Customer Reviews

Native American Ethnobotany

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Dr. Daniel Moerman has spent several decades building a database based on the scholarly literature on Native American Ethnobotany. The steadily growing information has has several print and online incarnations, and this book, the latest, is by far the most extensive. A summary review of the body of literature on the subject, cross referenced by plant, by tribe, and by therapeutic catagory. Indispensable for the student of native ethnobotany. The book may be a disappointment for the reader wanting great detail on dosages and specifics on usages -- much detail has been lost while adapting the information to database style. It remains the one book a student should own if he or she can afford only one.

Ever since I was a little girl I have been fascinated with how our ancestors used plants for food as well as medicine. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started seeking out and purchasing books on edible and medicinal plants. I subscribed to different publications whose main focus was this subject. Any article in magazines on this subject immediately grabbed my attention. Then with the wonderful internet becoming available to anyone with a computer, my search for information took an exciting turn. One website for information linked to another site, and then to another and so on. But through time and my amateur research I discovered my interest started centering more and more on how Native Americans used plants for different purposes not only edible and medicinal but for dyes for ornamentation, for baskets and cooking vessels, for seasoning, etc. But I was so overwhelmed with information that didn't focus on this specific area until I came across the website of Dan Moerman's Native American Ethnobotany database; I found nirvana. I blundered around and through the website for months but with his kind help and patience with my questions I began to use his database in a more productive way. But then I discovered he had recently published a book called Native American Ethnobotany!! (...) When I received the book I thought I had died and gone to heaven! I can't speak for professionals but for amateurs like me he has saved me many hours of research in one way but has in turn stimulated my desire to continue researching this fascinating subject but now with a more educated direction. This is one of the items I would run back to save if my house ever burned down! It is worth every penny and is priceless in its information.

This book is an amazing encyclopedia. Too many plant books are just scattered information which never satisfy me completely. This book is the most comprehensive book on Native American ethnobotany I have come across. There are various indexes for easy lookup of particular plants. E.g., you can look up the common name of a plant, get the proper Latin name for it and go to the proper section. There the plant is presented from various viewpoints, the plant as used for food, as a drug (medicinal), utilitarean (e.g basket weaving), which tribes used it, etc.. Various indexes in the back let you look up, for instance, all the plants the Blackfeet used, or all the plants used for food, which tribe used the inner bark of Cottonwood and for what purpose. Just an amazing compilation. Definitely worth it.

Daniel Moerman has written an extensive 927 page compilation of original Native American ethnobotanical knowledge into one easy to read reference volume. This is a scholarly work representing 25 years of research into what North American wild plants Native Americans used for medicines, food, fiber, dyes, tools and ceremonials.

Native American Ethnobotany provides what I consider essential ethnobotanical baseline information. That is, any serious student of comparative Native American ethnobotany will want to own, or have access to this book through their school or library to begin serious study of the topic.

Because this book was based on an extensive database, there are comprehensive indexes for plant usage, species names (including synonyms), and common names. As a reference work, there are no illustrations or photographs.

I highly recommend this book as a reference text for any lay or professional ethnobotanical researcher.

This is a big, solid hardcover volume that should be part of every library and university collection's plant and/or Native American reference sections. It is the absolute most thorough and comprehensive book on the subject, with cross-indexing and various ways to find the information you are looking for. I have an M.A. in Anthropology and am Native American myself (Ioway) and this book is an indispensable part of my personal library for both academic and personal use.

It is broken down into several sections, after the preface and acknowledgements.

"Plant Use by Native Americans" (pp. 11-28) gives overviews on the use of plants for drugs (medicines), foods, fibers and dyes, and other uses (hunting and fishing supplies (rods, lines, lures, traps, bows, arrows, spears, etc.), incense and fragrances, fuels, tools, and other uses. Interesting facts emerge such as more tribes used chokecherry as food (163 tribes) than corn (121 tribes), and the plant with the most medicinal uses was the common yarrow (355 uses)! The usages section covers the various sources of information and gives a list of the tribes and their locations.

