Grandfather’s Footsteps
by Jason Godesky
When the Grandfathers crossed the ocean and came here, they trod with heavy steps. With each step, their feet sunk deep into the earth, and everywhere they went, their steps upturned the soil and caused great commotion among the Green Nation. But in those footsteps, a little plant grew up, carried on the Grandfathers’ boots from the Old World from whence they’d come.
The Grandfathers considered it a terrible, intrusive little plant, and it saddened them that it had followed them from the Old World. They tried to pull it up wherever they found it, because they did not like it.
Then, one day, a bee stung one of the Grandfathers. He cried out in pain, and he heard the little plant call out, “Grandfather! Grandfather! Take one of my leaves, and crush it into a poultice with mud!” The Grandfather did so. As the mud dried, it pulled the blood and the stinger’s tiny shot of venom out of his arm. The leaves stopped the sting from infection.
“You have powerful medicine, don’t you, little friend?” the Grandfather asked.
“Indeed I do!” the little plant replied. “Wheresoever the soil is upturned, I grow quickly, and heal the soil, and that is why I grow in your footsteps, for you walk heavily and leave deep footsteps, and much soil for me to heal. But since healing is in my nature, I can also heal your scrapes, cuts, insect bites, stings and rashes. I can soothe your pains and heal your cuts, and a tincture or tea of my healing leaves will help you breathe easier when you grow ill.”
“That’s amazing, little friend!” the Grandfather replied.
“I will make a bargain with you, Grandfather, and with all of your descendants,” the little plant said. “If you tread more lightly, and walk like the other animals do, no longer leaving such deep and heavy footprints nor leaving so much work for me to do, then I will offer you all my medicine; you can take some of my leaves and use them to keep yourself and your family healthy.”
The Grandfather agreed to this, and the little plant remained our great friend ever since, healing our cuts and scrapes; and we, in turn, do not tread so heavily as the Grandfathers once did. And that is why we call our little friend, “Grandfather’s Footsteps.”
Field Guide
Find more about Grandfather’s Footsteps from:
- [[Plantain|REWILD.info Field Guide]]
- Plants for a Future
- Permaculture.info
- Wikipedia
- USDA PLANTS Database
Oral cultures don’t memorize facts and figures about thousands of edible and medicinal plants. They learn stories—stories about the personalities and powers of plants, how they relate to each other, to the world, and to the people who seek them out. Here, we’re starting some new stories about our rediscovered friends.
- Next Week: The Color-Maiden
This is the first post of a new weekly series called “Mythic Plants,” where we’ll start trying to pull together a new mythology to relate to our plant friends. Today’s is Plantago major, or “Common Plantain,” one of the greatest medicinal herbs you’ll ever meet. Indians called it “White Man’s Footsteps,” because it came over from Europe, and thanks to the soil disturbance and basic invasive plant ecology, spread wherever Europeans went. Of course, for us it’s not the “White Man’s” footsteps, it’s our own ancestors’ footsteps. How do you honor your ancestors, as healthy cultures do, when your ancestors were genocidal maniacs who declared war on all life? That’s a delicate subject and will be an ongoing challenge. The tone of this story tries to offer a possibility towards that end.
The Mythic Plants collection on Flickr might also be of interest to some people. These are all going to be plants in our own bioregion, and the myths we’re developing to help us relate to them. I hope I get to see others starting projects like this in their own bioregions. This isn’t finished by any means; this is just a starting point.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 June 2007 @ 11:35 AM
Awesome, thanks for this. I’ve wanted to create songs and stories about how things came to be, to help remember identifying traits, and uses (particularly in plants). This helps, surely.
Reminds me of a tale a friend of my father told me, that he heard, I believe, from the grandson of Black Elk.
Winter draws near, nights grow longer, the long days leave, along with the warmth. A couple of bears stand arguing about a number of hunters entering their land. Some of their friends fell the previous winter to some. Should they flee, should they attack. Back and forth, back and forth, to no resolution.
Porcupine awakens from all this commotion, “Hey, I got an idea” he says, yet the bears hardly hear him and continue bickering back and forth. “Hey, I know of something that might help!” comes out of his mouth, this time in a yell. Still, the bears pay no attention. Porcupine, not wanting his friends the bears to be killed this winter, decides they must hear what he has to say. Out of his stomach and chest he lets go the loudest, longest, scream of his life, the two bears turn to face him and notice he has worked up a sweat of no small degree, wondering why. The quilled one tries to speak, however his empty lungs will not allow for this. One bear turns to the other, about to get into the same old argument, when at this moment, porcupine, knowing that if they will not listen to him at his loudest they will not listen at all. Porcupine is fed up. Down his mouth chomps on his left thumb, he spits it out at the first bear. Then he chomps off his right thumb, spits it onto the second bear. The two bears stare, awed, upon porcupine. Moments pass, eventually porcupine has enough breath to talk, and this time the bears have waited. “Here’s what I’ve got to say. You go hide somewhere safe, and sleep the hunters away. The coming warmth of spring will awaken you, and the hunters in these woods, having killed no bear, will have long since left.”
This is the story told to me as to why bears hibernate and porcupines have four front toes.
Comment by chiggles — 19 June 2007 @ 12:48 AM
Yes! I love it, Jason. And I feel even happier to know that this post opens up a whole new series.
