I was starting to show my
age. My hair was beginning to turn white, my skin was so wrinkled and the old
brown spots were looking more like “old age spots” than ever. We had just
celebrated my 86th birthday when I went to see my doctor in her big, modern office.
I asked her to burn off one of those old age spots on my hand because it kept
getting caught in the thread while I was quilting.
“Oh we don’t do it like that
any longer,” she said. “We freeze them off now.” When I told her my Granny
showed me how to make an ointment that would have taken it off, she insisted I
write it down for her. So after I got home and rested up from my big outing to
the doctor’s office, I wrote her a letter.
Grandma was about fifty
years old and I was a barefooted ten year old. It was a hot day and we walked
miles through the woods that she knew like the back of her hand. She wandered
all over those woods all year gathering herbs for medicine, plants for food or
just hunting for the old open-range milk cow. Sometimes she was only telling me
the old legends that had been taught to her.
Not until a short time
before she died did she tell us that as a child she had taken council vows to
never admit that she was Indian – that way they avoided going to the
reservations.
That hot day seventy-five
years ago, Grandma would let only me go with her. She carried an axe, big
knife, bread in her apron pocket and bandages in case we got hurt. I carried a
big burlap sack and a hoe.
“Now I want you to always
remember what we are doing today. We will gather nine things
– three S’s, three B’s and three P’s. First we peel away the outside
bark on this pine tree and get a piled up double handful of the inner bark and
start filling your ‘toe sack’.
Now we do the same with that
black oak tree and do the same to a persimmon tree after while. Remember I
showed you when them sumac bushes had white berries and I told you they was
like poison ivy. We want the kind with red berries on down the hill. Chop up a
little pile of twigs of them like the piles of bark.
“There’s the persimmon tree.
After that we can drink from the spring, get black haw roots there and go to
the old house place where yellow sorrel grows and dig poke roots, too.”
We had rubbed crushed
pennyroyal on us so we had no ticks or chiggers; we saw no snakes and had no
injuries. I was tired when we carried water from the well and washed the sack
full of stuff.
We covered it with water in
the huge iron kettle and boiled it over a campfire. Grandma stirred it often
until the water was brown. She dipped out the bark and stuff, strained the
water into a big kettle and put it on the old-time wood burner cook stove. She
added a piled up handful of lard explaining that it was supposed to be bear
grease. Then it was boiled and boiled until all the water was gone.
It was the blackest, worse
stinking ointment one could imagine.
Grandma said it was to be
put on skin sores covered with a bandage. If it caused no pain, it was not a
cancer. If it hurt, leave the bandage on for three days and the cancer would
come out with the bandage, roots and all and would leave no scar.
I saw the one from Grandma’s
face. It looked like a big black spider with legs hanging.
Now, my good doctor, we
can’t go on someone’s land and gather three S’s, three B’s and three P’s. We
don’t have a big enough kettle! So you can just freeze or burn off my brown
spots.
See you next time I come to your office. Love Polly
Kidney
Stones: Chamollie Tea
Flush
Kidneys: Watermelon seeds
Diarrhea: Inner bark of
white oak tea, not too much or it will constipate (lock bowels!)
Snake Bite: Quickly cut
up chicken and place on bite and then apply onion poultices
Pin Worms: (Caused by
walking bare feet where animals have been) febrifuge tea also stomach
or tape worms that look like earthworms (fish worms) Add one teaspoon
of sugar with three drops turpentine. If febrifuge weed is not available use
Mimosa leaves tea.
Antiseptic for
wounds: Wine or whiskey, tobacco. Tobacco will also stop bleeding.
Menstrual pain: Ginger
tea of Mountain Ditting Tea
Sore throat: Honey with
a bit of whiskey or golden seal
Chest cold: Onion
poultice or warm wool cloth soaked in mixture of camphor, turpentine, kerosene
and grease. Reheat cloth and repeat on chest.
Pink eye: Poultice of
scraped raw potato, for babies eyes use drops of mother’s breast milk.
Stone bruise on bare
foot: Raw bacon or warm greasy pancake
Athlete’s foot or other sore
foot: Mullen leaves
Constipation: Diet of
fruit and green salad (fresh or cooked)
Warts: Cover with juice
of milkweed for 9 days (they may be gone in fewer than 9 days)
Mosquitoes: Crushed
marigolds, penny royal, fleabane, pale bergamot
Poison Ivy: Bloodroot
(red pucoon) in vinegar, or Jewelweed
Birth Control: Wild
sweet potato
Nerves: Catnip tea
Blood: Sassafras tea (never
burn sassafras, it is sacred)
Brain ailments: Ginseng
Stomach trouble: Golden
seal
Wounds: Comfrey leaves
and alcohol
Sick babies: Catnip tea
Trench
foot: Mullen, a green fuzzy leaf to put inside your shoe