"Organization of the Information" (pp. 29-32) discusses some of the issues involving the scientific and common plant names, both of which have varied over time and region, as well as ethnobotanical information.

The "Catalog of Plants" is the biggest part of the book (pp. 33-614), and it is arranged alphabetically by genus, with sublistings and specifics under the species. Then under each species, the use/s is/are given, as well as the tribe(s) which use it in those ways. For example, the chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) covers 4 pages in small print (pp. 444-448) of its many uses and the tribes across the U.S. who used it. After each use and tribe, the reference number in the original source is given. One example for chokecherry: "Cheyenne - Antidiarrheal - Unripened berries pulverized and used for diarrhea. (82:42)." Turning to the Bibliography, we find #82 is Jeff Hart's _Montana Plants and Early Peoples_, and checking page 42 of that book (which I also own and recommend) we find the passage there.

After the catalog of plants, there are sections on notes for certain entries, the bibliography of 206 sources, and FOUR useful indexes: two plant usage indexes (index of tribes and index of usages) and two plant name indexes (index of synonyms and index of common names).

The downsides? The print is fairly small, though the decent print quality makes it okay to read for my almost-50 year old eyes. If you are looking to learn how to identify plants, this is NOT the book to buy for that purpose. There are no photos or illustrations in this book. It is not a book that gives specifics on how the plants are mixed, gathered, applied, etc. For example, a plant's effectiveness is often tied to ceremonial and religious aspects that are not covered. There are details that can heal or harm if not absolutely correctly used that are not given. You need to buy field guides and plant keys for the area you are interested in to visually identify plants.

However, if you know the plants you are studying, and wish to have an encyclopedia-type reference to their uses in the various American Indian tribes and nations, you need this book. It's a little spendy because it is so big and is a hardcover, but I haven't regretted buying it and have used it often. It is really a lifetime reference source.

This is a superb written reference. However, it has no illustrations, and should be on your shelf as an essential reference to deepen your knowledge of plants for which you have illustrations in other books, or prior first hand knowledge from actually seeing and handling the plants.

This is not only a great text book for the ethnobotonists, but a great resource for the avid naturalist. In depth information on many species. A must have for any botanist.

This is a bible of plant uses that goes a LONG way! It doesn't include the dichotomic keys to identify the plant, but it tell you what has been done with them for the past millenia. Highly recommended.

As many of the previous reviews said, this book is an excellent reference. It is not a field guide, nor was it meant to be: the usage information is very brief, there are no pictures, or physical descriptions of the plants -- there are other books for that. Anyhow, the other reviews pretty much covered everything accurately ... highly, highly recommended.

It should also be pointed out that the information is available free online -- the author has a website called the Native American Ethnobotany Database (University Michigan Dearborn) -- http://herb.umd.umich.edu ... but the book is nice to have around, and has some information that is not on the site.

I can really appreciate this book because I know how much work went into creating it. Although I wish there was more detail about how the plants were used I'm able to cross reference other books to get the information I need. The layout of the book gives you the ability to attack a given plant inquiry from many different perspectives. For example, you can decide you want to know what a particular group of Native Americans did with a specific plant and look up the plant in the main body of the book (Catalog of Plants) and it will summarize the uses by the following categories: drug, food, fiber, dye & other. Then within each of these categories each group of Native American tribe is named with the uses if it applies to them. All of the uses are referenced to the literature (bibliography) giving you the ablity to obtain original articles if desired. From another perspective, you can have an interest in the Cherokee and go to the section "Index of Tribes" which will allow you to look up each of the many specific subcategories of the main categories mentioned above and get the use of specific plants such as under, Drug, the analgesic plant uses. It also contains a list of the tribes as well as their native regions which includes tribes from the U.S. (Alaska & Hawaii too), Canada, Greenland and some of Mexico (Northern). There is also an index of usages that is very handy. Each usage category will have an alphabetical list of plant genera followed by the tribe name(s) that used these genera. If you have any interest in Native American Ethnobotany then this book is of value and I highly recommend it for Native Americans, botanists, foragers and others interested in the disappearing knowledge of these amazing cultures.