The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed a renewed concern among nations of the world regarding the use of biological and chemical weapons of war, especially by terrorists and so-called rogue nations. The fact that all major nations possess extensive weapons laboratories and production facilities, combined with events of the past several decades, illustrates that anxiety over these weapons is firmly based in reality.

In 1968 at Dugway, Utah, a laboratory testing an extremely toxic agent precipitated a chemical cloud that killed 6,000 sheep. The plant was later closed. An accidental release of aerosol in 1979 from Compound...

What makes a plant poisonous? What effects do poisons delivered by arrow, spear point, knife, or dart have on the victim? Answers to these questions are not as clear-cut as one might think. Botanist Edward R. Ricciuti wrote,

How many species are capable of poisoning people? No one really knows. The toxic properties of hundreds, even thousands, of species may await discovery, and inclusion in the medical literature. The poisons in many common plants may be undetected simply because no one ever has eaten them, or if someone has, the symptoms of poisoning never have been linked to the plants....

Whereas only specialists possessed knowledge of a wide variety of poisons, most North American Indians were well versed on the subject of suicidal agents as well as compounds for fishing, hunting, and protection from pests. Although researchers found gathering information about poisons generally difficult, informants were more forthcoming about those used in the food quest and for suicide, which usually stemmed from a broken heart.

Growing throughout Native North America, the white, fleshy root of genusCicutastands out as the suicide plant. In the Northeast Culture Area, the “suicide root” (Cicuta masculata—Spotted Water Hemlock) was first mentioned by...

Even a brief survey of the relevant literature reveals that, from ancient to modern times, poisoned arrows have been employed in almost all parts of the world. As for the dawn of arrow poisoning, there lies only conjecture. Perhaps ancient humans first encountered the possibilities when they noticed more serious wounds and infections resulting from weapons coated with the dried remains of their prey’s blood and gore.

The Bible records the cries of Job: “The arrows of the Almighty pierce men, and my spirit drinks their poison.” Homer mentions in theOdysseythat Ulysses had knowledge of poisoning arrows and...

For clarity of presentation, the tribal groups germane to the theme of this chapter are organized in terms of the Culture Areas typically employed for Native North American ethnological discussion: Southeast, Northeast, Plains, Southwest, California, Great Basin, Columbia-Fraser Plateau, Northwest, Subarctic, Aleutian Islands, and Arctic.

The eastern boundary of the Northeastern Culture Area runs from Maryland, through New England, to Newfoundland and the southeast corner of Canada, and from the Atlantic seaboard to the lower Great Lakes. Major tribes of the area include the Iroquois Confederacy (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) and the Huron, Algonquin, Penobscot, Micmac, Erie, Abnaki,...

Although widespread arrow poisoning among North American tribes throughout all culture areas has been established, the issue of poisons in warfare is not yet exhausted. During the transition from bows and arrows to firearms, many North American Indian groups applied their arrow poisons to bullets. For a short span of history, some Native Americans apparently categorized both arrows and bullets as material projectiles and to some degree treated them the same way. For example, the Apache word for bullet iska, or “arrow.”¹

The Tonkawa Indians of south Texas transferred their arrow poison, the juice of the mistletoe leaf, to...

The people referred to by North American archaeologists as the Paleo-Indians, or “ancient Indians,” perhaps exhibit the first evidence of projectile-point poisoning by Native Americans. Precisely when these first Americans entered the New World and where they originated continues to be hotly debated.¹

The most widely accepted notion, however, is that the ancestors of the American Indians migrated from northeast Asia in small hunting and foraging bands more than 12,000 years ago by way of a land bridge that was exposed between Siberia and Alaska during the last glaciations. A minority of archaeologists champion northern and western Europe as one...

Ethnobotanical and ethnohistorical sources clearly refute claims, proposed as recently as the late-twentieth century, that North American Indians rarely used arrow poison. The appendix lists the major North American groups and the poisons they used. The use of poisons was not relegated to one specific cultural or ecological zone but was, as the literature demonstrates, widespread in hunting and gathering as well as horticultural environments—in woodlands, deserts, subarctic forests, swamps, high plains, and mountains.

North American Indian arrow-poison usage resembles that of the bow and arrow–based cultures of Japan, China, eastern India, tribal Europe, South America, Africa, Indonesia,...