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Native Americans relied on native plants for food, material to construct tools and weapons, and as medicine. In this section we will look at some of the plants the first Californian’s used as medicine, and also learn about uses they might have today,

Arnica

Barberry

Blueberry

California Poppy

Dandelion

Dock

Goldenrod

Wild Grape

Horsetail

Juniper

Manzanita

Arnica is a mountain plant with a bright summer flower. More than 12 types of Arnica live in the Backcountry. Related to the sunflower, it has one bright yellow flower on top of a single stem, and the flowers rotate to point to the sun. You might find a high sierra meadow dotted with thousands of this happy, sunny flowers. Its range is from the foothills up to 11,000 feet and it can live in dry fields, rocky area, or even boggy meadows

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H.R. Booth

Modern medicine is studying arnica and one of it natural chemicals, helenalin, shows promise in helping sure several types of cancer. Arnica also has healing properties used today to mend skin and body tissue.

The Maidu tribe of California Indians used the flowers and roots of the Rayless Arnica (Arnica discoidea alanta ) externally to heal wound.

Caution: Arnica has toxic properties and should never be ingested unless under the guidance of a health practitioner. It also should not be used on open wounds. It is most safely used by crushing the flowers, stem, and leaves and applying it to a bruised area of the skin.

Barberry is an evergreen shrub that prefers dry rocky slopes in the Backcountry, usually below 5-7,000 feet. The leaves are spiny and holly like in appearance. The bush blossoms with yellow flowers April – June.

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Charles Webber

The Maidu called Barberry "Holometu". They chewed the leaves raw or used the steeped tea to treat rheumatism, fevers and digestive pains. The roots and bark were crushed or sliced and placed inside open cuts to prevent infection. The Miwok hunters would wisely carry a piece of the root with them when traveling out into the deeper BackCountry on hunting or trading expeditions.

Today, Barberry is used to help cure Trachoma, a common eye infection. It has even been used in common over-the-counter eye drops that help reduce inflammation.

Blueberries grow wild in the shadowy depths of old growth forests and can thrive amid the rocky shorelines of year round streams. The blueberry is a deciduous plant and loses its leaves in winter, but first the fall sees its green leathery leaves turn red, purple and crimson. Blueberry flowers are white or pink and the bush plant likes a wet meadow or moist stream bank as its home in the California Backcountry.

The bush flowers May through July and the flowers turn into tasty fruit that ripens in late summer and is juicy and ready to pick in early fall.

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

Ancient Greeks and Europeans have used to blueberry to help soothe and cure intestinal problems. Today it is being studied as a possible preventative heart disease medicine. Native Americans also enjoyed the plant for a variety of purposes. The branches were used to make arrows, brooms, and tools. They ate the leaves to help sure intestinal problems. And like the Mediterranean and European inhabitants, California Indians enjoyed the delicious blueberry fruit in the fall as a food. In the last 100 years, researchers have discovered that Vaccinium, a chemical found in Blueberries, helps strengthen the retina of the eyes and also helps relieve inflamed joints that suffer from arthritis.

The California State flower is the beautiful yellow-orange variety of the wild poppy. It carpets hillsides in the Backcountry, and also has been seeded along our freeways. Its color ranges from white to red, with the yellow and orange the most common, and it blooms April to September.

Native Americans used the poppy plant internally to reduce pains from wounds. For toothaches, a piece of the root was squeezed and masked to make a sap that was placed right on the tooth and gums to relieve pain. Pregnant mothers and nursing mothers avoided touching the poppy, as they believed it would lessen the milk for the baby.

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

Caution: The poppy is illegal to pick in the wild to help preserve it as a California wildflower (it droops immediately anyway and quickly loses its petals when picked). It also has toxic alkaloids and should not be eaten in even moderate amounts.

One of the most common flowers in the Backcountry of California – and around the world – is the Dandelion. Chances are it grows in your neighborhood or schoolyard. Its bright yellow flowers have square edged petals, and is one of the first flowers to offer its happy color each spring. The flower then turns to a soft round globe of seeds that easily blow in the wind, contributing to its wide distribution.

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Charles Webber

The dandelion root is similar to a thin carrot, long and fleshy. The root has been boiled to make healing brews for several thousand years around the world. It is taken as a blood purifier, and helps cleanse the liver and flush out the gall bladder.

Dandelion root

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

Caution: Be careful in picky Dandelion leaves to eat. In urban areas the plants may have been sprayed with a toxic pesticide as it is often considered a weed due to its ease in proliferation.

