kinnikinnick

[Pass/Kishkan/High Ground Press]

>To: Sally Thomason <thomason at UMICH.EDU>
>From: high_ground at sunshine.net (Pass/Kishkan/High Ground Press)
>Subject: Re: kinnikinnick
>
>Yes, we have lots of kinnikinnick here on the Sechelt Peninsula. The
flowers are very lovely and seem attractive to bees, too, the kinnikinnick
patches humming with them in late spring. Nancy Turner's Food Plants of
Coastal First Peoples indicates that the berries were eaten with grease --
eulachon, mountain goat, and seal oil -- to moisten them as they tend to be
mealy and dry. The Nuxalk at Kimsquit dried them and made them into
dumplings. The dried leaves were smoked by many First Nations people.
>
>In Thompson Ethnobotany, there are many reports of kinnikinnick being used
medicinally as well as for food and tobacco. Bear grease and fish oil used
to moisten. Annie York reports that too much smoking of kinnikinnick makes
one dizzy!
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>Theres Kishkan
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>>In northwestern Montana, in the high valleys, kinnikinnick is a
>>handsome low dark-green plant that looks like the kind of ground
>>cover that people plant in their yards.  Pretty flowers, and then
>>bright red berries in late summer.
>>
>>Here's what the Audubon "Western Forests" guide says about it
>>(p. 418):
>>
>>   "Kinnikinnick, an Indian word formany tobacco
>>    substitutes, is most frequently applied to this
>>    species [= the one I just described], which also
>>    had many medicinal uses, including the alleged
>>    control of several sexually transmitted diseases."
>>
>>
>>  -- Sally Thomason
>>
>>
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