Hierochloe odorata (or Anthoxanthum nitens)
The name for sweetgrass in Mohawk (Kanien’keha) is Óhonte Wenserákon and in Cheyenne it is Motse’eo. According to Cliff Eaglefeathers and Pete Risingsun, “Sweet grass (Motse’eo) is a sacred plant, a gift from Maheo’ (God), our Creator of Life. Cheyenne believe life is a spiritual journey with the sacred spirit of Maheo’. We also believe in an invisible spiritual power greater than our own spirit. Sweet grass (Motse’eo) smells like its name, a natural sweet fragrance that invites your spirit into the Circle of Life of Maheo’. We smudge ourselves with the smoke from burning a Motse’eo braid to receive spiritual cleansing and healing from Maheo’. We smudge ourselves and pray for the blessings of Maheo’s gifts, that only he can bless us with. These gifts are a clear mind, and clean heart from which come patience, keen vision, acute hearing and thoughtful speech of wisdom.”
In the Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Guide prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are ample references as to how widespread the use of Sweetgrass was and continues to be among Native peoples for the purpose of purification and prayer: “Indian people call sweetgrass the grass that never dies. Even when it is cut, it retains its fragrance and spirit. Today, sweetgrass is used inter tribally throughout the country. Sweetgrass was used ceremonially by many tribes, including the Omaha, Ponca, Kiowa, Dakota, Lakota, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Winnebago. The Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Lakota use sweetgrass in the Sun Dance […] In the northeast, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Menominee, Mohawk, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Abenaki made coiled baskets of sweetgrass.”
The best work by far on Sweetgrass and its relation to Indigenous plant knowledge is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She is also an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Because of her academic background and graduate work in Botany, her perspective combines hard science with Native American traditions, a difficult task to be sure. As she puts it, “Getting scientists to consider the validity of Indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water.” Nevertheless, her book is itself a kind of weaving: “This braid is woven from three strands: Indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story—old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth.”
