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Page 9
| Echinacea: 254 Years of Medical Use |
| Traditional Native American Uses |
| Echinacea was one of the most widely used medicinal plants among Native American tribes of the upper Missouri River and the Plains. It has been reported to have been used for more illnesses than any other plant. Samples of echinacea have been excavated from Native American archaeological digs dating back 300 to 400 years.4 |
| Many tribes, including the Cheyenne, Lakota and Dakota Sioux, Omaha, Ponca, Crow, Comanche and Kiowa, traditionally used echinacea for a variety of purposes including its numbing qualities to allay the pain of toothaches and muscular pains. In addition they utilized it for coughs, colds, swollen glands, tonsillitis, many types of skin diseases and as an eyewash. Some of its more common and somewhat universal uses were to treat stings, burns and bites, including the often fatal bite of rattlesnakes. In this case, the root would be used both internally, by having the victim chew the juice out of the fresh root, and externally, by making a fresh root poultice to help draw the poison out. Some medicine people took greater advantage of the numbing qualities by mashing the fresh root and rubbing the juice on their hands with tallow to enable them to handle fire painlessly |
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