Pine Scent in Spring Is It the Tree Sapresin Running Again

018 - Native American Uses of Utah Forest Copse

This fact sheet describes many of the uses of Utah woods trees by Native Americans of the western United states of america and Canada.

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Introduction

Bannock family uses young saplings to back up their tepee at a campsite in Idaho

Native Americans used a neat variety of plants in their 24-hour interval-to-day existence, and although most of these practices are no longer current, many ethnobotanical studies have brought them to low-cal. While anthropologists accept focused primarily on native uses of herbaceous and shrubby plants, in that location are a number of sources that reveal native uses of trees too. This fact sheet focuses on the uses of the well-nigh common trees of Utah forests, and covers most of the species mentioned in an earlier fact canvass titled "Utah Woods Types: An Introduction to Utah Forests."

Of course, all tree species that abound in Utah also grow in the surrounding region, so native uses of copse by tribes outside of Utah accept been included for a more consummate discussion. Yet, no attempt is fabricated to be comprehensive, and simply tribes from the western United States and Canada are included. The principal source of the information presented here is a Native American ethnobotany database at the University of Michigan. The book Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel E. Moerman is based on this database and provides a source of boosted information.

Native Americans used trees mainly for medicine, food, tools, shelter, and ceremonial aids. All simply one of the trees discussed here is evergreen, and because evergreens share similar properties, there is some overlap in uses between species. For case, the needles of evergreens were commonly used for tea, the pitch was chewed similar gum, the inner bark was consumed for food or medicine, the wood was used for home and tool construction, and diverse parts were used for purification or cleansing, both physical and spiritual. Similarly, there is considerable overlap in the uses of these trees by different tribes. Therefore, in the accounts that follow, the individual tribes are mentioned only when the uses are unique to a particular tribe's surround or belief system. The location of each tribe is noted when the tribe is outset mentioned.

This information is presented only to foster cultural and historical understanding. If you are considering using whatever of these tree-based foods, medicines, or remedies, you should first do thorough research into their safety and potential dangers. A web search for "poisonous plants" would be a valuable starting point.

Pinyon
Pinus edulisandPinus monophylla

Pinyon branches and cones with pino nuts

Pinyon is probably best known for its edible seeds, commonly called pino nuts (see "Pine Nuts: A Utah Forest Product" in Utah Woods News). Although at that place are ii species of pinyon native to Utah, Colorado pinyon (Pinus edulis) and singleleaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla), they were used similarly by Native Americans, and so they are dealt with together here.

Pinyon has a long list of medicinal uses. The pitch was used for a myriad of ailments including cuts, any kind of pare problem, digestive or bowel troubles, infectious diseases such equally colds, influenza, and tuberculosis, venereal disease, sore muscles, rheumatism, fevers, and internal parasites. Information technology was also heated and applied to the face up to remove unwanted hair or prevent sunburn. The inner bawl was eaten as an emergency ration or made into an expectorant tea. The needles were chewed and swallowed to increment perspiration to relieve fevers. Buds were chewed and made into a poultice for burns, or dried and pulverized to brand a fumigant for earaches. Applied uses of pitch included making dyes or paints, gluing arrows, cementing turquoise jewelry, or waterproofing woven h2o jugs or baskets.

Pine nuts were a tremendously valuable food source, and there were many more ways to consume them than but raw or roasted. They could be ground into flour and rolled into balls, made into cakes or gruel, mixed with berries and stored for wintertime use, mixed with yucca fruit lurid and fabricated into a pudding, kneaded into seed butter and spread on staff of life, or made into stiff dough, frozen, and eaten like ice cream. Some tribes ground them with the shells for boosted flavour. The value of the basics was increased past their periodicity—good cone crops could not exist counted on every twelvemonth. Generally a heavy ingather of pine nuts was but expected once every seven years. This oftentimes was followed past a smallpox epidemic, perhaps due to many different groups coming together to share the harvest and perchance spreading the disease.

Virtually every other part of the pinyon also had a employ. Pollen was used for ceremonial purposes, sometimes in place of cattail pollen. Pinyon forest was valuable for firm construction since information technology was resistant to rot and forest-eating beetles, and it was also used to make useful items such every bit cradles, looms, saddle parts, tools, and toys. Charcoal from pinyon forest made the best black for sand paintings, and pinyons that had been struck past lightning were valued for ceremonial uses.

