoting Echinacea know this important part of the history of this now very famous herbal medicine. Prior to Echinacea there existed the truer form of this remedy, the knowledge of which is nearly lost, were it not for those articles published about its uses and popularity within the Eclectic Medical Journal. The knowledge of the medicinal value of the Ratibida species, is a direct result of trappers and mountainmen.
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Grindelia is surprising a late comer to the herbal medicine world. Its introduction to this market came due to California physicians for the most part, and well after the gold rush years. This herb reached the marketplace due to the famous mid-19th century allopathic drug manufacturing industry Parke & Son, which later merged with several other companies to form Parke, Davis & Company. This part of the Parke-Davis history made it the most important company to use and make famous the medical plants of the Pacific Northwest, in particular those of the State of Oregon, such as Oregon Grape, first known as Rocky Mountain Grape or Mountain Grape.
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Rocky Mountain flora represent a class of plants that in a contemporary sense are very much related to Oregon trail history, but due to their distribution and the delay in the dissemination of knowledge about these potential herbal medicines, were slow at achieving notoriety. Oregon grape is a perfect example of this history related dilemma. Oregon Grape is the state plant for the state by the same name. Its familiarity is a part of Oregon history, and it is known best perhaps for its barely palatable, bitter fruit that are berries with a dark blue-to-purplish color, and often a fine white powder coating them. By the end of the 19th century, this plant was referred to in the Illinois Herbal Almanac, one of the primary sellers of herbal medicines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, in this sales catalogue it is referred to as Rocky Mountain Grape or Barberry.
The low-lying creeping shrub version of Oregon Grape is Berberis repens, which is most likely the first western Berberis to become a popular herbal medicine. Further west, deep in the mountains, a number of other species of close relatives of this Berberis are found, with Berberis nervosa being the low lying shrub found on the western face of the Rockies. Even more impressive than these two Berberis species is the true Oregon Grape, a full-size, erect standing shrub about 4 to 8 feet in height, with the Latin name Mahonia aquifolium, not Berberis. According to some botanists, it was different enough from its similars to be given a new genus name. During the earliest Oregon Trail years, the differences between the Mahonia and Berberis was less important. The main version of this Oregon Grape to become a popular medicine was Berberis repens, that species residing closest to the western edge of the Great Plains. To many travelers, this plant marked the end of the Plains region and the beginning of the Rocky Mountains.
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In my next sections I will review the two books: Medicinal plants of the Great Plains and Edible plants of the Great Plains.
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Brian Altonen, MPH, MS 