Prairie des Femmes : May 2024

Part 7: The Voice of Big Bill

bashuchak

Rabbit Chew

Part 9:

Over the two years that I observed this plant I gained an ability to spot her and tell the difference between her and her cousin purple cudweed. In May of 2023 I had Amanda Lafleur, Bill Fontenot and Dr. Charles Ray Brassieur over for what we called a vineraire-coffee summit. I walked them out to the field to see one of the closest plants.

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Since I had seen Dr. Allain last winter, every once in a while I would send him a new photograph of the plants. His photos on the USGS survey website were one of my main resources in identification, so we all knew his word was gospel. So finally on a particularly hot day in July I found 13 more plants in the overgrown coton jaune patch to the east side of the field. They were five times the size of the plants in the west yard. With that, I found the courage to call Dr. Allain, who lives 2 miles as the crow flies from me. I explained again what I had growing and encouraged him to come anytime to see the big plants. He was at my field within an hour.

As we walked around he told me that he was initially incredulous because he had never seen this plant just “growing in someone’s yard” like that. He said that it was a mid-successional species, and that they appear halfway to when the prairie habitat is “healed”, that is, back to its original vitality and biodiversity. I found some metaphor in this.

Although Prairie des Femmes is remote, she is hardly untouched. Dr. Allain said that this life everlasting can be found in some of the rehabilitated prairie habitats as well as prairie remnants, and as I understand, needs the biodiversity of the intact prairie soil and root system (never tilled for agriculture) to thrive. Although we are an old and somewhat insulated prairie close to the wild oxbow swamp to the north, our field was not a prairie remnant, but rather a fallow and overworked sweet potato field. In my opinion, this plant must have survived in our place not because it was pristine, but because of the way we managed the land, including planting native species, forgoing poison, minimal mowing and burning periodically.

So my field was not a prairie remnant but maybe the place where I found the first plant in 2011, in the far southwest corner of the yard, was rounded by the plow and retained some type of biodiversity needed for this plant to survive. Perhaps she came on the feet of some bird or deer, or in the fur of the coyotes who passed noisily in the field. Whatever it was, somehow this vineraire patch had survived here. The prairie has a memory.

When we went to the local neighborhood boucherie my neighbor Monique Verdin’s cousins from down the bayou were all there. I gave some of the rabbit tobacco to all the neighbors, Monique’s cousins, as well as her most matriarchal aunt who remembered it. That fall I was put in touch with Marlene Toups who called it the “lost herb” and said she had not seen it in 40 years down the bayou. When I hand delivered a bag to Mrs. Marlene at festivals Acadiens et Creoles, she smelled it and said, “you found it”. Mr. Clovis Billiot said that the salt water intrusion had “tout tue’ en bas”. Hurricane Hilda and Ida were the worst and the water stayed a long time inland, enough time to kill the tender medicinals. I gave the plant and beaucoup seed to Theresa Dardar as well as Janie Luster (or maybe I just called Ms. Janie and offered it).

I was also able to return a big bag to the Attakapas-Ishak tribe through their daughter Maaliyah Papillion, a Creole and Indigenous actress, singer, model, former Ms. Louisiana and third-generation healer. In return her father and uncle gave me information on the ceremonial blend rabbit tobacco was used in, as well as a spear point directly to my eldest son, who had escorted me there.

Vineraire Part 8: Life Everlasting

Part 7: The Voice of Big Bill

Life Everlasting

An antiquated story-and-a-half Creole cottage sitting right down on the banquette, as do the Choctaw squaws who sell bay and sassafras and life-everlasting. -George Washington Cable, Café des Exilés

As any good student of Louisiana literature I had read Toole, Grau, Gaines, Percy, Fontenot and Chopin at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. However, it was reading George Washington Cable’s Old Creole Days under the tutelage of the late Dr. Maurice Duquesnay, rumored muse for certain attributes of Ignatius J. Riley HIMSELF, that brought me the first mention of the elusive herb, life everlasting.

No mind, the herb was one of those details that, as a college student, I glossed over. Bay laurel and sassafras were common enough in our food. Bay leaves went in soups and gumbos. I foraged bay laurel at the top of a bluff on Santa Rosa Island, Florida. The sassafras root I was given to chew as a child. The leaf was known in my town as the ubiquitous tonic “tisane” and was, according to Mayor Vidrine, good for everything, including puberty. With harvested sassafras leaves (sometimes green, sometimes red) I would dry and grind filé to sprinkle in my gumbo bowl at the last minute. But life everlasting? What was this old herb the Choctaw women sold while sitting on the banquette in New Orleans?