• Children of the Kawaiisu tribe of southern California wore croaky pine nut shells on their earlobes every bit ornaments.
• The Navajo of the southwestern United States had a taboo against shaking pinyon copse to bring downwardly the nuts, and preferred to gather them after they had fallen naturally to the ground. They also smeared pinyon pitch on a person involved in a burial, and spread it on the forehead and nether the eyes of those in mourning.
• The Hopi of northeastern Arizona applied the pitch to their foreheads when going outside the business firm equally a protection against sorcery. They also put pitch onto hot coals and used the fumes to smoke people and dress after a funeral.
• The Havasupai of Arizona put pinyon sprigs into cooking pits with porcupine, bobcat, or badger to improve the taste of the meat.
• The Shoshone used pine nuts to make pemmican. The pine nut was a staple in their diet. The cones were harvested in the autumn past knocking them out of the tree with a long pole. The cones were then buried overnight to cause them to open.

Juniper
Juniperus osteosperma and Juniperus scopulorum

Ute equus caballus corral made of juniper and pinyon wood
Utah Juniper

Every bit with the pinyon, the two native tree-sized species of juniper in Utah, Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) and Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum), are not differentiated here as to native uses.

In contrast to pinyon, most medicinal uses of juniper came from infusions or boiled extracts of branches, twigs, needles, or cones rather than from pitch. Nevertheless, these preparations were used for a listing of conditions only as long and varied: kidney trouble, heart trouble, hemorrhages, stomachaches, headaches, menstrual cramps, colds, fevers, smallpox, flu, pneumonia, venereal disease, diabetes, cholera, tuberculosis, chickenpox, worms, swellings, rheumatism, burns, sore throats, hives or sores, and boils or slivers. A strong decoction of the cones was even used to kill ticks on horses.

The bluish, berry-like cones containing i or two seeds were boiled and eaten, or dried and used to brand a drink, or basis into meal and added to water for a drink or to make into cake. They were also pierced and strung for beads. The Okanagan-Colville tribe of British Columbia considered the cones to be poisonous and used them on bullets or arrowheads to impale people more than apace in warfare, yet they too fabricated a drinkable from the cones and drank it in the sweathouse.

Juniper bawl worked well as a torch or for tinder to outset fires. It was besides well suited for lining and covering pits for storing fruit, and for covering floors and thatching roofs. As with other trees, juniper woods had many uses, such as club construction, corrals, contend posts, horse yokes, spoked wheels used in a throwing game, drums, flutes, bows, and bowls (made from knots in the wood).

Juniper needles and boughs had additional protective powers over illness, expiry, and sorcery. Boughs were hung around the house during epidemics to bulldoze germs away and were considered powerful medicine for driving away evil spirits associated with death. Hunters also rubbed themselves with juniper boughs for protection from grizzlies. Needles were burned ceremonially for their sacred, purifying smoke that could ward off illness, protect from witches, and remove fear of thunder.

• Cheyenne men of the Nifty Plains used juniper wood flutes to court women. They as well used an infusion of juniper for sedating hyperactive people.
• The Navajo used the juniper for "War Trip the light fantastic toe medicine," and as well to rub on the hair for dandruff.
• The Shuswap of British Columbia used juniper to go on earwigs and bedbugs out of the house.
• The Blackfoot used juniper in the Sun Dance anniversary on the altar of the sacred woman.
• The Hopi held misbehaving youngsters in a blanket over a smoldering juniper burn to calm them downward.
• The Shoshone used the bark to make clothing, moccasin insulation, and rope. The woods was used to make corrals for antelope drives.

Quaking Aspen
Populus tremuloides

Aspen bark was valuable every bit both food and medicine

Heavily relied on by numerous species of animals, aspen was also a great source of food, medicine, and wood for Native Americans. Many medicinal uses relied on the presence of salicin and populin, two precursors of aspirin that are present to some degree in all members of the genus Populus.

Aspen bark had the most medicinal uses; preparations were used to treat ailments such as tummy pain, colds and coughs, fevers, centre problems, and venereal disease, and to wearing apparel wounds, stimulate the appetite, and tranquility crying babies. The inner bark was considered a sweetness treat for children, and it could be eaten raw, baked into cakes, or boiled into syrup and used as a spring tonic. An infusion of the roots could be used to preclude premature birth. Fifty-fifty the white powder on the surface of the bark had uses: to treat venereal affliction, to stop haemorrhage, and to apply to the underarms to forbid pilus growth or as a deodorant and antiperspirant.

