Indigenous knowledge of Appalachia was the result of thousands and thousands of years of cohabitation and coevolution. Their deep, ancestral knowing of the landscape must have stood out starkly to the newly arrived Europeans who had long since felt a sort of severance from their own historic lands and folkways. The settlers could not totally discount the knowledge and experience of the Indigenous people they encountered. For this very reason, no matter what prejudices the European colonists arrived with, Indigenous folkways and knowledge were vital to their survival and left a large mark on Appalachian folk culture.
Enslavement and the treatment of African peoples throughout Appalachian history directly affected their contributions to Appalachian folk magic. Often, literature and academia deemphasize the African influence on this magical system. Yet it is vital to look at these sources critically: who wrote these accounts? What biases did they have? What did they see as valuable? Contrary to these sources, a myriad of African spiritual practices and herbalism are ever present in Appalachian magic. To me, it is not a question of whether these influences are present or not; it is a question of how to discover them.
We can still see the West African fingerprint on Appalachian folk magic. One core belief is that spirits can cause illness. The idea that living out of balance with other people and one’s environment could cause illness was shared between many West African cultures and Native American tribes, which allowed for more ready blending of certain beliefs.
The ways that folk magic was shared between enslaved people and white colonists is complex, and changed dramatically over the years from the Spanish arrival until after Emancipation. Europeans were fascinated by African people, but they also exotified, feared, and dehumanized them. As a result, white settlers honored and upheld certain African practitioners of folk magic and medicine, while discrediting others as ineffective, heathen, or evil. This dynamic was heavily influenced by location, background, and class.
There are many different tribal groups and cultures that make up what is known as “African” in Appalachia, Sadly, due to poor recordkeeping and historical inattention, it is difficult to say exactly what each of these groups contributed. However, it is certain that with them came more practices surrounding the inherent power of the land and the sacredness of the landscape. One could argue that the final mixing of European, Indigenous, and African beliefs occurred in the post-Civil War South, where many colonists lost their wealth and class lines blurred. This caused folk healing methods to cross not only race lines but class lines as well.
Certain books also had a tremendous effect on the formation of Appalachian folk magic. A few that had wide circulation throughout Appalachia, like William Buchan’s 1794 book Every Man His Own Doctor, Dr. John C. Gunn’s Domestic Medicine or Poor Man’s Friend, and English translations of a German charm book, John George Hohman’s Long Hidden Friend. Their remedies and influence were detectable in many different areas of Appalachia, and still are.
FOLK MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE
The following beliefs and healing ways are characteristic of Appalachian folk medicine as defined by renowned Appalachian herbalist Phyllis Light of Alabama. Disease is believed to originate from damp, dirt, cold, heat, and pathological invaders, spiritual transgressions, and magic. In Appalachian folk medicine, blood is seen as the most important part of the body, especially when it comes to maintaining health. This is because blood is the carrier of the damp, cold, and heat that can harm the body. In this system, to be healthy, the blood must be clean. You can think of the folk idea of this blood system as similar to the flow of sap in trees. Like sap, blood is even affected by the weather. It sweetens and thickens as weather gets cooler, which is why spring tonics are so important in this medicine tradition. Spring cleaning is important to rid the thick blood of winter stagnation.
While there is no one way to speak of, learn about, or teach folk medical theory, it is sometimes said that this knowledge is cast into two systems: personalistic and naturalistic. Personalistic theory means illness can be caused by a thing or person rather than a system out of balance or systemic, impersonal causes of illness. This essentially means a violation of certain taboos could lead to illness. One can see this in folk medical beliefs all over the world, and I believe it is these shared experiences that allow for the mixing of folk belief so freely in Appalachia, as many of the cultures arrived on the shores here already holding beliefs like these.
THE APPALACHIAN FOLK BLOOD SYSTEM
There are four states of blood grouped into two oppositional sets: high vs. low and thick vs. thin. These states of blood represent four states of folk illnesses.
High Blood: Most likely derived from humoral medicine, this refers to blood volume, not pressure. The symptoms of high blood were headache, nosebleed, flushed face, nausea, and dizziness. Bloodletting and leeches were used to cure this, but eventually treatments to “cut the blood,” like drinking wild cherry or sassafras root bark and eating garlic and onions, took precedence.
Low Blood: This folk blood condition refers to the idea that there was too little blood or that the blood lacked vital nutrients. The symptoms were fatigue, dizziness, pale complexion, and listlessness. Some believed that blood rises and falls with the seasons, meaning that you were more likely to be anemic on weak winter food, and in spring, a good tonic would revive you.
Thick Blood: Maintaining normal blood viscosity was thought to be critically related to good health. Older folks thought it made one more susceptible to stroke and heart attack if you had thick blood.
Thin Blood: You would be thought to have thin blood if you were easy to bruise, had slow-healing sores, or were older. The older you got, the thinner the blood. This would be helped by eating more meat, eggs, leafy greens, bread, and milk.