It took twenty years for me to close my knowledge gap in the indigenous women’s herbal trifecta. As I was identifying the same mysterious herb in my own field, my husband at the time was creating a performance at the Music Box Village in New Orleans called "Café des Exilés" where our friend and poet Moose read so beautifully the very excerpt about the Choctaw women and their life everlasting.

Life everlasting. They say this herb will heal anything: skin, lungs and spirit, and make you live a long time. For me, there was a deeper meaning. Not only was my life feeling utterly over and un-lasting at that time because of my failed marriage, I had reason to attach the folklore about this plant as a respiratory and funerary herb, a protector and smudge, and connector to the afterlife to other experiences I had had. There was a spiritual lesson in this name life everlasting and vineraire, as well as in the properties of this plant. I often say it's smart like a chaoui (racoon). If you leave food out and make a habitat for it, it will follow you around. The everlasting came into my life at a time when we were both at risk of survival. The name life everlasting and the quest to identify and grow it out gave me what felt like a secret wink from the universe and indeed encouraged me to live a long time.

Vineraire Part 7 - Big Bill as the Voice of God

Vineraire Part 7

“What if I told you that plant was sent straight to you from God.”

In May 2023 like the old stories, I found myself alone for the first time in twenty years in the Prairie des Femmes.

I sat in the pasture and relied on my work with this plant to soothe, preoccupy and heal me, and she did all of these things in abundance. I told myself over and over that I was growing this plant to seed for the ladies down the bayou. This gave me hope. I checked on the different plants and their progress, even watering them by hand over a six acre patch. The more I wandered crying aimlessly, the more my tears acted as prisms to magnify her presence. When I watered one plant, another appeared larger in the path before me, until I had found many who were competing with the overgrowth of our uncollected coton jaune. I celebrated every new plant, complimented her, called her "darling", manicured the caterpillars, cleared the weeds and protected her from poison as well as from man's cruel blade. The plants multiplied and they got bigger. From 2022-2023 I had gone from 3 volunteer plants to over 200.

In utter despair at the illusion of a twenty year life I was brutally waking up from, in complete disarray I called on horticulturalist Big Bill Fontenot, who is like an uncle to me. Being from my own hometown our families had connections across the centuries. Over the years of my questioning land and plant memory and “herbal adventuring” Bill had become a trusted mentor. I was completely humbled flat at the turn my life had taken, namely I was divorcing, but Bill was able to clear the weeds for me and show me that through this utterly unbearable pain, there was God. “God is as easy as fallin’ down,” he said.

If finding God was as easily as being near the earth, I was there both mentally and physically and it felt terrible. Big Bill offered me the idea that God sent me this plant as a gift as well as and an offering to the intellect and senses I possess to receive her in perfect timing, or at all. God was in the essence of this plant, after all we are all manifestations of God, and if God loves the humble, she was most loved.

Bill also offered that it was strong medicine and required a strong person to handle it properly. I took these offerings and kept him supplied with the dried rabbit tobacco, a spray and a balm I made. In this way survived the summer of 2023.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Native Ethnobotany Uses of Life Everlasting

Native American Uses of Life Everlasting According to the Native Ethnobotany Database

Alabama

Sedative

Compound decoction of plant used many ways for nervousness or sleeplessness.

Decoction of plant used as a face wash for nerves and insomnia.

Cherokee

Analgesic

Compound used for local pains, muscular cramps and twitching.

Infusion of plant rubbed into scratches made over muscle cramp pain.

Antirheumatic (Internal)

Used with Carolina vetch for rheumatism.

Cold Remedy

Decoction taken for colds.

Misc. Disease Remedy

Used in a sweatbath for various diseases.

Cough Medicine

Used as a cough syrup.

Misc. Disease Remedy

Warm liquid blown down throat for clogged throat (diphtheria).

Throat Aid

Chewed for sore throat.

Respiratory Aid

Smoked for asthma.

Choctaw

Analgesic

Decoction of leaves and blossoms taken for lung pain.

Cold Remedy

Decoction of leaves and blossoms taken for colds.

Creek

Cold Remedy

Compound decoction of plant tops taken and used as inhalant for colds.

