Buffalo grass, Indian nettle and witch hazel - the flora of the native peoples of North America
Indians - Lost Worlds
June 24, 2018 - September 30, 2018
An interview with Carsten Schirarend
Who knows that most of our colorful garden perennials were originally native to the Great Plains of the USA? And which plants have great effects as medicine? In the exhibition project, Dr. Carsten Schirarend, scientific director of the Botanical Garden, questions common clichés and sheds light on the everyday life of some sedentary tribes who practiced agriculture and trade along the upper Missouri.
How did the idea for the exhibition come about?
The idea for our project came from the gardeners who look after the North America department in the Botanical Garden. They have a particularly intensive access to the plants from the different regions of North America and many of the plants they cultivate in Hamburg they have collected themselves in the prairies or in the Appalachians. Numerous conversations and contacts with visitors to the Botanic Garden have shown that there is an unusually great interest in the plants used by the native peoples of North America, so that the desire arose to present this topic on a larger scale.
To what extent do you break stereotypes?
If you study the subject a little more intensively, you quickly realize that our image of the native peoples of North America is very one-sided. In fact, at the time of Christopher Columbus, there were up to 500 nations that populated the land between the Arctic and the rainforests of Central America and were characterized by extremely different economic strategies and organizational structures. In addition to nomadic fishermen, hunter-gatherers, there were more or less sedentary tribes that combined farming and hunting, up to the completely sedentary irrigated field farmers of the American Southwest. The nomadic equestrian cultures of the prairies, so familiar to us, which provided the raw material for the romanticized and distorted image of Indians in the German-speaking world, on the other hand, did not develop until after the so-called discovery of the New World and the associated introduction of horses into North America.
Three peoples whose way of life did not fit this stereotype at all were the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan. They were sedentary and lived on the upper Missouri River by farming and trading. Due to several major expeditions that had contact with these tribes in the early 19th century, we have a very good source base here, which we have used for a special exhibit on their daily lives.
Why are so many North American plants found in our gardens?
Large parts of North America are characterized by a temperate climate and thus harbor plants that can also be cultivated in Central Europe without any problems. Since the effects of the ice age were much less severe here due to the north-south running mountain ranges, North America also has a much more species-rich plant world than Europe. So it is not surprising that many North American woody plants and perennials have found their way into the gardens of Europe. Some, like black locust, are so familiar to us today that we consider them native plants.
As in many parts of the world, industrialized agriculture and other modern land-use practices have left their mark on North America. This is especially true of the prairies, once the largest steppe area on earth. Today, this region is considered the breadbasket of the U.S. and presents itself as a vast agricultural, partially desolate and often artificially irrigated cultivation area for wheat and corn. Many of the prairie plants that were once native here are threatened with extinction and are often only found in nature reserves and national parks.
What can visitors experience, what do they take away?
As with all primitive peoples, the Native Americans' knowledge of the powers of nature was deeply rooted, and plants in particular, with their many uses, played a prominent role. From today's perspective, it is particularly remarkable that the use of these natural resources was always characterized by respect and great reverence, i.e., according to today's understanding, by a special sustainability. With our project we would like to sensitize the visitors for this today again very modern idea of responsible and sustainable handling of the animate and inanimate objects of nature.
