Sorciére
Sorciére
by Jess Donoho
CHILDHOOD
My people were the French speaking Acadians who lived in the boggy forests of Lac Du Bonnet, in what is known today as Manitoba, Canada. My grandparents and their neighbors were exiled by the British during the seven-year’s war in 1763. What was previously a French territory was taken by the British, who drove the French settlers out of the country.
My grandmother was a healer in Lac Du Bonnet, having been trained by the generations before her, as well as the local native tribes that populated the surrounding land. The Winnipeg, Cree, Sioux and Anishinaabe all had their own herbs and rituals for healing. Although they fought among each other fiercely, the healers shared an uncommon peace, and shared their knowledge freely. The tribes also had their spirits that were of the land and water. These spirits were called upon to bring healing to those afflicted. Although my people did not believe in spirits, they acknowledged the beliefs of each tribe, and incorporated these spirits into the healing as a show of respect. The Acadians and the tribes they encountered had traded their herbs, poultices, and tonics throughout the province.
But the wars came to this small corner of the world. In exile, the Acadians traveled south. Although this was a dangerous time, my people forged a trail southward through the North American wilderness. The journey took them through the lands of the Odawak, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, Cherokee and Chickasaw. It is widely known that wherever you travel, the earth will provide everything man or beast needs for good health. Even the arid deserts provide. In this new land my grandmother found yarrow, which she applied to the skin for wounds, or to stem bleeding. It was also a mild sedative for those with anxiety. It could remove swelling caused by sprains or tears. She was introduced to the purple coneflower, which treated coughs, colds, and problems with breathing. Even the astragalus plant, which had many varieties to treat infections, relieve seasonal breathing issues from pollen and dust, even remedy heart and liver problems when used properly or mixed with other herbs. Some varieties of astragalus were fatal, and it was her task to know the difference.
As a newcomer to this land, my grandmother would trade her knowledge with local tribes and settlers as she went. She learned about the healing herbs, rituals, and the spirits of each tribe, and in turn shared her own knowledge and herbs. In this way, my grandmother was a key figure in insuring the safe passage of her Acadian community.
When the Acadians had gone as far south as land would permit, they encountered the virtually impassable swamps of the Territory of Orleans. This was lowland marsh and bog that stretched from the terra firma of the inland plains to the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of square miles of soupy green and brown water, much only inches, or feet deep. All of it split into tens of thousands of small bogs, marsh, and islands. At the border of the marsh, she stopped with the majority and established a village called Houma, named for the native Houmas tribe that had existed there since antiquity. Houma would grow and succeed in a hostile and remote part of the country.
It was here that my parents were born. My mother to original Acadian settlers and my father to a French Cajun family living in the deep swamp. Both were raised in the healing arts. Together, their healing arts merged into a greater vocabulary of care and welfare for the communities they served.
Later, my parents and their kin moved further south to form the village of Dulac, from the French words meaning “Of The Lake”. This is a spit of dry land extending to the deepest southern land before swamps of cypress block the way to the ocean. It was wet and wild, like Lac Du Bonnet, but instead of forest, there was tropical and dense jungle. Where Acadia was a land of pristine, deep blue lakes and streams, Dulac was warm, still water, stained brown by the deterioration of leaves and the disturbance of sediments by every living creature under the surface. Acadia was a land of crisp, biting air that was dry and cold. Here in the bayou, it was hot, humid and the air was heavy. It was a swampy land, but it suited them. They were raised in a wild remote place, and in Dulac, they found the wildest and most remote land possible. Not only remote, but unwanted by others. There was little chance anyone would care to run them out of this hell on earth; but it was their hell, and they embraced it.
Settlers to these rugged places brought their native words to describe the land. A marsh or swamp is made of large meadows, saturated with water, or large swaths of shallow waters with miles of cattail and reeds covering every inch. A marsh could be fresh water, brackish (which was a mixture of the oceans salt water and the inland freshwater), or a saltwater marsh (which was inundated with salt water). Bayou were the narrow channels of water that separated the tens thousands of small landmasses created by the buildup of sands, mosses, and algae between the roots of the cypress trees. Bogs are the soft, spongy ground and vernal pools were freshwater spring. This was country settled by the reclusive, private, and rejected of society. To live in this place was to endure the worst the world could throw at you as the price for absolute privacy and freedom.
