This month, as we honor Native American Heritage Month, I feel called to step softly into the green library of my own lineage — the Muscogee (Mvskoke/Creek) people. On my paternal side, my family carries Mvskoke blood, and over the years I’ve had the privilege of attending ceremony — primarily Posketv, the Green Corn Ceremony — where I’ve experienced some of these medicines firsthand in sacred settings.
To witness the plants used in ceremony — to taste their bitterness, feel their warmth move through the body, and understand their rhythm — is to see how deeply medicine and spirit are intertwined. The Muscogee peoples stewarded and walked with a rich pharmacopeia of Southeastern plants — trees, shrubs, and herbs that show up in stories, in ceremonies, at council fires, and in daily healing. Much of this knowledge was (and is) place-based: what grows on the rivers, the ridges, the coastal flats becomes part of a people’s medicine. Modern ethnobotanical compilations and community accounts record many of these plants and their traditional uses.
Here are a few that stand out — not just as medicines, but as living relatives.
Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) — the Black Drink
A cornerstone of Southeastern ceremonial life, yaupon leaves were roasted and boiled into a concentrated brew — sometimes called the “black drink” — used in purification rites, council meetings, and sacred ceremonies. Beyond ceremony, yaupon served as a social tonic and an energizing drink before work or battle. Its role among Mvskoke and neighboring nations is well documented; the beverage sometimes appears in accounts of the Green Corn Ceremony and other rites.
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)
Sassafras bridges the practical and the sacred, and shows up across Southeastern Indigenous medicine as a tea and topical: roots and bark were used for tonics, to ease digestive complaints, and as poultices for wounds. In kitchens it also served as filé (thickener) and as a flavoring — a plant that braided food, medicine, and daily life together.
Sumac (Rhus spp.)
Sumac’s tart berries and leaves provide more than flavor. They are used as teas for digestive complaints, as topical washes, and in child care remedies (historical uses vary by community and species). The bright clusters of berries are a practical, multi-use resource — food, wash, and medicine. It’s one of those humble plants that show up quietly, doing a lot with a little.
Mullein (Verbascum spp., naturalized)
Though mullein is not native, it was adopted into Mvskoke and neighboring traditions for respiratory support — a soft, woolly plant that comforts the lungs and soothes the breath. Its presence in ceremonial medicine circles speaks to the way Indigenous wisdom evolves: adaptable, open, and always listening to what the land offers.
Willow & other salicaceae
Willow bark and twigs — familiar across many Indigenous and folk systems — are still used for pain and fever, topical poultices, and first-aid preparations. Willow’s salicin chemistry later inspired aspirin, but more than chemistry, willow medicine carries a story of endurance. In the Mvskoke worldview, many plants — willow among them — are teachers of resilience, bending but never breaking, offering their medicine without demand.
Sitting with the Medicine
Writing about these plants is, for me, a way of remembering — not as an expert, but as a descendant listening for what still hums beneath the surface. Each of these plants is a bridge: between ceremony and science, between past and present, between the body and the Spirit that moves through all things.
If you feel called to explore these plants, do so slowly and respectfully. Learn their stories from tribal voices, elders, and community knowledge holders. These medicines are not just ingredients — they’re living participants in a sacred web of kinship.
This month, may we honor the people who carried these songs, the ceremonies that still keep them alive, and the land that continues to speak through them.
Mvto.