According to Edible & Medicianal Plants of the Rockies a berry tea has been used to prevent pregnancy and also as a hunger suppressant. Medicinal uses include the ubiquitous cure for a cold and other chest aliments, as a digestive aid, and for inflammation. Edible & Medicinal Plants of the Rockies (Kershaw, 2000) includes an easy recipe for making a Tricky Mary, a virgin Bloody Mary in which you allow juniper berries to flavor tomato juice. One of the best known uses for juniper berries is in making gin. In Europe they are used to flavor German sauerkraut and Swedish pickles, as well as to cut the gaminess of venison and other meats. Of course, there were numerous uses of the berries as both food and medicine, but not only in Native American cuisine. Giving berries as gifts conferred honor on the recipient. Mythology says that juniper boughs have been used to ward off devils and witches, while dreaming of the berries had symbolic meaning. One source mentions that the wood is used in making pencils. Dyes can be made from the roots and berries. An ingenious way of producing a hole in the berry was to allow ants to eat out the sweet inner core.
The berries, which are actually the seed cones of the plant, could be dried and strung for necklaces. It may also have been a dandruff deterrent. The boughs were used to line sweat lodges, and a few tribes bathed their horses in water steeped with juniper to give their coats a high sheen. The Cheyenne were said to prize the wood for flutes. Rocky Mountain Juniper branches were used for purification, the red colored wood for lance shafts and bows.
The junipers, often mistakenly called cedars, were used by many Native American tribes. The fourth, Juniperus communis is a low-spreading shrub.
Four species are also native to Colorado, three of which are marked in the park. Juniperus is the largest of the genus in family Cupressaceae and consists of at least 55 species.
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