I always believed that if the Tribe of Anthropik put itself to writing about primitive skills in a practical sense, then it would happen in an amazing way. Thanks for proving my belief right.
I look forward to reading more and to incorporating them into the REWILD.info Field Guide.
Comment by Rix — 19 June 2007 @ 3:12 PM
By all means. I love wikis, I hate copyright, and I especially love REWILD.info. If you can remake this appropriately for that, then take anything you like.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 June 2007 @ 3:18 PM
amen to all the above. and all hail the glory of “copyleft”.
the story stand appropriate as-is for a songlines sub-page in the wiki. now we just need a plantain page to parent it.
Comment by Rix — 19 June 2007 @ 4:26 PM
I love this site, but it’s huge! Has there ever been any discussion previously about the use of hallucinogenic/entheogenic plants and shamanism? I’m re-reading Terence McKenna’s Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival at the moment, and finding them very stimulating to my ideas about the return to Paleolithic values of ecstasy and connection with nature that are inevitable as we face the messy end of the Industrial Experiment…anyone have any thoughts on this? Or can you direct me to somewhere on the site where entheogenic shamanism is discussed?
Keep up the great writing, Jason and Tribe…
Comment by Ulerian — 21 June 2007 @ 1:11 PM
Check out “Neoshamanism is Masturbation.” We take a dim view of shamanism as a thin veneer for drug use, which is what so much of neo-shamanism amounts to. Entheogens have their place, but that’s a place that’s well beyond mere cultural appropriation.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 2:02 PM
Very good article Jason, and I agree with you. Shamanism as a “thin veneer for drug use” is just another way the current capitalist culture tends to degrade and product-ize everything.
Let me clarify: I’m really not talking about the use of entheogens as a way to “become” a (neo)shaman of any existing tribe/tradition, but as a possible tool for reconnecting with our plant teachers. My experiences on these substances have been both terrifying and illuminating, never to be undertaken lightly or for recreation. The context in which they are taken is critical. There is ecstasy, but there is agony, too.
But these plants have always taught me something about the world and our place in it. We could do worse than model ourselves on their processes. I’m not saying they are the only way, but they can be a tool for trying to reconnect with nature. And whether we call it shamanism or not, I think we all agree that a reconnection to our ground of being is essential for our continued survival as a species.
Terence McKenna never claimed to be a shaman of any kind, by the way. He was probably more of a trickster or maverick, by his own definition. But his experiences with the realms he encountered on psychedelics helped him see that the way out of our present predicament is a combination of what we’ve learned technologically with what we left behind 15,000 years ago. Only the technology is in our minds, not outside of us in our toys/artifacts. My reading of him shows no conflict whatsoever with much of what you and others are writing about now. Apparently it is only the means by which he gained his insights that cause discomfort. Try as we might, we cannot easily escape our barren birthright of Judaeo-Christian distrust of altered consciousness and pleasure.
It’s true we should not and truly cannot appropriate another’s culture. But how are we to reclaim our own shamanism, without seeing how others are doing it? Perhaps certain plants can teach us how, can help us create a shamanism that is distinctly our own. There had to be a “first shaman” somewhere–how did he/she learn it? How do we reclaim it? A thorny question to be sure…
Just another piece of the tapestry, for your consideration. Regardless of one’s comfort level with the discussion, the entheogens are also mythic plants, and ought not be overlooked due to cultural/societal prejudice. They are healers, too, little as we may trust them.
Comment by Ulerian — 22 June 2007 @ 5:44 AM
That’s a very easy path to become overwhelmed in. As an animist, I see the whole world as relatives and potential friends, but a universe of relationships doesn’t mean that everything and everyone in it should be trusted. Some plants have tricky personalities, and have their own agendas. It takes a deep, rich shamanic tradition to really know which ones are which. Look at the “Lords of the Outer Darkness” that ayahuasca drinkers so often encounter; your average Westerner experimenting with entheogens would actually believe them.
Entheogens have been part of such shamanic traditions in the past, but rediscovering them is like the post-grad studies of shamanism. Most of us are lucky if we get through Kindergarten. Entheogens are usually used as aids for weak or inexperienced shamans, but they’re used under the supervision of very experienced shamans who understand the plant and its agenda. You’re engaging this plant, after all; it may want to “ride” you around for a bit, and if you don’t know that this particular plant is willful, tricky and not particularly concerned with human welfare, you might easily fall into that trap.
The other important part to look at is your own local ecology. Is your bioregion a place where entheogens have traditionally been used? What entheogens are they?
I’ve been using the term “Second Shaman,” because while we have some last vestiges of shamanic traditions to learn from, we’ll largely need to rediscover it for ourselves, and learn from the plants, animals, winds and Others directly. We’ll need to duplicate the feat of First Shaman. I doubt First Shaman used entheogens, though; that’s probably too advanced, and it’s probably too advanced for us. Our great-grandchildren might get to the point where they’re able to deal with powers like that, but for us, just wrapping our heads around the notion that we can shapeshift or talk to animals is difficult enough.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 June 2007 @ 9:27 AM
I turned this into a songlines page on the REWILD.info wiki here.
Comment by Rix — 28 June 2007 @ 5:56 PM