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Back in early America, the slaves who worked the plantations held cotton in very high prestige. To them, it was a source of
signs,conjuring and folk medicene. This was based on the belief that the plants themselves held spirits of the dead.
When
the plants were still green, spirits haunted the plants,but, when the crop ripened the spirits emerged to haunt people and
animals. Continuing even after the gleaning of the fields.
For example,a story goes that one cold December night after
a heavy snowstorm some horses were in a cotton field when the ghosts of long dead indians came and mounted them. The very
next morning the horses were all found dead;they had been ridden to death. This tale may reflect real life observation for
cotton contains a poison from which many an animal has died, gasping, a bloody froth at the mouth, as if it were 'run' to
death.
The poison, a yellow pigment called gossypol, is present especially in the seed and sometimes in toxic quanities
in processed cottonseed used in livestock feeds. This same poison used in lesser quanities was used as a medicine.
Cotton
was chewed for a toothache remedy and a preperation made from it was applied locally to treat headaches- a use still practiced
today in India, cotton's original homeland, from whence the plant was then introduced to Africa in antiquty,long before Europeans
had ever seen or heard of it.
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