A poultice of shredded roots or a boiled extract of stems and branches was used for rheumatism, and the leaves were used to treat bee stings, oral cavity abscesses, and urinary problems. The buds could exist boiled in fat to brand a nasal salve for sore nostrils caused by colds. Healing salves were made past mixing the ashes of bawl or wood with grease.

Practical uses for aspen wood were also many and varied. Aspen logs were used to make Sun Dance lodges, dugout canoes, and deadfall traps for bears. Poles provided tepee frames and scrapers for deer hides. Knots could be made into cups, and bark could be made into cording.

• The Thompson tribe of British Columbia used a grooming of the bawl to rub on the bodies of adolescents for purification. Stems and branches helped with insanity caused by excessive drinking, and made a protective bath against witches.
• Anyone observing a liquid taboo in the Blackfoot tribe could suck on aspen bark.
• The Blackfoot likewise fabricated whistles from the bark in the spring when it could be slid from the branches.
• The Apache of the American Southwest used the sap to flavor wild strawberries, and the Utes of Colorado and Utah considered it a delicacy.
• The Upper Tanana of Alaska mixed the ashes of burnt aspen wood with tobacco and used it as chewing tobacco.
• The Carrier of British Columbia used rotten wood for diapers and cradle lining.
• Aspen stems were used to brand a hoop for the Navajo Evilway anniversary.
• The Shoshone used aspen for edifice shelters, as pole scrapers, and as a season marker.

Douglas-fir
Pseudotsuga menziesii

Douglas-fir cones were used to aid cease the rain
Douglas-fir pitch was used for medicine, chewing gum, and glue

All parts of the Douglas-fir had medicinal uses. The pitch was used for cuts, boils, and other pare issues, coughs and sore throats, and injured or dislocated basic. It could exist mixed with oil and taken as an emetic (to promote vomiting) and purgative (a strong laxative) for intestinal pains, diarrhea, and rheumatism, among other ailments. Information technology was besides taken as a diuretic for gonorrhea. The bark had clarified properties and was useful for haemorrhage bowels and stomach problems, excessive menstruation, and allergies caused past touching water hemlock. The needles were used for a proficient general tonic and a handling for paralysis. Bud tips were chewed for oral cavity sores. A decoction or infusion of immature shoots was used for colds, venereal illness, kidney problems, an athlete's foot preventative, or an emetic for loftier fevers and anemia.

Douglas-fir didn't provide quite every bit much nutrient equally some other trees, but as with many other evergreens, the pitch could be chewed like mucilage or eaten as a sugar-like food. The needles and young shoots could provide a tea, and seeds were reportedly used as food, though they weren't nearly equally big and nutritious as the seeds of the pinyon.

The forest found its way into such useful implements as snowshoe frames, bows, spear shafts, tepee poles, and dugout canoes. Boughs made good camping beds and sweathouse floors. Twigs could function as a fibroid twine wrap in basket making, and pitch could be used as glue and a patching material for canoes. Rotten wood was used to smoke buckskin, thereby preserving and dying it. Many tribes had various ceremonial uses for parts of the Douglas-fir.

• The interior Salish tribes of B.C. ate a white, crystalline sugar that sometimes appeared on the branches during hot weather in early summertime.
• The coastal Salish steamed tree knots and placed them in kelp stems overnight, then bent them to make fishhooks.
• The Okanagan-Colville of British Columbia used the branches as a purification scrub for the bereaved. The Thompson tribe used them in a like fashion for good luck. They also chewed the peeled plant tops equally a mouth freshener, and used the shoots in moccasin tips to help continue their feet from sweating. Hunters made a branch scrub to prevent deer from detecting their scent.
• The Karok used soot from the burned pitch to rub into the punctures of girls' skin tattoos and the wood to make hooks for climbing sugar pino trees.
• The Northern Paiute of Oregon used the branches as a flavoring for barbecued bear meat.
• The Swinomish of Washington used the boiled bark on fish nets as a low-cal brown dye to help camouflage the nets from fish.
• The Chehalis and Cowlitz of Washington used the cones as charms to cease the rain.
• The Shoshone used this tree for shelter and its sap for sealing water jugs.

Ponderosa Pino
Pinus ponderosa

Ponderosa pine in the Uinta Mountains of Utah with a scar made by Native Americans harvesting bark

Ponderosa pine pitch was used medicinally for sores and boils, aching backs and limbs, sore eyes, earaches, and as a general tonic. Heated needles were used to hasten the commitment of placenta, and a decoction was adept for coughs and fever. Boughs were used in sweathouses for muscular pain. Plant tops were used to help with hemorrhaging and high fevers.

