Tarahumara Medicine (Osha and the Plants of Mexico's Running People)

Tarahumara medicine is the plant knowledge of the Rarámuri (Tarahumara), the Indigenous people of the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua, Northern Mexico. Most people find them through Christopher McDougall's 2009 book Born to Run, which made them famous for running long distances in thin sandals. Their medicine gets less attention, but it is well recorded. Native Seeds/SEARCH counts 294 plant species the Tarahumara gather for medicinal use. One of the best known is a mountain root they call wasia, which the rest of the world knows as osha.

Who are the Tarahumara?

The Rarámuri live in the canyons and high pine country of the Sierra Madre Occidental, around the Copper Canyon system in southwestern Chihuahua, with smaller numbers in Durango and Sonora. They moved deeper into the sierra after Spanish colonists arrived in the 16th century, and many families still farm small plots of corn and beans on steep slopes.

Population estimates vary. Figures from 2006 put the Rarámuri at between 50,000 and 70,000 people. "Tarahumara" is the Spanish version of the name. Early ethnographers, including the Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz, translated Rarámuri as "runners on foot" or "those who run fast", though not every scholar agrees with that reading.

Running is part of community life. In rarájipari, the men's ball race, teams kick a carved wooden ball ahead of them in relays across the mountains. Women run their own races, tossing a hoop along with a stick. A race can last from a few hours to a couple of days without a break.

What do the Tarahumara eat?

Corn and beans, mostly. When researchers María Cerqueira, Martha Fry and William Connor took dietary histories from 372 Tarahumara adults and children in 1973 and 1974, they described a diet "composed primarily of beans and corn", low in fat and cholesterol. Their results ran in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1979. Squash, greens and chili fill out the plate. Meat makes up a small share, often fish, chicken or squirrel, with goats and cattle kept for ceremonies.

The corn foods have names you may have seen on running forums:

• Pinole, toasted ground corn stirred into water or packed for long trips
• Tortillas, tamales and atole (a warm corn drink)
• Iskiate, chia seeds soaked in water, often with lime and a little sweetener, the drink McDougall made famous
• Batári, or tesgüino, a fermented corn drink shared at gatherings and festivals

The chia is a local wild species, Salvia tiliaefolia. Native Seeds/SEARCH, which keeps seed collected at Cerocahui in 1983, notes that Tarahumara runners credit part of their endurance to it. Campbell Pennington's 1963 book The Tarahumar of Mexico is still the standard account of how these foods are grown and prepared.

How Tarahumara medicine works in practice

Rarámuri curing sits inside ceremony. Healers diagnose illness, chanters lead the rhythm at curing gatherings, and plants are part of both. The fullest modern record is Tarahumara Medicine: Ethnobotany and Healing among the Rarámuri of Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015) by Fructuoso Irigoyen-Rascón, a physician who spent a decade in Tarahumara communities and learned the language. It is the book people mean when they search "tarahumara medicine book".

Ethnobotanist Robert Bye studied the overlap between Rarámuri plants and city markets. His 1986 paper in Economic Botany, "Medicinal plants of the Sierra Madre", looked at 47 medicinal plants from the Sierra Madre Occidental sold in Chihuahua's markets. About three-fifths were used the same way by the Tarahumara and by urban Mexicans. Bye read that agreement between two cultures with different ideas about illness as a sign the plants earned their place, and as a pointer for future research.

Osha, the root the Rarámuri call wasia

Osha (Ligusticum porteri) is a tall member of the carrot and parsley family that grows at roughly 1,500 to 3,500 metres. Its range runs through the Sierra Madre into Chihuahua and Sonora, and it also grows in high mountains further north. The Rarámuri call it wasia and also use the Spanish name chuchupate.

Bye recorded that the Rarámuri drink a tea of the root for stomach complaints, headaches and fever. Irigoyen-Rascón adds uses beyond the cup. Families carried a piece of root to keep snakes away, and tied one at a newborn's neck as protection. Natasha Myhal's 2017 thesis at the University of Kansas gathers these accounts alongside the plant's history among the Diné, Zuni and Lakota, whose name for it, mato tapejuta, means bear medicine.

The bear name comes from the animals themselves. Bears have been seen digging the root after hibernation, chewing it and rubbing the paste into their fur.

The University of Texas at El Paso study

In 2008 Oscar Beltran, a researcher at the University of Texas at El Paso, tested three plants used in Northern Mexico against the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. His thesis describes osha, under its local name chuchupaste, as a plant the Tarahumara use against TB and other chest illnesses. In the lab, osha extract stopped more than half the growth of the bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.

Bear Root is the same plant, in a dropper bottle

Bear Root is Mara's osha root tincture, made from Ligusticum porteri, a mountain plant of Northern Mexico. It is the plant the Rarámuri call wasia, extracted into liquid. If you have read about osha under several names, our page on whether bear root and osha root are the same plant sorts them out.

The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. Most people take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into a morning tea, a water bottle before a trail run, or a smoothie. At that rate a 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.

Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture

50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.

Add to bag

The extract is the practical way to keep osha in your day. Wild osha looks a lot like poison hemlock, so digging your own is a job for experts, and many plants are over ten years old by the time the root is lifted. A tincture is measured by the dropper and keeps without drying out. Bear Root sits in dark Miron glass, which blocks light and keeps the extract stable from the first dropper to the last. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, and Miron is the gold standard.

For the full story of the plant, from where it grows to how it has been used across North America, read our complete guide to osha root.

Bear Root considerations

Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

What is Rarámuri medicine?

Rarámuri medicine is the same thing as Tarahumara medicine: the plant remedies and curing ceremonies of the Rarámuri people of Chihuahua. Native Seeds/SEARCH puts the number of medicinal plants they gather at 294 species.

Is there a book on Tarahumara medicine?

Yes. Tarahumara Medicine: Ethnobotany and Healing among the Rarámuri of Mexico by Fructuoso Irigoyen-Rascón, with Alfonso Paredes, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press and runs to 418 pages.

Is chuchupate the same as osha?

Yes. Chuchupate is a Spanish name for osha (Ligusticum porteri), and the Rarámuri use it alongside their own word, wasia.

What do the Tarahumara drink when they run?

Pinole stirred into water and iskiate, a chia seed drink, are the two McDougall describes in Born to Run.