Adjuvant

Leaves added to medicines as a perfume.

Antiemetic

Decoction of leaves taken for vomiting.

Misc. Disease Remedy

Decoction of leaves used as a throat wash for mumps.

Psychological Aid

Decoction of plant used as a wash for persons who 'wanted to run away.'

Sedative

Decoction of plant tops taken and used as a wash for old people unable to sleep.

Witchcraft Medicine

Decoction of plant used as a wash for persons afflicted by ghosts.

Koasati

Febrifuge

Decoction of leaves taken for fevers.

Pediatric Aid

Notes: Decoction of leaves used as a bath and given to children with fevers.

Menominee

Analgesic

Dried leaves steamed as an inhalant for headache.

Disinfectant

Smudge of leaves used to fumigate premises to dispel ghost of a dead person.

Psychological Aid

Dried leaves steamed as an inhalant for 'foolishness.'

Stimulant

Leaf smoke blown into nostrils to revive one who had fainted.

Meskwaki

Psychological Aid

Smudge of herb used to 'bring back a loss of mind.'

Stimulant

Smudged and used to revive an unconscious patient.

Montagnais

Cough Medicine

Decoction of plant taken for coughing.

Tuberculosis Remedy

Decoction of plant taken for consumption.

Rappahannock

Febrifuge

Infusion of roots taken for chills.

Respiratory Aid

Infusion of dried stems or dried leaves smoked in a pipe for asthma.

Candy

Leaves chewed for 'fun.'

Compiled from Native American Ethnobotany Database

Monday, May 27, 2024

Sprouts and comparisons

Vinéraire Part 6: A Vulnerary Plant

Part 7: Big Bill as the Voice of God

In 2022 I began having coffee meet ups with three of my mentors to discuss a project on native plants they wanted to involve me in. Amanda Lafleur, Bill Fontenot and Dr. Ray Brassieur and I met a few times in the fall of 2022. At the meetings I presented them each with a sprig of the sweet everlasting. I left these meetings with a life changing sense of dedication and dignity for the work I was doing.

In December 2022 I attended a prairie society function at NuNu’s in Arnaudville where I ran into my Frozard neighbor Dr. Allain whose photographs on the USGS survey I had used for months. I knew at this time that this plant was rare in my experience, but these prairie biologists were familiar with it. I gave Dr. Allain a sprig of flowers and he was able to sprout seed. He thought the rosette was purple cudweed, which was common in our area. I knew there were differences between the purple cudweed and the sweet everlasting in my own pasture, and taking all opinions in for consideration, continued observing them.

At a follow up coffee with Dr. Brassieur I presented him with a gallon ziplock bag of the vinéraire. He was full of insight and offered the origin of the name.

The word vinéraire conjures up ideas of a plant that is venerated, and so this is true, but the word has more to do with vulnerability than adoration. He explained that vinéraire, as we say, was a corruption of vulnéraire, a vulnerary (all purpose healing) plant. "Corruption" isn't really a nice word and I don't ascribe to the idea that Louisiana French has been degraded in any way, rather, it has been enriched. The name represents a change to the French in Louisiana because of factors such language influences and the predominantly oral aspect of the language. For example, I worked with American Beauty Berry, in French sassepareille, but also in Louisiana creole chassepareille and sometimes in Point Blue, bouilli sauvage. Would I call chassepareille a corruption? No, I'd call it poetry.

According to vocabulary.com:

The old-fashioned word vulnerary can be used as a noun or an adjective to describe plants that are used to heal wounds or treat illnesses. Calendula flowers are sometimes used as a vulnerary…Vulnerary shares a root with vulnerable, the Latin vulnus, or "wound."

Dr. Brassieur also told me of emails he’d received from native women down the bayou like Marlene Toups and Therese Dardar who were looking to Louisiana ethnobotanists and horticulturalists for the vinéraire of their memory. Some said they had not seen the plant in forty years. They used to smell it in the savanne, like syrup, and their daddies would bring it back from the rabbit hunts. Dr. Brassieur remarked that smelling it in the field was the same way I found it, plus my field is full of rabbits.

I left that vinéraire-coffee with the good professor with a clear mission: to grow this plant out and return it to anyone who wanted it, especially the native women and tribes who had lost it. I knew this plant existed up north, but I had no other sightings of it here in Prairie des Femmes in all of my years tromping this countryside and scanning the roadsides. Even the fields boardering my field are strangely barren of it, or much diversity at all. I felt confident that whatever strain of this plant that was surviving here was somewhat tolerant of our micro-climate, and deserved after all these years to be venerated.

