The contrahierba de Julimes: an arrow poison and the antidote an Indian gave for it
Arlegui's chronicle of Zacatecas records that the Tarahumara poisoned their arrowheads with a herb so strong that in the rising of 1690 the scratched died without remedy, because the Spaniards "ignoraban la qualidad de la herida". The antidote was not found by the missionaries: a reduced Indian showed them a root, kneaded and laid on the wound. The same chronicle credits divine mercy for it in the next clause.
Why this wins its question: Arrow poison in Spanish America is told almost entirely as curare and the Orinoco, and indigenous remedies are usually cited to European compilers — Monardes, Hernández — who worked far from where the plants grew. This object prints a different and much less known case from the sheets: a poison used against Spanish troops in the Tarahumara rising of 1690, an antidote that the chronicle says was shown to the Spaniards by an Indian who had come into the missions, a second locality where the same root was later found, and a stated limit on what the cure could do. It is worth having because of what sits beside it on the page rather than in spite of it: the acknowledgement of systematic herb-testing is in the same sentence as "crasos entendimientos", the credit for the discovery goes to divine mercy in the clause before the Indian is named, and the chronicler declares outright that he is suppressing the rest as unworthy of record. A reader can see both the transfer and the frame that nearly erased it, each quoted to its page.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The source is the Chronica de la Provincia de N.S.P.S. Francisco de Zacatecas by Fray Joseph Arlegui, chronicler and former provincial of that province, printed at Mexico by Joseph Bernardo de Hogal in 1737. The passage stands at page 153, in the second book, whose tabla summarises it in one line: "Inficionan sus saetas con veneno, y en la contrahierva de Julimes se ha hallado el remedio."
The chronicle states the botanical practice and the insult in one sentence, and the corpus quotes it whole rather than the half that flatters: "Enmedio de sus crasos entendimientos, tienen conocimiento de muchas hierbas, que, como moradores de los campos, examinan sus qualidades, especialmente para mojar en sus zumos las puntas de sus saetas, haciendo con su qualidad irremediable la herida." Systematic testing of plant properties is being described, and described as occurring in spite of the minds of the people doing it.
The nation named is the Tarahumara, in the Franciscan missions of Nueva Vizcaya, and the poison is described by its effect rather than by its species: a herb so venomous that it is enough for the arrow to draw with a scratch the least sign of blood, "por alli passa hasta el corazon el veneno, con tanta aceleracion, que mueren sin remedio alguno". The chronicle names no plant and this corpus names none.
The passage dates the crisis. The poison "hizo este genero de veneno grandissimos daños, quando se alzò la nacion Tarumara el año de mil, seiscientos, y noventa", and the reason given for the deaths is ignorance rather than the wound: "porque, como ignoraban la qualidad de la herida, morian sin duda, los que se hallaban tocados de sus saetas". Men were dying of an injury that was survivable if you knew what it was.
The remedy came from the other side, and the chronicle says so in plain words: "porque uno de los barbaros, que se reduxo, y cobró amor à los nuestros, mostrò una raiz, que llamamos oy la contrahierba de Julimes, la qual se amasa, y unta en la parte herida, y quita la actividad al veneno con increible eficacia". The transfer is one-directional and named as such — an Indian who had come into the missions showed the root, and the Spaniards adopted it and gave it the name of the place. The corpus records that the informant is unnamed in the source.
The attribution in the same sentence is not to that man. The clause immediately before the disclosure reads "pero por la Divina misericordia se ha descubierto el remedio à tanto daño". The chronicle prints the fact and the credit in the same breath and gives the credit elsewhere; that both are on the page is why the fact can be trusted.
The remedy spread and was found again. The chronicle adds that it "es ya tan comun, que se ha descubierto tambien en el Armadillo" — a second locality yielding the same plant, so that the antidote was by 1737 in general use in the province and no longer dependent on Julimes. It also states the limit of the cure without softening it: "si la herida no es por su naturaleza de muerte, escapan todos con el remedio". A wound mortal in itself is still mortal.
A second remedy on the same page is recorded without any transfer at all, as a practice the chronicler finds barbarous and reports anyway: when they are heavy and out of sorts, they crush between stones the pencas of the maguey, "que en Andalucia se llama pita", and rub the whole body with it, "teniendo por medicina, lo que para los demas hombres es terrible penitencia, porque el zumo de esta planta, apenas cae en el cuerpo, quando excita grandissimo escozòr, y cantidad de granos; pero para sus duras carnes es saludable lenitivo". The observation is precise about the irritant effect and dismissive about the people.
What the chronicle refuses to record is on the same page and is the strongest reason to treat it as a partial witness. The paragraph ends: "No refiero otros increibles abusos de estos miserables barbaros, por inusitados, è indignos, de que se haga relacion de ellos." Whatever further pharmacological or ritual knowledge Arlegui had, he declined to print it as unworthy of relation. The gap in the record is the chronicler's choice and he states that it is.
A comparable failure is printed thirty pages later, which is what keeps the page 153 success from reading as a fable. At page 182 the chronicle describes those bitten by vipers seizing the snake and crushing all its bones with their teeth, "juzgando, que por este medio no moriran de la mordedura, pero à su pesar mueren muchos con la eficacia del veneno, sin que les valga el abuso". The same observer who reports a remedy that works reports one that does not, and says which is which.
The limits of this entry. Everything above is read from pages 153 and 182 and the tabla at PT9 of the Mexico printing of 1737. The chronicle is an order history written to celebrate its own province and its author is not a physician; his identification of a root by a place name is not a botanical determination, and this corpus makes none. Nothing here establishes which plant the contrahierba de Julimes was, which plant the arrow poison was, whether the antidote had any pharmacological action, how many died in 1690, or whether the remedy reached the Protomedicato or any printed materia medica. A modern identification would need the botanical literature, which was not reachable for this entry, and it is not asserted from a chronicle.