Chippewa Indians
Herbs are a common staple in American cooking. In fact, herbs are the forefathers of taste. The Chippewa Indians and all of the other Indian tribes of the times have been using herbs for hundreds of years, not only for cooking purposes, but also as medicine and self-healing. If you have been to any large supermarket lately, you may have noticed how much more space the produce department has dedicated to herbs. That is mainly because of the knowledge explosion about what herbs can do for your overall health. The secret healing power of herbs is a secret that the Chippewa Indians and virtually all of our forefathers have utilized for centuries past. It is about time we learn something from them.
If you are considering using herbs as a medicinal tool like the Chippewa Indians have done and still do today, you will have a choice to make. Should you purchase your herbs at the local market or should you grow them yourself? Of course, I always find it better to do my own gardening. I believe there is nothing better for you than ingesting your own hand grown herbs. Nowadays, there are too many reasons to doubt that your herbs were “handled with care”. You will have no way of knowing whether or not your food was polluted by chemicals and pesticides. Back in the days when the Chippewa Indians planted their gardens, the problems associated with crop damage were not treated with the chemicals of the twentieth century.
So, which herbs do you choose? If you are going to plant indoors, here is a modest list of herbs that are very windowsill friendly and that have many medicinal properties:
- Basil, chives, dill, fennel, hyssop, lavender, parsley, peppermint, rosemary, sage, savory and thyme.
If you are going to plant outdoors, the following plants will flourish with little effort. These are all perennial medicinal herbs and do well for anyone in a temperate climate.
- Chasteberry, goldenseal, lemon balm, mints, oregano, spearmint, St. Johns Wort, tansy, valerian, wild yam and willow.