Vinéraire Part 5: Traiteurs from Down the Bayou

Bilingual author and up the road neighbor Jonathan Olivier who runs Frozard Comunity Garden had always been an ally. In 2021 he wrote an article for Bitter Southerner Magazine about plant medicine. In the article he talked about this rabbit tobacco, and the information he gathered was pivotal in answering a question as well as raising one. In my own independent identification process I was down to two contenders: pearly everlasting and sweet everlasting. Jonathan's article documented the story of native faith healers, namely Madame Teresa Dardar of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe in Pointe-aux-Chênes, Louisiana. It stated:

“One [hard to find plant] is vinéraire, or pearly everlasting.
Although it isn’t native to the Southeast, oral histories show
it has been commonly used in tea in Louisiana and was cultivated
by indigenous people. ”

And there it was, my smoking gun: the French name: vinéraire.As a collector of oral histories myself for la Prairie des Femmes, I knew there was an element of error that must be taken into consideration. While it was true that pearly everlasting is not native to the southeast, i.e. Louisiana, fragrant sweet everlasting is. As I stood in my vinéraire patch 40 miles from the gulf, I asked myself why the natives of down the bayou would trade pearly everlasting when they had something locally and more fragrant growing natively right here. It was another meeting with Jonathan where I gathered that the people he interviewed were unclear on what the plant was ( I understood why after all the tracas I had been through to Id it) because since the hurricanes Hilda and Ida, saltwater intrusion had made this sensitive plant just a memory to the traiteurs of down the bayou.

Part 7: Big Bill as the Voice of God

Venéraire Part 4: The Identification Process

The ID Process

I identify plants for my own purposes by smell. I was always a tire-feuille (leaf puller) and when the native knowledge came to me, it worked because I had known plants by smell since I was a child. The smell of a plant tells me much of what I need to know, but I would’t use a plant seriously or on anyone else without a level of certainty that comes with formal identification experience. My main tool of identification was the Vermillionville Healer’s Guide. I also used Richard Guidry’s Les Arbres de la Louisiane, The Charles Bienvenue thesis, elders of my community, comparison, books, Native Ethnobotany website, google searches and plant ID apps that were becoming more popular and reliable. My identification process could go on for days, weeks, months or years, and always had multiple levels depending on the season and environmental conditions. I liked to know the plant in all her seasons. I knew the old names and remedies, could feel the plant’s energy and hypothesize the uses, but as a teacher I knew the Latin names were a code that I had to know. All in all, I had reliable instincts.

When identifying the rabbit tobacco I had to take into consideration all of the common names both in French and English and a few Latin names that had changed and evolved over the years. These plants are in the aster family and all take the common names of rabbit tobacco, everlasting or cudweed. Sometimes one specimen had all three common names depending on area.

There was pearly everlasting (anaphalis margaritacea) and prairie everlasting (antennaria neglecta). The plant in my field was fragrant white rabbit tobacco, pseudoghaphalium obtusifolium, and not the early rabbit tobacco (gamochaeta purpurea) that was so common to this place. The Healer’s guide listed patte de chat (gnaphalium purpurea) and herbe dentale (gamochaeta purpurea) as two separate plants. I was confused because they seemed like the same plant and their latin names are synonymous. Neither of these was my pseudognaphalium obsusifolium, so I began to realize she wasn’t listed in my main sources.

According to the North Carolina Plant Extension:

Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium

Common Name(s):

Previously known as:

Gnaphalium obtusifolium
Gnaphalium obtusifolium var. praecox
Pseudognaphalium

While I was still trying to decide exactly what I had, I used it, made teas, smudges, carried it in an acorn locket around my neck, and sat with it morning, noon and night. I flagged and celebrated every new plant I found. She beamed and I was happy to keep my promise to her.

In 2021 I had three plants that I tended and weeded around for the first time. In 2022 that number was over 200 volunteer-only plants. I identified the American Painted Lady butterfly (vanessa virginiensis) and larvae on the plants. This manicuring of the plant mirrored the self care I was also giving myself at the time, because my life was about to change drastically and I had no idea.

Part 7: Big Bill as the Voice of God