Native American healers often combined religious rituals with medicine in order to better serve their communities.
Early societies often blended spirituality with medicinal practices, tying faith with natural science to provide an effective means of alleviating sickness. This practice was not unique to the Old World and was a major facet of Native American life as well. The duality of medicinal herbs, potions, and even objects, is linked very closely with their meaning in native religious practices. For instance, a specific herb may have no intrinsic medicinal value while at the same time it can be viewed as a curative agent due to the belief that its healing properties are tied to its spiritual meaning. Since spirituality was and still remains very closely tied with indigenous society it is easy to understand how the tribes have combined natural elements with the supernatural world.
The highly diverse nature of native societies rules out the possibility of a coherent medical philosophy. The fact that the continent of the North American contains hundreds of individual societies and cultural groups makes it difficult to thoroughly explain indigenous medical practices. However, as with all other aspects of Native American culture, there are common practices and beliefs that can be explained in order to paint a vivid picture of this ancient art. At the heart of these medical practices is the ceremony associated with the healing elements of nature. The invocation of the spiritual world in healing rituals involves complex ceremonies, ritual dance, and herbal stimulants. There are often individual consultations with respect to physical illness and a treatment method based on the practitioner’s understanding of the myriad causes of the illness—whether physical of spiritual. Following this one on one consultation, the villagers may be called upon to assist with the invocation of the spiritual realm.
What separates native medicinal beliefs from that of the western world is that Native Americans viewed sickness as having a variety of spiritual causes. There is, of course, a physical cause but there also exists a metaphysical reason. If a village is experiencing a certain blight that has caused widespread sickness, the environmental factors as well as spiritual distemper may be taken into consideration. Once the aliment and the variety of natural and spiritual factors affecting the tribe and the individual is identified, the healer sets to work at determining the best treatment method. In most cases, a combination of herbal remedies, special prayers, and healing dances are employed—the objective of which is to purify the sick person both physically and spiritually.
Other aspects of Native American medicinal practices include the use of often mind-altering drugs such as peyote, again with a ritual invoking its healing elements, and the sweat lodge. Both have their key practices and are used to alleviate specific ailments. Used primarily throughout the southerwestern cultural region, peyote was seen as an all-purpose herb—used for medicinal, as well as social purposes. Tobacco was also smoked through ceremonial pipes for a variety of purposes—primarily as a means of transcending the gap between the spiritual world and the physical world in order to assist with healing ceremonies. Gradually, these practices were either abandoned or changed as new methods of healing were discovered or incorporated with modern medical science. Today, there exists a balance between native beliefs and medical practices and the “science” of medicine.
David M Jones and Brian L Molyneaux, Mythology of the American Nations. (London: Hermes House, 2006).
Gilbert Legay, Atlas of Indians. (Hauppage: Barron’s Educational Services, Inc., 1995)
Carl Waldman, Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2006)
Carl Waldman, Atlas of the North American Indian. New York: 2000).
