How I love the smell of herbs! There is nothing that smells quite like thyme seasoned on grilled tomatoes, or the freshness of mint tea.  Herbs, which grow in the natural environment, can beautifully flavor and enhance foods.  However, herbs can also have medicinal purposes.  The Lenapes, a Native American tribe, had extensive knowledge of herbs and their power to heal diseases.  In fact, the Lenapes made medicines out of herbs, roots, plants, and bark.  For example, they would brew a special tea called catnip tea, which is a plant that is related to the mint family, for a sick member of the tribe, or strengthen the infirm by covering them with strawberry leaves.  There are two fascinating things about these natural or organic cures.  The first is that the herbs worked effectively to alleviate their ailments.    This can be assumed because the history of using herbs  as medicine is long and well intwined in the Lenape society.  The second is that the herbs healed diseases we still have today, such as rheumatism.  Therefore, it is not surprising that some of the organic cures have been passed down to our society.   Many medicines now contain at least one ingredient derived from plants.

Through this picture, it is clear that the Lenapes were dependent on the natural environment in order to maintain their health.  There may have been hundreds of herbs that had medicinal purposes, but  the Lenapes tended to move from site to site, based on the seasons.  What did they do if they needed the herb that cured cold symptoms but there was non growing nearby? There was no pharmacy for them to pick some up.  It is possible that they carried certain herbs with them from place to place, or that many herbs cured the same thing.  If this were the case, the Lenapes had a vital and continuous relationship with the natural environment, as they were always bringing the parts of nature they deemed important, the healing herbs, with them.

The Lenapes also respected the natural environment.  Not only did they understand the medicinal effect of herbs, and how something so small could have such a large impact on their health, but they also respected the environment that the plants grew in.  The Lenapes did not run through nature cutting down every catnip plant they saw.  They treated the plants with dignity, as would be appropriate to something with such great powers.  There was a procedure for collecting plants that had to be followed with respect to proper rituals, otherwise the cures did not work.  This included dropping a tobacco offering at the first plant the collector found and then picking the next plant of the same kind.  In addition, bark was only peeled from healthy trees.  The Lenapes took their rituals seriously.  They believed in the curative effects of the herbs, and while being dependent on the natural environment to provide the plants, the Lenapes respected the natural environment from where the herbs grew.  The Lenapes were in a constant, dependable, but respectable relationship with the natural environment.