Although widespread arrow poisoning among North American tribes throughout all culture areas has been established, the issue of poisons in warfare is not yet exhausted. During the transition from bows and arrows to firearms, many North American Indian groups applied their arrow poisons to bullets. For a short span of history, some Native Americans apparently categorized both arrows and bullets as material projectiles and to some degree treated them the same way. For example, the Apache word for bullet is ka, or “arrow.”1
The Tonkawa Indians of south Texas transferred their arrow poison, the juice of the mistletoe leaf, to the new weapon; however, rather than coating the bullets, as was most common, they dribbled the liquid down their gun barrels.2 The Sisseton Sioux poked small holes in the bullet lead and pressed greased Opuntia missouriense spines into the perforations.3
Like the Sioux, the Blackfoot doctored their bullets and musket balls with traditional arrow poison.4 The Cree south of Hudson Bay put a poisonous mush from Heracleum maximum on their bullets.5
As late as 1980, some Okanagan-Colville hunters still enhanced their bullets with juniper-based arrow poison.6 Western Apaches covered musket balls with a compound of ground nettles, lichens, and rotten deer spleen—essentially the same recipe they had used on their arrows.7 The Nootka of Vancouver Island poisoned their bullets with a paste of Veratrum viride root.8
Native Americans polluted the water supply of both game animals and human enemies.9 Northwest Indians poured an infusion of crushed Megarhiza oregana (Oregon rock cress) roots into ponds or springs where deer drank, and the stupefied animals became easy prey. In the early days of Spanish contact, the Zuni poisoned the springs at the entrance to their valley with Yucca juice and unidentified cactus spines, which “caused suffering and death among the forces of Diego de Vargas.”10
A generation later, an Indian leader named Opechancanough attempted to kill members of the first English expedition into Virginia by sending them tainted food. Captain John Smith wrote, “We find Opechancanough the last year [1621] had practiced with a King on the Eastern Shore, to furnish him with a kind of poison, which only grows in this country, to poison us.”11 Regarding English-Indian relationships along the central East Coast in the early 1700s, an account states, “A notorious shaman known as the Indian River Doctor brewed a large quantity of poison that was intended to be used to infect the drinking water of the colonists. A log house deeper in the swamp had been built as a repository for guns and ammunition, and a large quantity of poisoned arrows with brass points had been accumulated.”12
Colonel James Smith reported on a poisoning technique of the Catawba Indians, a group with several novel methods ofwarfare. An Indian acquaintance described the Catawba tying buffalo hooves to their feet and walking after dark near an enemy village. The following morning, the villagers followed the tracks into a Catawba ambush. Smith wrote,
In the morning those in the camp followed after these tracks, thinking they were buffalo, until they were fired on by the Catawbas, and several of them killed; the other fled, collected a party and pursued the Catawbas; but they, in their subtlety brought with them rattlesnake poison, which they had collected from the bladder that lies at the root of the snake’s teeth; this they had corked up in a short piece of cane-stalk; they had also brought with them small cane or reed, about the size of a rye straw, which they made sharp at the end like a pen, and dipped them in this poison, and stuck them in the ground among the grass, along their own tracks, in such a position that they might stick into the legs of the pursuers, which answered the design; and as the Catawbas had runners behind to watch the motion of the pursuers, when they found that a number of them were lame, being artificially snake bit, and that they were all turning back, the Catawbas turned upon the pursuers, and defeated them and killed and scalped all those that were lame.13
A second account, this time from a Catawba informant, relates another instance of poisoned sticks:
The story goes that a large number of Iroquois were going toward a Catawba village. All of the able-bodied men of the tribe were away hunting. The young boys and the old men who had been left behind on hearing of the enemies approach, went to the medicineman with the poisonous snake and asked him for poison. He took a bowl, held it before the snake and told the snake to give him poison. The snake, who was almost like a brother to the medicineman, poured the venom into the bowl. Oak splinters about twelve inches long were cut and soaked in the venom. These splits were then put in the mud at various locations around the village, and so placed that about an inch of the splint, protruded. The Catawba attacked the Iroquois, and then feinted with a false retreat, leading the pursing Iroquois into the areas where the poisoned splints had been concealed. The Catawba were careful to skirt these areas, but the unsuspecting Iroquois were crippled and their ranks broken. The Catawba were then able to easily finish them off.14
In the Northwest Coast Culture Area, the Coastal Salish had to contend with the Kwakiutl, who often traveled as far south as Puget Sound on slave-raiding ventures. To protect themselves, they built highly sophisticated forts, one consisting of two plank houses within a stockade with tunnels leading to loopholes in the bank outside. Inside stood two poles upon which baskets of flaming pitch could be hoisted to light the surrounding area at night, and sharp sticks soaked in rattlesnake poison were hidden outside the walls in the grass.15 The Yaqui of northern Mexico “were known to sow trails with thorns poisoned with a venom so strong that there was no antidote.”16
Poisoning was a typical means of assassination among North American Indians, and they knew dozens ofplants with which they could contaminate the food or water of an enemy. Poisoning was greatly feared, according to a number of sources. The Aleut, for example, laced their adversaries’ food with the juice of Ranunculus occidentalis or Equisetum.17
Captain Smith recounted an attempt by Wecuttanow, a Powhatan chief’s son, to poison him,18 and members of his own tribe poisoned the Pequot renegade Wequash for assisting the English in the Pequot War.19 North Carolina Indians were known to poison potential chiefs whom they judged incapable of governing.
The Iroquois concealed dried and powdered Eupatorium perfoliatum
(Common Boneset) in an enemy’s liquor flask, the Western Keres added pulverized Datura wrightii to water, and the Menominee sprinkled dried Comptonia peregrina (Sweet Fern) leaves on an enemy’s food. The neighboring Meskwaki adulterated food with finely chopped root of Arisaema triphyllum (Jack in the Pulpit), and the Penobscot used A. triphyllum in the same fashion. The Lakota preferred Zigadenus venenosus as a murder weapon.
A questionable report—in that no other such account appears in the voluminous literature on North American Indian ethnobotany—by Huron H. Smith, noted for his ethnobotanical studies among tribes of the Great Lakes region, mentions that Sisyrinchium campestre was mixed with oats to make horses sleek and vicious.20 The ingestion of this plant rendered their bites poisonous, a handy trait for a war horse. Dogs were given Clintonia borealis to poison their teeth for hunting and fighting.21 A Navaho source mentioned that powdered Datura spp., when thrown in the face of an enemy, was an effective weapon.22
The novel use of botanicals among the Makah should be noted. They pounded the fresh roots of Rumex obtusifolius (Bitterdock) to rub on their bodies when near a powerful enemy. Warriors believed that this medicine would prevent them from serious injury in battle and was so important that they would pay from five to ten blankets for one application.
The most striking fact in the preceding materials is that Native American Indians could wage war with poisons delivered to their enemies in a great variety of ways, though the poisoned arrow was the most common. The wide range of techniques used in poison manufacture suggests that they had been experimenting with biochemical poisons for a long time. The use ofpoisons may indeed date to the earliest peopling of the New World.
World History
