kw’ulxeen – Rattlesnake Plantain

Ellen White (Kwulasulwut), of the Snuneymuxw First Nations, Nanaimo, British Columbia

Rattlesnake plantain. I didn’t know the English name to this until quite recently. But I have known of this plant since I was a very small child. We were told to use this for bee stings, for mosquito stings, or any kind of sores that you had. We ran around without shoes, and we had cuts, cuts a lot. And our hands and our feet. And you hold the little leaves in your hand for a few minutes and it comes apart very easily when you split them apart. And it’s the inside that you are looking for. You can use it as sort of a poultice or hold it over a sting or a cut. If you are bleeding a lot, you hold this over the cut for a few minutes, and the blood will just stop. It was used for a lot of things, like for using it for eyes. If you had a sore eye, then you can hold this over your eye. But never get the juices and stuff like that right in the eye. And it was chewed if you had a toothache or your tooth was sore, or if you lost a tooth and your mouth was bleeding, this was used also. If you were throwing up blood, then this was used. Pregnant women, right in the beginning, this was used. You chewed it and swallowed the juices. It made you feel good and you never had a sick morning. And right toward the end, toward round about the seventh month, they were told to chew this and swallow it. And when they gave birth, some of them bled a lot and some of them even died, very weak for many weeks, months. And if they did this, it was not so. They would give birth, hardly any blood was lost. And they were up a few minutes later and washed and bathed their own babies. So this was used in that way. It gave you a very nice feeling sort of a comfortable feeling when you took it. If you were tired or anything like that or get excited, then this was good to use. For sprinters and canoe pullers this was also used. If a sprinter was off in the woods and he became tired or sore muscles, you’d grab some of these, quite a few, split them or just rub them in your hand and scrub yourself with it, and leave it, sort of a liniment effect. It had a nice smell to it. Canoe pullers also used this, and they used to bathe and even chew it and this was very good.

This is the transcript of a recording made by Ellen White in 1977 by Thomas Hukari.