Rush and his colleagues, whose writings characterized Native medicine as nothing more than chicanery, spawned stereotypes of Indian medicine as ‘bizarre superstition.’ Bound by his own beliefs in the superiority of “civilized” society, Rush was incapable of recognizing the depth and breadth of Native medicine, even as he remarked on the general lack of illness among Natives, saying that “fevers constitute the only diseases among the Indians.”
Rush’s comments were bolstered by the apparent ineffectiveness of many New World plants. Few examples of what these physicians considered effective medicine were ultimately collected and their impact on European medical practice was negligible. Reasons for this situation can be attributed to a number of causes, among them the fact that the medicine was collected far from population centers and trading ports, was insufficiently preserved for long sea voyages, and in some cases was adulterated to make the product cheaper. Also, the remedies needed to be adapted to an entirely different system of disease and drug classifications.
Resurgent Interest in Native Medicine
While European and American interest in Native medicine waned significantly during the eighteenth century, the wars late in that century and early in 1800s in American and Europe resulted in a severely disrupted economy, affecting American access to European medicines and medical practitioners. The impact on transcontinental trade appears to have focused greater attention on Indian medicine within the bounds of America. Anti-British sentiment during this time helped transform American identity as well. In the spirit of American independence, what could be decidedly less British than colonials identifying with Native Americans?
In addition to changing social attitudes in America, there may have been practical considerations as well. The late 1700s was still a formative, if not primitive, period in American medicine. One source estimates that in 1775 there were 3,500 physicians (only 400 with a medical degree) serving a colonial population of three million, and most practitioners had minimal equipment or knowledge to help them identify and treat various diseases. With limited access to European-trained physicians, Americans placed new value on home remedies and self treatment. In spite of the arguments presented by Rush, there appears to have been a notable, post-Revolutionary shift in American medical literature with greater attention paid to Native American medicine. This is evident in early nineteenth century publications such as Indian Doctor’s Dispensatory (1812), the first U.S. Pharmacopeia (1820), Medical Flora of the United States (1828), and The Indian Physician (1829). This also reflects increasing interaction with Native people as Americans began to open and settle the western frontier during the 1900s. The frontier experience no doubt contributed significantly to the interaction between Indians and the “new” Americans, who as their “own doctors” may have been keen to adopt and exchange information regarding medicines. In fact, at the request of President Jefferson, Rush prepared a list of questions to be asked of the Indians encountered during the Lewis and Clark expedition, including the nature of their remedies.
The Indian Doctor
By the final quarter of the eighteenth century, many Natives in southern New England had converted to Christianity and attained a relatively sedentary lifestyle, and were viewed as “civilized.” Despite this, some relied on treatment through traditional healing practices while others were treated by Euro-American physicians. Through the 1800s, most known documentation suggests an increasing reliance by Natives on Euro-American medicine. This, however, may also be the product of documentary bias. Connecticut Indian overseer’s records offer a one-sided account, showing that many tribal members were being treated for illnesses and prescribed medicine by local physicians.
Though the two Pequot communities in southeastern Connecticut may have voluntarily terminated their pauwau tradition in 1675, the practice and use of traditional medicine persisted for about 125 years without being noticed or recorded in any written record. Noyes Holmes, a white man reflecting back on his childhood living in the household of a North Stonington physician circa 1800 remarked, “How defective must be the skill and how far short must be the healing power from what many image: when the scientific can not cure a humor, that an old Indian squaw can cure with a few applications of cat’s grease and Indian Posey. For such was my case.” The unidentified Indian woman was likely a member or resident of the nearby Mashantucket or Eastern Pequot communities.
The Rev. William Apes described in his accounts of Christian conversion, “The Experience of Sally George,” a Mashantucket Pequot woman who died at age 45 in 1824. Among the details of her life he conveyed that she was “skilled in doctoring the sick, and was useful wherever she went.”
Additional nineteenth century accounts from the southern New England area suggest that some members of the Native community maintained a strong tradition of herbal knowledge. Amasa Lawrence, a Pequot living at Mashantucket between 1833 and 1879, was well known throughout New England, as the “Medicine Man” who treated illness with roots, herbs and faith in the Great Spirit, according to an account in The Westerly Sun of July 9, 1934. In a Civil War pension record, his son-in-law testified that:
“I employed no doctor but used the same things that I did while in the hospittle (sic) such as simple [illegible word] and cold water bathes until 1869 I married my 2nd wife the daughter of a kind of an indian doctor and then he took to treating me for the piles which I am now suffering from. He used hurbs (sic) and barks and I still use the same stuff. That indian dr whose name was Amasa Lawrence he died a year ago last March and I have had no doctor since.”
Though a direct connection has yet to be established, the herbal traditions of the Indian doctor appear to have emerged to a certain extent from those of the pauwau. By most accounts, nineteenth century descriptions of the Indian doctor in southern New England closely resemble those early records of the pauwau, including specialized knowledge of plants, miraculous cures, secret remedies, and association with prayer to the Great Spirit.
“Salvage Anthropology?”
The developing field of American anthropology in the late 1800s and the establishment of government institutions such as the Bureau of American Ethnology prompted a generation of young anthropologists to “salvage” the lifeways of the “vanishing Indian race.” Like earlier periods in the southern New England region, few examples of nineteenth century Native medicine survived. In 1915, anthropologist Frank Speck, relying on his young Mohegan protégé Gladys Tantaquidgeon, was able to collect and publish an extensive list of traditional Mohegan medicine in “Medicinal Practices of the Northeastern Algonquians.” So, since Rev. Sampson Occom’s treatise on Indian Medicine “Herbs and Roots” in 1756 until Speck’s work there is a gap of nearly 160 years in the published record of Native medicine. How does one explain the continued presence such a rich body of information through that period without it being documented in print?
This can probably be attributed to three main factors: First, the continued secrecy of the individuals who controlled this information and transferred it to subsequent generations. Second, while there was notable interest in the mystique of the Indian doctor, there was a broad lack of recognition and interest in the regional Native communities during the 1800s, which by all written accounts were marred by the “Last of the Mohicans” syndrome. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Tantaquidgeon, like Samson Occom, was uniquely positioned to collect information from elder members of her own community. Later, in 1939, anthropologist Eva Butler recorded a similar list of plant uses among members of the Pequot community.
A comparison of the presence and use of native and introduced species for medicinal purposes among the works of Occom, Tantaquidgeon, and Butler, suggests an interesting pattern. In all three works, covering a span of nearly 200 years and among three different Native communities, approximately 53-57 percent of the plants used medicinally were native, 37-40 percent were introduced plants and 5-8 percent are not able to be determined. This suggests that Natives continued to maintain a balance of traditional uses as well as a continuing experimentation and incorporation of new plants into their medicinal repertoire.
So, whose medicine is it? The transformation of Native medicine from the seventeenth century “devil-worshipping” pauwau to the twentieth century, European influenced “folk medicine” appears, superficially, to be quite radical, and might suggest to some that the Natives just adopted European medicine or medicinal lore. Documentation from the intervening centuries, albeit limited and infrequent, offers a different perspective on this transformation, one that is much more gradual in nature and every bit within the control of the Native community. Euro-American physicians had dismissed Native medicine in the late seventeenth century as inaccessible and, in the course of the following century, sealed its fate in myth and quackery. In spite of all the documentary gaps and stereotypes, it appears that many of these traditions were steadfastly maintained by and guarded within the Native community.