The sweetness inner bark was used for food by many tribes (see the Summertime 2004 Utah Forest News article "Ponderosa Bark Used for Nutrient, Glue, and Healing"). A highly nutritious food source, it could be eaten raw, rolled into balls for a sweetness care for, baked into cakes, mixed with corn and meat and used to flavor stew, or peeled off in strips and dried for later utilise. It was collected on cool cloudy days when the sap was running, and different sources take likened the taste either to sheep fat or lemon syrup. The seeds were besides used for food, either raw or roasted, or stale and powdered and made into small cakes or bread.

Practical uses of ponderosa pino seemed to outnumber the food and medicinal uses. The pitch could be used every bit a kind of hair tonic, equally glue for arrow making and other manufactures, and as a waterproofing agent for h2o jugs and moccasins. The bark was good for temporary shelters while out foraging, or for containers for sand painting pigments. The abundant long needles could be used to make baskets, insulate hole-and-corner storage pits or the roofs of pit houses, or to provide a platform supported on a pole framework for roasting berries. The roots were used to make a blue dye, and the root fibers were used in basketry. The forest was valuable for large roof timbers, social club poles, dugout canoes, ladders, fence posts, corrals, cradleboards, saddle parts, and snowshoes.

• The Utes used the pitch to glue rawhide to horses' hooves to protect them from rocky terrain; they placed people confronting scarred trunks for healing.
• The Cheyenne used the pitch inside whistles and flutes to amend their sound.
• The Paiute used pitch to protect rock paintings.
• The Shuswap valued the bark as fuel considering it cooled apace and prevented enemies from knowing how long agone a campsite was broken.
• The Flathead of Montana jabbed the needles into the scalp for dandruff.
• The Thompson used pitch on babies' pare and claimed it made them sleep all the time.
• The Hopi attached needles to prayer sticks to bring cold weather.
• The Kawaiisu used a branch to hang the outgrown cradle of a male person child in the hope he would grow strong like the tree.
• The Shoshone used the tree for shelter and the sap for sealing h2o jugs.

Limber Pino (Pinus flexilis) and Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata)

Limber pine and bristlecone pine were manifestly not used as extensively as their lower summit counterparts, just there are some records regarding these two species. The Shoshone used a poultice of heated pitch from bristlecone pine on sores and boils. The Navajo used limber pine as a cough and fever medicine, a good luck fume for hunters, and a ceremonial emetic to induce vomiting. The Apache roasted limber pine seeds and sometimes ground and consumed them, shells and all.

Lodgepole Pine
Pinus contorta

Lodgepoles used for the dwelling house of a Ute chief in the eastern Wasatch Mountains, Utah

As with almost evergreens, the pitch of lodgepole pine had a broad multifariousness of medicinal uses. Internally it was considered skilful for colds, coughs, sore throats, tuberculosis, stomachaches and ulcers. External poultices were used for center trouble and rheumatism, and a mixture of pitch, red axle grease, and Climax chewing tobacco was practical to boils. Heated pitch was mixed in a ratio of iv parts pitch to i function bone marrow for use on burns. Information technology could also be applied to a splinter in the peel, allowed to set, and then peeled off along with the splinter.

Medicinal uses were too found for other lodgepole pine parts. The needle tips were boiled to make an extract for paralysis, body sores, or constitutional weakness. An infusion of twigs with needles attached was good for the influenza. An infusion of sprouts and bawl was used for syphilis. Smoldering twigs were carefully applied to arthritic or injured joints for pain and swelling. The inner bawl was eaten as a blood purifier and used every bit a cathartic (strong laxative) or general tonic. Like the pitch, it was considered helpful for tuberculosis, coughs, and tummy problems.

In one case once again, similar near evergreens the pitch was chewed like gum, the needles were made into a tea, and the inner bark could be used for food too every bit medicine. The latter was sweet and delicious in May and June when the sap was running, but information technology was hard to digest raw and was normally boiled. Although it was used to treat stomachaches, eating as well much could cause that problem. The seeds could besides be used for food, though similar Douglas-fir seeds, they weren't large enough to provide a lot of nutrition.

Practical uses for lodgepole wood included tepee and travois poles, and it was this apply of the lodgepole that prompted Lewis and Clark to give the tree its proper noun. The lodgepole was so valuable for tepee poles, in fact, (each tepee needed 25-thirty poles) that Plains tribes would travel hundreds of miles to the mountains to go new poles every yr. Other uses included bowls made from burls, fasteners on food storage bags, story sticks, fire tongs, board bending tools, and small-scale totem poles.

