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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: December 21, 1937
Name: Dolly Murphy
Post Office: , Oklahoma
Date of Birth: March 23, 1858 [Age: 77]
Place of Birth: east of Atoka
Father:
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Joe Southern
 
Dolly Murphy, a Choctaw Freedman, was interviewed and the following information was learned of different names of herbs, roots and bark and their use among the Choctaws and others before, during and after the Civil War.

Button Snake root as a tea was used in teething or dysentery among children.

May apple root was used in a powdered or tea form for live and stomach trouble.

Cotton root was used as a tea among the girls and women for female disorders.

Mistletoe was used in its native state among livestock in the aid of nature after birth of their young.

Mullein was used in tea form for cooling fever.

Jimpson weed was used in liquid form for scrofula.

Sassafras roots were used in tea form, three cups daily, for purifying the blood.

Jerusalum oak seed was boiled with honey or syrup and was given for stomach worms in children and older persons.

For itch, poke root was boiled and liquid was used for bathing.

For cold or cough, broom weed, locust bark and prickly ash bark were boiled and the liquid was sweetened with honey and some butter was added and a tablespoonful was a dose.

Mrs. Murphy was born east of Atoka on March 23, 1858. She says that in the early days here, doctors were not too plentiful and that most everybody gathered roots and herbs of different kinds in the Spring and summer. They dried and stored them away for medicine in case of sickness. She has lived all of her life in what is now Atoka County, Oklahoma.

Transcribed by Barbara Morris; submitted to OKGenWeb by Rusty Lang, a Choctaw descendant. <Rlang90547@aol.com> 02-2000.