(upbeat music) - Hi, kids!

Welcome to the Museum Of Native American History.

I'm Tiny Tusker, and this is a real medicine trunk from the late 1800s that you can see at the museum.

But today, there's something special inside.

Let's check it out.

- Hi kids, my name is Evan.

And today, we're at the Museum Of Native American History in Bentonville, Arkansas.

And today, we're going to learn about the medical uses of echinacea.

So echinacea, or the purple coneflower plant, is a very common type of plant.

And you can see it growing around in North America, specifically the Eastern United States, from Iowa and Ohio to Louisiana and Georgia.

The purple coneflower has many uses, has been used for many centuries by the Native Americans as an herbal medicine for treatments of things like the common cold, coughs, bronchitis, and upper respiratory infections, just to name a few.

The purple coneflower, or Missouri snake root, is a commonly used herbal remedy still used to this day.

Plains Indians would use echinacea or purple coneflower as a largely medicinal plant.

It was used for various injuries and illnesses from toothaches, coughs, colds, sore throats, and even snake bites.

People of the Choctaw tribe used the purple coneflower as cough medicine and as medicine for stomach aches and pains.

- Even today, the medicine people say that if you don't know the proper medicine formula, the proper plant and how to prepare it and how to conduct that ceremony, a medicine person can go out in the woods, and a plant will nod.

I'm who you're looking for.

They say that the plant could speak to that medicine person.

The medicine people learned how to stay in balance with the plants.

You never come to an area where there's something that you need and take it all.

You have to leave some to come back the following year.

(gentle music) - Some of us that are elders were not taught how to have conscious living on this earth.

And it's important what the Museum of Native American History does.

We want to show the diversity of culture of the first people.

And these are the people that observed how the planet works.

The first people we look at, we're the whole umbrella, we are all related, all things are alive.

And so the first people were the plants and the animals that showed us how to live on the planet, what plant works for you, what shelter works for you in that area that you live in.

And it's important that we bestow this information on the next generation.

The pots behind us, they're called effigy pots.

And again, this ties into all of our relations.

We have so many people, the word effigy, what does that mean?

You know, it seems like such a scary word, but effigy just means likeness.

But also see observation of animals and their attributes.

You know, you see, you know that skunk is probably more powerful than bear, because he raises a little tail and he can go poof and scare bear off, because it's like, oh my gosh, that was so stinky.

So, you know, so through that observation, people would take certain animals as taking them into battle, sort of attributes of fearlessness or great sight and all that.

And so the pottery here is just extraordinary.

And especially the Quapaw pots that are behind us, some of the finest potters.

(gentle music) Where we sit right now, the first people of this area would be the Osage, and this was Osage hunting ground, the Quapaw and the Cahto.

But it's really important that on our website that we have this little thing that you can type in your zip code, and it'll tell you who lived on your land all over the world.

And it's good to acknowledge that, and want to learn more.

(gentle music)