Dock is a distinctive looking plant that grows up to two feet tall. Its flowers form in clusters along its stem, first looking like soft 2-3" long bushy caterpillars climbing up the stem. When it dies back in the fall, the high iron content in the plant turns its leaves and stems a rusty red color that stands out from other yellowing annuals as winter approaches.

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Charles Webber

The Sierra Nevada Owens Valley Paiute Indians made dock tea to help cure stomachaches. The Modoc and Maidu ate the seeds as a food source. The Miwok drank Green Dock tea to help cure boils, and made a poultice of dock to apply on swollen boils.

The Goldenrod plant grows at many different elevations in the California Backcountry. There are four common types in the Sierras – California, Meadow, Alpine and Western. Golden flowers cluster on their own thin stalks off the main plant stem. Like the dandelion, the flowers become easily air borne seeds in late summer and fall.

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

The Miwoks would grind up the leaves of Goldenrod and sprinkle the fine dust into sores and cuts to speed healing. They enjoyed Goldenrod tea to help cure toothaches (as it has also been used in Europe). The Maidu also applied it to sores and wounds, and drank it to clean out their urinary system. It should only be used in small amounts as it has toxic properties in large doses.

With broad green leaves on its vines, and clever green tendrils that help the vie grow up and over bushes and trees to reach more light, the wild California Grape looks a lot like its cultivated relative. The fruit on the wild Grape form individually, and cluster together in an unusual spiral around the pant’s bracts. Its fruit is smaller and less sweet than the cultivated grape, but it remains a favorite of wild animals and intrepid hikers.

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Jed and Bonnie McClellan

Native Californians enjoyed the Grape fruit, and its leaves were used as a poultice for snakebites.

The first forests of the world had massive stands of gigantic horsetail. Today, it is found in moist boggy areas in the California Backcountry in a smaller form. The vertical stems are green and its regularly space joints are often darker in color at the joint. The stem ends at the top with a little cone head. It can grow to be 6"-3’ tall. Usually found near streams, or where underground water is close to the surface, it is found through out the Backcountry up to elevations of 9,500’. In ancient times, the Horsetail thrived in swampy forests that covered the California Backcountry and it was a companion to the Dinosaurs.

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

The Maidu would burn Horsetail and the place the ashes on burns to help heal the skin. The Wintun used the ashes to help heal sores around their mouth. At Lake Tahoe, the Washoe made a tea used to soothe sore eyes to drink as a urinary flush.

Scouring Rush Horsetail

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

The Horsetail also served to help California Indians, and early pioneers in their daily work. It has natural silica good for scouring and was used to clean pots and pans by early pioneers. Indians used it to polish arrows, baskets and wooden handcrafts.

The Juniper trees that cling to granite crevices on the Sierra Nevada mountain faces are often turned and twisted and seem to live in defiance of nature. The tree’s red bark is more dominant that its small leaves. There is also a dwarf Juniper that is a low shrub with dark green needle leaves. Both types of Juniper have green berries that ripen to a blue color in the fall. These are not really ‘berries’ – they are the pant’s cones!

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Brother Alfred Brousseau

Native Americans used Juniper in many ways. The Lake Tahoe Washoe inhaled the smoke from burning Juniper twigs to help relieve headaches and to clear out colds. The Maidu chewed the berries to relieve fevers and boiled the bark as a tea to relieve colds. The Modoc inhaled its smoke to cure colds and coughs.

The Manzanita is a shrub that grows from the coast to the Sierras and over into the Great basin east of California. There are at least a half dozen varieties that live in the California Backcountry. It has smooth reddish brown bark to cover its often-gnarled branches. The leaves are a flat, green or gray-green oval. Its small white and pink flowers appear early in the spring and turn to red-brown berries in late summer. Many animals, and the first Californians – have relied in the berries as an important food source.

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Dr. Robert Thomas and Margaret Orr

John Muir noted in My First Summer in the Sierras "Indians and bears and birds and fat grubs feast in the berries, which look like small apples often rosy on one side and green on the other. The Indians are said to make a kind of beer or cider of them. "

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Charles Webber

The berries could be eaten fresh or dried and stored well for winter food. The coastal Chumash also made a cider from the berries. The seeds inside the berries were ground to make small thin cakes that were cooked on hot stones. A paste of the leaves was also used to lessen poison oak inflammation. Early white settlers used the berries for jellies and jams.