Father of Modern Ethnobotany

RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES: FATHER OF MODERN ETHNOBOTANY

from The Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom

Richard Schultes was the father of modern ethnobotany, the study of the use of plants by native cultures such as the Amazonian Indians, among whom he lived in the 1940s.

He was also the leading authority on peyote, ayahuasca and other hallucinogenic plants, and his research came to influence William Burroughs, Aldous Huxley and the drug culture of the 1960s.



Schultes was regarded as the last of the great plant explorers in the tradition of William Dampier and Alexander von Humboldt. Clad in a pith helmet, for much of the 1940s and 1950s he navigated the tributaries of the Amazon in a portable aluminum canoe, relying on the hospitality of local Indians.

He documented the use by them of more then 2,000 medicinal plants, and gathered some 24,000 specimens. He also gave his name to 120 species, as well as to 2.2 million acres of rain forest protected by the Colombian government. Schultes was among the first to chart the growing threat to the eco-culture of the Amazon.

The hallmark of his work was his sympathy and sensitivity to the ways of life he encountered. He happily chewed coca powder with tribesmen, and treated the often fearsome-looking people he met with disarming courtesy. He never carried a firearm, “I do not believe in hostile Indians,” he said. “All that is required to bring out their gentlemanliness is reciprocal gentlemanliness.”

His research into plants that produce hallucinogens brought his scientific works an underground following in the 1960s, and he met both Burroughs and Timothy Leary. He afforded neither much respect. Schultes chided the latter for misspelling the Latin names of plants, and when Burroughs describes a psychedelic trip as an earth-shattering experience, his response was: “that’s funny, Bill, all I saw were colors.”

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Schultes maintained that contrary to popular conception, the Indians were eager to share their medical secrets. But, he warned in 1994: "The Indian people and their knowledge are disappearing even faster than the plants themselves."

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