Bad Medicine!

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Hi Guys!

It’s your pal, Andrew the Bee, again!  I gotta tell you that I’ve always admired the American Indians!  They were great hunters, great fighters, and they knew all kinds of stuff!  Man, they could really live off the land – Every animal, every plant – they got the most out of it! 

 

Healy & Bigelow, The New Kickapoo Doctor, c. 1890

 

Pioneers and settlers learned that first-hand.  Out on the frontier, there weren’t too many doctors around, so the Indians sometimes shared their knowledge of medicine!  To the palefaces, Indian cures and remedies were mysterious, but they sure as heck worked! 

People back East heard about ‘em and you can bet they wanted Indian medicine for themselves!  Naturally, there were plenty of Yankee doctors who were happy to put it in bottles and sell it!  Of course the folks who bought the stuff had no way of tellin’ if it was the real deal or not, but they didn’t ask too many questions.  If it had the word “Indian” on the label, then it must have been good!  

 

Pawnee Bitters, Pawnee Indian Medicine Co., San Francisco, c. 1895.  In the convenient whiskey flask shape.  Because truth in advertising was important to these guys.

 

Pretty soon, quacks everywhere realized that Indians made for some great advertising!  They came up with all these stories about how bold white men and half-breeds like  Texas Charley Bigelow and Donald McKay won “Ka-Ton-Ka,” “Sagwa,” "Too-Re," and other weird-sounding cure-alls!   

 

"Texas Charley" Bigelow of Healy & Bigelow.  These guys got Buffalo Bill Cody to make up some bullshit about the Indians actually making and using "Sagwa."*

 

  

Or how brave Indian Princesses like Winona of the Onondagas obtained the formula for Austen’s Oswego Bitters from an evil shaman!  Who, uh, happens to be her mother...

 

Winona gathering ingredients for high-octane "medicine," c. 1885.

 

Or how modern-day Pocahontases like Uanita, the daughter of Chief Unawanga, shared the secret of Swift’s Specific with tarty-looking white boys!  The better the story, the better the medicine, right?

 

"I say, Uanita, are you certain that this pretty flower will cure my sniffles?"  C. 1885.

 

But it didn’t stop there!  Some quacks went all-out and brought in real Indians to push whatever snake oil they were peddling!  Usually they’d just get a few of them, but Healy and Bigelow (as in “Texas Charley”), whipped up a whole village, which they installed on top of their “winter quarters” in New York City.   Now that must have been a sight to see!  

 

Healy & Bigelow "Wigwam," New York City, c. 1887. 

 

These guys and plenty of others would hit the road with their Indian medicine shows, which were part cultural experience, part circus, and all infomercial!  Heh, I bet no one left without at least one bottle of something or other!  It seemed like the Indians had a cure for just about everything, too.  Just check out this typical product roster from the Oregon Indian Medicine Company:

 

Something for everyone!  The Oregon Indian Medicine Co., Corry, PA, 1891.

 

You’ve got stuff for colds, coughs, worms, tuberculosis, you name it!  Hey, I bet you’re wondering about that "Warm Spring Indian Moc-Ci-Tong” that costs a whopping ten dollars a bottle!  Well, that was a special concoction for "nervous debility," or to put it in modern terms, erectile dysfunction!  Most dudes would pay anything to get their Johnsons to stand up straight again and let's face it, the Oregon Indian Medicine Company had sufferers by the balls!  Funny thing is, they marketed Moc-Ci-Tong to women, too...

Sounds like heap bad medicine if you ask me.  See you later!  

 

*  https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-kickapoo-indian-medicine-company-of-new-haven-entertains-the-masses-but-doesnt-cure-them/
 

 


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