How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine and Crafts

Frances Densmore delves into herbs of our specific area (we live in Northern Minnesota) in a way that male ethnobotanicists never have or possibly could. We have a treasure trove of herbal medicines at our disposal and she gives us the information needed to learn how to identify and use these medicines. Rather than going to a pharmacy or health food store and spending oodles of money on supplements and/or herbs which are quite possibly made from the very 'weeds' that you stumble upon on a walk through your woods, or state forests...learn about your areas own treasure trove...I only wish you all had access to such a definitive book.

I learned alot from reading this book. It's fairly short, and has lots of interesting tidbits. Though I feel it should be renamed--it doesn't deal with most indian cultures, but rather the Chippewa Indians, as they are who Frances Densmore made an extensive study of. The title is a bit misleading. One thing I felt that would have improved the book would have been a bit more of a clear listing of the information in the book, but then again, it is rather dated material.

I haven't read this book, but after reading the previous review from the other reviewer, it seems clear she highly recommends this book and thus made a mistake with her 1-star rating. It seems a shame and unjust that sales of this book would suffer because of the reviewer's mistaken star rating when her review was positively glowing. So I'm going to balance things out -- at least this book will have a 3-star rating.