ABSTRACT
North America has rich historical resources from which to draw information on ethnoveterinary medicine. The relationship that Native Americans wrought between themselves and the plants and animals around them was unique and seamless and existed within the mantra that all-humans, animals, and plants-were part of the natural world without divisions of hierarchy or ownership. Native Americans embraced animals as their equals within the natural world and believed that animals, like humans, held their own spiritual power.1 Similarly, plants were an important and integral coefcient in the equation of natural life. Plants offered food for families and livestock, medicines for the sick, smoking for social and spiritual enlightenment, and poisons for hunting wild game. This inherent, spiritual harmony within which Native Americans, plants, and animals existed provided for medicine systems for humans and animals that were virtually indistinct from each other. The knowledge that Native Americans had of the uses of plants around them was applied without prejudice to the animals in their care.