• The Carrier painted pitch on the heart for snow blindness.
• The Klamath of Oregon reportedly used pitch on the inside of the eyelid to assist sore eyes.
• The Thompson used a mixture of pitch, carry tallow, rose petals, and red ochre as a face foam with disinfectant properties that helped with blemishes, or as a kind of lotion for newborn babies. A salvage of the resin mixed with animal fat was likewise practical to the body for purification after a sweatbath, or used for smoothing and polishing soapstone pipes.
• The Blackfoot used boiled pitch as a glue for headdresses and bows, and as a waterproofing agent for moccasins. They likewise used the forest to brand current of air chimes to nowadays to newly married couples.
• The Kwakwaka'wakw of British Columbia used the pitch to trap hummingbirds. The birds' hearts were then used in dearest medicines.
• The Okanagan-Colville used the bark to make temporary berry-picking containers.
• As with Douglas-fir, the branches of lodgepole pine were rubbed on hunters' bodies in the Tolowa tribe of California and Oregon to hibernate the homo aroma.
• The Haisla of B.C. used burned twigs to brand a pigment for tattoos, and to singe and trim hair.
• The Shoshone used this tree principally for building shelters, simply also for edifice structures for ceremonies and for making travois.

Subalpine Fir
Abies lasiocarpa

Engelmann spruce

Subalpine fir was known as the "medicine tree" by a number of tribes, and the list of ailments it was used for is truly impressive. A poultice of the needles was used to help with colds and fevers, and ground needles were used in horse medicine bundles, for skin diseases, haemorrhage gums, and as a baby pulverization for rashes from excessive urination. The fume from a needle smudge was used to fumigate sick horses or human being faces swollen from venereal disease, and was inhaled for headaches, fainting, and tubercular coughs. The pitch was used for general weakness, colds, tuberculosis, lung trouble, cuts and bruises, loss of appetite, and ulcers. It also provided a wound clarified, a means of inducing vomiting, and an external treatment for goiter. The bawl was also medicinally valuable—an infusion could be given to horses for diarrhea, or it could be eaten as medicine for "shadow on the breast," the beginning of tuberculosis. Co-operative tips were chewed for allergies caused by water hemlock.

Subalpine fir was non used most equally extensively for food equally other trees, although the inner bawl and seeds could exist eaten. The cones could be crushed into a fine powder and mixed with fatty and marrow for a confection.

The needles could be used equally a deodorant or mixed with grease to use as a hair tonic or perfume. They could as well be placed on stoves as incense or pulverized and used equally torso and garment scents. The wood was used to make chairs and insect-proof storage boxes for dancing regalia. The branches were used on the floors of sweathouses and equally bedding that could be easily changed every few days.

• The Blackfoot tied bags of needles on a belt and hung it effectually a horse's neck for perfume. They too used a needle smudge for safety during severe thunderstorms, and sprayed chewed needles over ceremonial containers to purify them. Needles were also mixed with paint to make it odour better.
• The Cheyenne burned the needles as incense in ceremonies to assistance those afraid of thunder, to chase abroad illness, and to revive a dying person's spirit. Their Sun Dancers used fir boughs for confidence, protection from thunder, and purification.
• The Okanagan-Colville rubbed stale, powdered bark on their necks and underarms as a deodorant.

Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii)

Engelmann bandbox was non as unremarkably used for medicine every bit the subalpine fir. However, the pitch was used for eczema and as a poultice for sores and slivers, an infusion of the bawl was taken for respiratory ailments including tuberculosis, and a boiled excerpt of needles and pitch was taken for cancer or coughs. The bark was used for baskets, roof thatching, all kinds of utensils, and canoe coverings. The wood was used for shakes, clapboards, and framing timbers, and the limbs and roots could be shredded and pounded to make cord and rope. The Thompson believed that the spruce and redcedar would provide vivid dreams to anyone sleeping under them, as well as good luck for those who asked for it.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Patty 1000. Timbimboo-Madsen of the Northwestern Ring of the Shoshone Nation for reviewing this fact sheet, and to the Academy of Michigan–Dearborn for providing and maintaining the Native American ethnobotany Web site that provided much of the content.

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Published May 2011.

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Source: https://forestry.usu.edu/news/utah-forest-facts/native-american-uses-of-utah-forest-trees

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