HUMORAL THEORY
As discussed in chapter one, there are unique health practitioners in Appalachia: Thrush Doctors, Wart Doctors, Blood Stoppers, Goiter Rubbers, and Burn Doctors, among others. These arts are a combination of humoral pathology and the miasmic and atmospheric theories which were prevalent in the nineteenth century. Humoral theory is credited as being developed by the Greeks. It involves the balance of four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, which represent heat, cold, dry, and moist, respectively. These humors have a sort of balance which is subject to the effects of the changes in season. Winter causes phlegm, and in summer, the blood increases. There is a hot and cold dichotomy that also exists in Appalachian folk medicine, much like in Traditional Chinese and Kampo medicine in China and Japan.
MIASMIC THEORY
Miasmic theory involves the idea that putrid vapors from nasty substances can cause illness. Things like rotting game, bogs and mires, and waste areas could create these invisible clouds of illness. The cures for such illnesses are largely categorized as heroic therapies. These are things like purging, bloodletting, scarification, leeches, and cupping. In Appalachia, many illnesses are believed to have been caused by fluctuations in blood volume (high vs. low), viscosity (thick vs. thin), or waste or sugar in the blood (sweetness). These ideas of blood that can become defiled through certain actions or seasonal changes, are often linked with ideas of miasmic theory as well as the idea of autointoxication (belief that you can poison yourself by not moving the bowels often enough). Many of the remedies and herbs used in Appalachian folk medicine revolve around these ideas of cleansing, moving, and affecting the blood.
MAGICAL REMEDIES
Aside from herbs, minerals, and animal substances used in cures, there are also magical remedies in Appalachian folk medicine. The magical remedies are based on sympathetic magic, which means “like affects like.” The number three figures extensively, as well as its multiple nine, perhaps due to the influence of the Holy Trinity. Many charms or rituals are performed three times. Transference magic is also observed in certain charms, for it is believed that illness can be transferred to objects or other people. The color red also prominently features in many cures, often as a red flannel, for red is the color of blood and vitality, the color of life.
ASTROLOGY
Astrological influences—like certain moon phases or even the time of day, like sunrise or sunset—may be considered before performing certain cures. Individual plants and organs are also associated with the zodiac. Many of these specific astrological ideas came directly from the mystic Christian faiths of Germans—who arrived in Appalachia after fleeing religious persecution in Germany—and Native American beliefs.
BOTANICAL HEALING
Appalachia may be the most biodiverse region in the United States. This means there are more medicinal and edible plants, trees, and shrubs here than in many other places. This may have led to a common belief that the environment is essentially a benevolent and healthful place to be: due to the fine climate, diverse botany, and many water features and springs, the mountains were viewed as an essentially healing landscape by both Native and settler folks alike.
Residents commonly gathered plants like ginseng, goldenseal, wild cherry, or sassafras to sell to crude drug manufacturers. Prior to World War II, root digging was an important part of the rural Appalachian economy. This is still practiced today in some areas. The author has spoken with a neighbor in his sixties in Madison County, North Carolina, who harvested bloodroot to make extra money as a boy and got twelve dollars per coffee can full of dried root. The environmental destruction of the Appalachian Mountains by extractive industries like coal mining, fracking, and clear-cut forestry threatens this culturally significant wildcrafting, as does overharvesting of sensitive species like ginseng. S. B. Penick and Company, once one of the major suppliers of crude drugs to the world market, said in the late 1920s that 85 percent of American drugs were sourced from the Appalachian region.
Appalachia has 1,100 plants which have been identified as having medicinal uses, but there are about 90 to 100 plants that people largely relied upon. Some of the most common were apple, catnip, corn, mullein, onion, poke, slippery elm, sorghum, tobacco, and walnut.
THE TONIC TRADITION
Tonics were used to treat everything from digestive disorders to gout and sore eyes to skin problems and liver ailments. A “tonic” is a type of preventative medicinal substance, usually taken as a drink that would promote health and high energy. They were usually a strong tea or decoction (where the herbs, roots, or barks are boiled rather than just steeped), sweetened to taste with sugar or honey. Spring greens such as wild asparagus, dandelions (Taraxacum officinalis), dock (Rumex spp.), poke (Phytolacca americana), wild onion (Allium spp.), ramps (Allium tricoccum), and nettles (Urtica dioica), could also have a tonic or purifying effect. Even the juice of certain plants, like cleavers (Gallium spp.), or goosegrass as it was more commonly known in the South, was seen as a blood purifier.
Certain chemicals like turpentine and sulfur had many uses in Appalachian folk medicine and were touted as fine tonics. A tonic of molasses and sulfur was arguably one of the most popular in the eighteenth century. Tonics were thought to move the slow winter blood in spring, and there were many traditional plant medicines taken and prepared during this season, though in some cases they might be used throughout the year. Spring was the most popular time to ingest and brew tonics, due to the aforementioned Appalachian folk medicine concern with blood.
SPRING TONIC SALAD
Note: Always ensure correct identification before consuming a new plant.
Harvest a handful each of:
Dandelion greens
Wild onion grass
Chickweed greens
Harvest a few sprigs each of:
Alehoof (Glechoma hederaca)
Dead nettle greens (Lamium purpureum)
