Words from a Chitimacha Medicine Woman…. we made houses from the earth, plastered with moss, ate what grew around us, made our clothes just as the birds weave their nests. The greatest art of the Chitimacha is basket weaving.
Few people know little about the Chetimacha herbs and their uses. and most have a very dim view of what once was called Medicine Man. These men without science and study of drugs and ordinarily without preparation cured their sick many times as surely as the most skillful physicians could do. Eye sickness through herbs, pneumonia, tuberculosis, asthma, lock jaw, black widow spider bites, snake bites and many others. The Indians said the Great Spirit gave them the knowledge to cure and you do not charge for the work of the Great Spirit.
These practices were finally taken away from the Chitimacha in 1938 by the AMA. Jailed if anyone was treated. The medicine has gone to the grave with the elders.
So much of my work i have seen this same story, Conquest for land, white man brings disease and jails native medicine people for healing, slavery, collapse of community, assimilated into the big white pot. loss of tradition, knowledge about the earth, only to be replaced by artificial environments.
What kind of human do you want to be? We can chose.
I am chitimacha three out of four of my great grandmothers were full blooded I am interested in my heritage and the way of their life please contact me
hello john, thanks for writing. i dont have much to tell you about the Chitimacha, am French-Indian, assimilated into the south. all i know is great aunt was full choctaw from Lyons Point, La. my biological father from the same roots. whats your search?