It was here they established a trading post and a small community. While the nearest large town of Houma was only sixteen miles to the north, it could take two days to navigate the labyrinth of swamp and forest to get there. As quickly as they established a road, it would become overgrown and disappear. When the storms came, they flooded the streets and washed out the bridges and dams, still, they stayed on and claimed this small piece of land as their own.
Winters were mild, spring was beautiful, summer brought hordes of mosquitos, and the sickness they delivered. Fall was the hurricane season, bringing storms and destruction to the lowland swamps. While Acadia had giant mosquitos that swarmed, the Orleans variety were tiny, but just as voracious. Even with the storms and the bugs, we still refused to abandon what we had earned with our sweat and work.
My father traded with local native tribes of the Oumas, Tunicas and Chitimacha’s. It was the healers of these tribes that taught my parent the plants, songs and prayers that healed in this part of the world. It was here that I was born in 1791. I would be raised in the wisdom of healing. As an infant I was tied to my mother’s bosom as she harvested her herbs and roots. As a toddler, I sat on the table while my father pressed and pounded recipes and potions. My school was the room where they treated wounds and virus, delivered babies, and tranquilized the dying to send them off painlessly.
We were not a people of religion. To us, death, like birth, was a part of the life process. Both were a cause for celebration. The beginning and end of a journey.
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Our routine was predictable. Each day we would break fast, then head deep into the woods and swamp in search of the plants, roots, flowers, and fruits that we used in our healing practice.
When we returned, it was generally mother that began seeing patients while father and I prepared our harvest. We tied a hemp string to the stems of each plant bunch and hung them upside down from the ceiling. This preserved the flavors and efficacy of the medicine within. In Acadia, roots and fungus traditionally went into a cellar for the cool, dark storage, but here, with the groundwater only inches below the surface, we built above the ground floors of timber and wattle, covered in a thick mound of dirt. This insulated against the heat and humidity of the glades and allowed our roots to be preserved all season long.
Some of our medicinal plants had a very short growing season and a short effective life. These we would boil down in water, extracting the medicinal compounds, then we would preserve this extract with a small amount of distilled alcohol. It tasted foul, but it was an effective preservation. A single plant preserved was called an extract. A blend of extracts created a tincture, and a specific recipe was called a potion. Thus, we were able to build a medicine cabinet that had an effective life that transcended seasons.
As the only medical help for days around, we needed to do much with little outside assistance. For wounds, we apply a poultice of yarrow root, which stops bleeding. Plantains can have a numbing effect. Burns and mild cuts and scrapes were best treated with our wild honey. Honey is naturally antibiotic, antiseptic, antifungal and antimicrobial. While we did not understand the biology in this time, we recognized that these treatments had been used since antiquity. There are many types of anti-inflammatory plants that we can add to the honey to reduce swelling. We can make teas out of just about any plant in our native swamp with medicinal effect. The hot water steeps our medicinal compounds and when ingested, can be effective treatments for everything from cough to pain or nausea. Once our herbs are prepared, both father and I assist mother in the care of our patients.
Injuries like wounds were always easy for me. Whether a septic wound caused by infection, or a bite from one of the predators of the swamps, wounds are visible illness that can be quickly diagnosed and treated. The injuries that frightened me were the snake and insect bites. Small puncture wounds that betrayed the venom that coursed through veins and muscle. These attacks often happened at night, and the victim rarely know what kind of insect or snake had caused the injury. Some venom attacked the breathing, other the blood, or nerves. Without knowing exactly what caused the bite, we treated basic symptoms, and waited for others to appear. In cases where minutes can mean death, waiting is a luxury we cannot afford.
The other illness that confused me were the cancers. On the outside, everything looked normal, but inside, tumors or rots were occurring. The patient would lose weight and was often in great pain, but we had no method of determining if it were curable or not. If so, what to use? We generally treated the pain with hallucinogens and prayed to whatever spirits or gods came to our mind at the time. Any small advantage was taken.
Still, under the tutelage and instruction of my parents, and the visiting native healers that occasioned to travel our way, I became adept at diagnosing and treating all manner of ailment before I was ten years old.
