Importance of ethnobotany to the Seminole people

Ethnobotony Seminole

Ethnobotany Amongst the Seminole: Tied to the land through faith and for food

The Seminole are a Native American tribe indigenous to the American Southeast. The land from which they came is very fertile. For the Seminole people, religion, land, and their relationship with what is yielded by the soil, both through their own efforts, and what they can hunt and gather, are all intertwined. The land means food, as well as medicine. As observed by one ethnographer, even amongst a Florida Seminole community that had been heavily influenced by Christianity, Christ had supplanted some of the roles of their native gods, yet the idea that the divine gave medicine and food in the form of the earth remained: "From Ko-nip-ha-tco [missionary Reverend Clay] Macaulay learned that starchy koonti root was a gift from God; that long ago the Great Spirit sent Jesus Christ to earth with the precious plant, and that Jesus had descended upon the world at Cape Florida and there given koonti to the red men."

The koonti root is one of the staples of the Seminole because it can be consumed whole, and also used to make flour and other nutrient-dense goods. In Seminole mythology, the root is given great reverence for its medicinal and nutritional qualities. It is not seen as something that was so much discovered by the native population, as it is given by a divine force: "rather it is bestowed upon them as a gift to enable them to live by God." In one original Seminole myth, the god of the tribe, described as the "Breathmaker" controls the natural cycles of rain and fertility. After a drought, the Breathmaker makes it rain and the tribe finds the ground covered with little cakes. "The next morning Breathmaker made the little cakes sprout roots from their sides. This was the koonti plant." From the beginning of the tribe, the koonti's gift as a root and as a source of flour is present. Another staple crop, pumpkin, is honored with an origin story that mixes Christianity and more traditional creation myths, as it is said "Indians got pumpkin from Jesus at the same time they got koonti, from Jesus and his "pocketful of pumpkin seeds." Pumpkin and koonti, like Jesus or the Breathmaker, depending on who is telling the myth, are said to have had a presence in the world since the beginning of the tribe, and the tribe's existence is dependent upon this foundational, crop dating from the beginning of the human creation.

The Seminole have similar origin myths for other staple crops such as corn. Unlike the koonti and pumpkin, corn is sexed as female, and highly anthropomorphized in mythic depictions. It is said that: "Corn women lived in the woods and were big, fat, and heavy. Their bodies were made like a big ear of corn. They scraped their legs and kernels fell off on the ground." Corn is life-sustaining for the tribe, and the myth of the corn woman parallels the relationship of the tribe to the crop. In the myth, the corn woman steals a young Seminole boy and feed him on corn, causing him to grow up big and strong. The corn woman gives him fertility, according to the myth: "He was soon married," and "our kernels of corn from which he grew four large plants. Soon the family had plenty of corn. When it was all gathered it filled a huge chest. That is the way the Indians obtained corn."

The Seminole were long noted for being proud of the abundance of the food in the area, and they felt great reverence for good quality food and the earth's bounty of medicinal and delicious herbs. Their standards were high, even during their first encounters with white settlers: It was said by one early European observer of the tribe that "traders noted that, so far as the Indians know, they will buy of them only what is the best either of food or of material for wear or ornament" Although Christianity obviously later permeated the world-view of the tribe, the Seminole long had an independence in terms of food, clothing, and medicine that other tribes lacked, because of the bounty of their agriculture. The tribe understood this, hence its continued reverence in their worldview, particularly the staple of corn.

Food is thus given by god in both Christian and pre-Christian origin myths, and the beginnings of the tribe are tied to the beginnings of the crops that sustain the tribe. In the case of the corn woman, food and god herself are the same. The love of the life-sustaining corn woman underlines the particular social and economic importance of corn in the tribe. Cooking corn, which is eaten green or boiled and roasted on the cob, is a daily part of the tribe's traditional activities. Corn is also pounded into meal with mortar and pestle to make flour meal, which was then, as one observer noted: "sifted through an open-mesh basket and then winnowed by being tossed into the air, the breeze carrying away the chaff, while the heavier, edible portion of the corn falls back into the flat receiving basket. In this condition the meal is mixed with water and boiled to make sofki. This is the name applied primarily to this corn soup, of which, in addition to the kind mentioned, there is fermented or sour sofki, and soup made from parched corn, which is by far the most savory of the three." Sofki is obviously the most labor-intensive of all of the preparations, but corn can be consumed whole, and immediately from the cob.