Ginseng, China, and the Transformation of the Ohio Valley, 1783–1840

It may have been growing among the old-growth chestnuts on the side of Little Mountain. Or perhaps it had matured under the butternut trees on the banks of Turkey Creek. Somewhere near the brand-new hamlet of Union in the western Virginia backcountry in October of 1783, a Scots-Irishman named William Ewing spotted a small plant among the deep green understory. He saw the cluster of bright red berries perched atop a peduncle that protruded from the center of the twenty-inch-high herb. He counted the leaves. It had four. His heart beat a little faster. It probably had a large root. Ewing knew this root by itself could provide him with a knife, a pair of spectacles, a pound of gunpowder, a bushel of salt, or maybe a pint of rum.¹

Wild ginseng (2012).

OHIO DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

The Iroquois called it garangtoging, or "child's thigh." The Cherokee named it atali-guli, "the mountain climber," and sometimes, Yunwi Usdi, "the little man." The Tartars, living in the northern Chinese province of Tartar, called it Orhota, or "queen of the plants," and William Byrd of Virginia referred to it as the "plant of life." Linnaean taxonomists would later label it Panax quinquefolius, but Ewing knew it as "sang," a shortening of the word "ginseng," derived from the Mandarin jen-shen. Indeed, it was a world-famous plant. East Asian peoples revered ginseng as a virtual panacea. Their belief that it could effectively treat a wide variety of ailments and imbalances and their willingness to pay a premium for it made it one of the world's most sought-after medicinal herbs.²

Ewing had only one month before ginseng disappeared for the season. A deciduous perennial, it could grow for dozens, if not hundreds, of years, but its top—that is, everything but the root and rhizome—died back every year after the first frost. He likely knew that it grew in cool, moist deciduous forests, and although it could be found in the piedmont, it seems to have always preferred the mountains, or what one mid-eighteenth-century observer called "the hills that lie far from the sea." As early as the 1730s, colonists recognized the plant's tendency to grow on the "north sides of mountains and very high hills, that are shaded with trees." Ewing also likely knew that ginseng grew in patches, sometimes so dense that a digger could haul one thousand pounds of roots out of one patch. When he found one plant, there were probably hundreds more nearby. It was like treasure-hunting.³

Yearling ginseng plant in July, yearling root in October, and two-year-old root. Ginseng: Its Cultivation, Harvesting, Marketing and Market Value, with a Short Account of Its History and Botany (Orange Judd Company, 1903).

FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Ewing uprooted the full ginseng plant from the earth, cut off the leaves and stem, and placed the gnarly root in a small sack, where it joined hundreds of its kinsmen. Ewing took 186 pounds of roots to James Alexander's trading post in Union, where he exchanged them for, among other things, one pound of gunpowder, a hat, a pint of rum, and two saddles. At the end of the season, as the weather turned bitter cold, Alexander loaded Ewing's roots with thousands of others and hauled them in a covered wagon to Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley. There is a good chance that Dr. Robert Johnston, who had purchased some forty thousand pounds of ginseng there in the summer and fall of 1783, purchased them in Staunton, for close to four shillings a pound. If they had ended up in Johnson's hands, they would have been taken to Philadelphia, then up the coast to New York where more than fifty thousand pounds of other ginseng roots dug from the Virginia and Pennsylvania backcountry were loaded on the Empress of China. These roots would prove crucial in the first...