In November 1535, explorer Jacques Cartier and his crew were trapped in the ice near Stadacona, an Iroquoian village at what is now Quebec City.
The men became so weak they couldn’t stand up. Their legs swelled like balloons. Their gums rotted and their teeth became loose. Purple marks showed up all over their bodies.
By February, of the 110 men who made up Cartier’s expedition, eight were dead and only 3 were healthy enough to work.
Cartier placed an image of the Virgin Mary on a tree in the snow and ordered everyone healthy enough to walk there in a procession. They sang psalms and prayed for an intercession.
Then Cartier saw the Iroquoian boy Domagaya.
The year before, Cartier had kidnapped him and his brother Taignoagny and taken them to France. They were the sons of Chief Donnacona.
The last time Cartier had seen Domagaya, his knees were badly swollen, his gums had rotted and his teeth were loose. He was in the same condition as his sick crew. But when Cartier saw him on this day, he was miraculously healthy.
Domagaya told him about a tree called annedda. He sent two women to collect its branches. They boiled the bark and leaves in water. The liquid was drunk and the remaining material was placed on the swollen legs.
Cartier’s crew drank the medicine and within days, they had recovered.
He wrote this about the incident.
“… had all the doctors of Louvain and Montpellier been there, with all the drugs of Alexandria, they could not have done so much in a year as did this tree in eight days…”
The Iroquois knew that the needles of coniferous trees cured the symptoms because they had been experimenting with natural cures from the forest for 4,000 years.
We now know that they were suffering from scurvy caused by a vitamin C deficiency.
This is the first documented use of Indigenous North American medicine by Europeans.
And it cured a disease that Europe had no answer for.
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