Entry Detail

Black gum, tupelo

Entry Type:

Species

Scientific Name:

Common Name:

Black gum, tupelo

Myaamia Name:

neenasionki

Harvest Seasons:

Winter

Habitats:

Beech-Oak-Maple Mixed Mesophytic

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Myaamia Archival Sources ▼

Reference Source	Reference Type	Archival Data	Comments
Dunn, J.P. ca. 1900	Description	Dunn gives this as and describes it as ‘a tall tree of the southwest of the United States which attains a height of 50 to 80 feet. My informant did not know the English name, but the Peoria name, as above, means : the "unrecognized one". He describes it as resembling a pecan tree, with few limbs only, truck straight, and resembling closely the white oak. It bears nuts (not certain about this) and the wood is good for burning. The roots are called "great medicine" by the untutored natives of the western prairies. My informant saw it nowhere but around the council-house of the Seneca Indians, Quapaw Reservation, Indian Territory’
Gatschet, A.S. ca. 1895	Use - Medicinal	Gatschet gives form as , describing it as ‘a straight-grown, nut bearing tree with few limbs only and from fifty to eighty feet in height, resembling the white oak; probably the black gumtree. The graining runs crosswise and very close, so that it is almost impossible to split the wood and in the Indian territory it serves for fuel only. Of the bark the Indians make tea against pulminary consumption. The bark is rough and quite thick. It is scarce there; one of them stands by the council house of the Seneca nation, another near Cayuga, I. T. The Peorias do not know its English name and hence call it the unrecognized or undefined from nänáⁿzo’; ‘the unrecognized tree; SW saw some in Indiana where they call it the black gum’
Dunn, J.P. ca. 1900	Use - Technology	Not necessarily the same tree species; but the Peoria account of this medicine tree by Dunn is reminiscent of a Shawnee account of a tree with impressive medicinal properties; whose fruits produced a pain-numbing effect in humans as powerful as opium

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