Giving Credit Where Credit is Due:

Although more than 200 of the plants that American Indians (from North, Meso-, and South America) used as remedies became part of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, an official listing of all effective medicines, the originators of these remedies often remained unacknowledged.

When precontact indigenous origins of medical treatments were mentioned, American Indians were often said to have stumbled on these cures by accident, because they did not use the European scientific method. (Empiricism, sometimes called true science, did not begin in Europe until the time of Francis Bacon in the late 1500s — nearly a century after contact between Americans and Europeans.)

Today more than 120 drugs that are prescribed by physicians were first made from plant extracts, and 75 percent of these were derived from examining plants used in traditional indigenous medicine.

Seventy-five percent of the varities of food grown today are indigenous to North, Meso-, and South America, — most of them cultivated by American Indians hundreds of years before European contact.

Most of the entries contained in the Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World came into being long before Columbus set foon on Hispaniola in 1942. In instances such as rubber, popcorn, quinine, and hammocks, American Indian contributions have become a part of everyday life in very tangible ways worldwide. Other contributions were less tangible, such as the influence of the Iroquois on the U.S. Constitution …"

From Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield. Copyright © 2001 by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield. Reprinted by permission of Facts On File, Inc.

Did You Know That —

The Olmec, who lived in the Yucatan Peninsula, invented a way to treat raw latex in order to make usable items from rubber as early as 1700 B.C. They used it to make balls, soles for sandals, hollow bulbs for syringes and waterproofed ponchos. This process was similar to vulcanization patented by Charles Goodyear in 1844.

Pre-Colombian American Indian astronomers used a sophisticated system of astronomy, which could calculate celestial events such as solar eclipses. They also created calendar systems, complete with corrections that were based on detailed observations of the sun and moon. Indigenous astronomers were so accurate at observing the movements of the stars and planets that by the fifth century B.C. those in Mesoamerican had calculated a year's length so accurately that it was only 19 minutes off.

Using a technique called seed-selection, American Indian farmers of North Meso-, and South America were able to develop varieties of cultivated food crops suitable to a number of climates. By the time Columbus landed, they had developed at least 3,000 varieties of potatoes alone and had domesticated at least 300 grasses. Best known for the development of corn, American Indian farmers are also responsible for developing Great Northern Beans. According to archeological evidence, they were expert plant breeders by about A.D. 1. In contrast, European interest in plant genetics remained indifferent for over 40 years after Gregor Mendel presented his work in 1865.

North American Indians had medicinal uses for at least 2,564 species of plants. In addition to their expert use of botanical medications to treat medical conditions, American Indians from a number of culture groups were expert surgeons. The operations they performed included plastic surgery, skin grafts, thoracentesis to remove fluid from the chest cavity, and arthrocentesis to remove fluid from the knee. American Indian healers routinely cleansed wounds with water that had been boiled and used botanical antiseptics on them, a practice not routine in Western medicine until the early 1900s. Pre-Columbian Aztec healers working in urban areas practiced in government-funded hospitals.

Pre-Columbian metal workers on the coast of what is now Ecuador worked platinum into objects. In order to do this, they developed a process known as sintering, mixing granules of silver with platinum to lower the melting point of platinum, which is about 1770C. Platinum work was unknown in Europe until the 19th century because metal workers there had not found a way to melt it.

American Indian metallurgists also invented electroplating, a chemical process they used to gild copper and alloys that they made from silver, copper and gold. The Moche, who lived on the coast of northern Peru, invented this process between 200 B.C. and A.D. 600. Europeans did not discover the process of electroplating until Sir Humphrey Davy's experiments in the late 1700s.

The Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World includes science and technology entries that cover:

• Agricultural Techniques
• Architecture
• Astronomy
• Civil Engineering
• Dentistry
• Environmental Science
• Aquaculture
• Nutrition
• Mathematics
• Medicine
• Metallurgy
• Pharmacology
• Political/Social Science

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This section updated 12/28/01
©Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield