Plains Apache Ethnobotany

One tribe's traditional knowledge of plants, presented for the first time

Residents of the Great Plains since the early 1500s, the Apache people were well acquainted with the native flora of the region. In Plains Apache Ethnobotany, Julia A. Jordan documents more than 110 plant species valued by the Plains Apache and preserves a wealth of detail concerning traditional Apache collection, preparation, and use of these plant species for food, medicine, ritual, and material culture.

The traditional Apache economy centered on hunting, gathering, and trading with other tribes. Throughout their long history the Apache lived in or traveled to many different parts of the plains, gaining an intimate knowledge of a wide variety of plant resources. Part of this traditional knowledge, especially that pertaining to plants of Oklahoma, has been captured here by Jordan's fieldwork, conducted with elders of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma in the mid-1960s, a time when much traditional knowledge was being lost.

Plains Apache Ethnobotany is the most comprehensive ethnobotanical study of a southern plains tribe. Handsomely illustrated, this book is a valuable resource for ethnobotanists, anthropologists, historians, and anyone interested in American Indian use of native plants.

Julia A. Jordan holds a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. As a research anthropologist, she conducted extensive fieldwork among Indians of western Oklahoma as a part of the Doris Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Oklahoma. Later at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History she served as consultant and co-principal investigator for several anthropological projects. Now retired, she lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

Paul E. Minnis, Professor of Anthroplogy at the University of Oklahoma, is the editor of Ethnobotany: A Reader and coeditor of Biodiversity and Native America.

Wayne J. Elisens, Professor of Botany and curator of the Bebb Herbarium at the University of Oklahoma, is coeditor of Biodiversity and Native America.