How Medicine Came to the People: A Tale of the Ancient Cherokees

Deborah L. Duvall
Murv Jacob , Illustrator

"A long time ago, all the animals and people lived happily together," begins this story of the origins of Cherokee herbal medicine. As the people begin to outnumber the animals and then to hunt them for their hides and meat, the days of peaceful coexistence are over. The animals take their revenge on the people by making them sick, creating rheumatism, coughs, and colds, aches and pains, fevers and swellings and rashes and allergies. The people are saved by their only remaining allies: the plants and trees that they have cultivated, who show them how to use herbal medicine to survive.

Simply told and magnificently illustrated, this story is suitable for children but eerily resonant for adults at a time of heightened awareness of the threat of disease and the usefulness of herbal remedies. The book includes an appendix with pictures of common medicinal plants and information on their uses.

Visit the authors' website at www.jacobandduvall.com

Ages 6 and up

Winner of the Oklahoma Book Awards Director's Award for a series of works of special merit.

Deborah L. Duvall is an author of books and short stories on Cherokee history and tradition, a singer-songwriter, and a professional in financial management. She was born and continues to live in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation.

Murv Jacob, a descendant of Kentucky Cherokees, is an internationally known artist whose illustrations appear in over seventy book and video projects. He won the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award for Design and Illustration for his drawings in The Great Ball Game of the Birds and Animals.

The Grandmother Stories

8.5 x 10 32 pages 30 pen-and-ink illustrations