Before and Beyond the New Age: Historical Appropriation of Native American Medicine and Spirituality / Antes Y Más Allá De La Nueva Era: Apropiación Histórica De La Medicina Y La Espiritualidad De Los Nativos Americanos

Abstract

The appropriation of spiritual and medical practices has become a significant topic among scholars and practitioners of Native American religions. Scholars often focus on New Age religion as the primary realm in which the commodification and appropriation of Indigenous religious beliefs, practices, and objects has occurred. Since the 1960s, practitioners of New Age religion have drawn on an eclectic array of spiritual practices, including those originating in Native American communities, for inspiration. Yet the commodification and appropriation of Native American practices began well before the dawning of the New Age. This article examines "Indian medicine companies," US-based patent medicine companies that developed and marketed Native American-themed medicinal products to the American public in the late nineteenth century. Examining facets of material culture produced by Indian medicine companies reveals the extent to which these business enterprises, in addition to peddling remedies, sold racialized narratives about Native American religion, culture, and history.

Resumen

La apropiación de prácticas espirituales y médicas se ha convertido en un tema importante entre los estudiosos y practicantes de las religiones indígenas americanas. Los estudiosos suelen centrarse en la religión de la Nueva Era como el principal ámbito en el que se ha producido la mercantilización y apropiación de creencias, prácticas y objetos religiosos indígenas. Desde la década de 1960, los practicantes de la religión de la Nueva Era se han inspirado en una variedad ecléctica de prácticas espirituales, incluidas las originarias de las comunidades indígenas americanas. Sin embargo, la mercantilización y apropiación de las prácticas de los nativos americanos comenzó mucho antes de los albores de la Nueva Era. Este artículo examina las "Indian medicine companies", empresas de patentes médicas con sede en Estados Unidos que desarrollaron y comercializaron productos medicinales de temática indígena para el público estadounidense a finales del siglo XIX. El examen de las facetas de la cultura material producida por las compañías de medicina india revela hasta qué punto estas empresas comerciales, además de vender remedios, vendían narrativas racializadas sobre la religión, la cultura y la historia de los nativos americanos.

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On June 10, 1993, over five hundred representatives attending the fifth Lakota Summit passed the "Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality."¹ This document, penned by three spiritual leaders and affirmed by members from over forty discrete Siouan communities, described ongoing instances of "spiritual exploitation." In strong words, the authors of the Declaration decried a long process of "having [their] most precious Lakota ceremonies and spiritual practices desecrated, mocked and abused by non-Indian 'wannabes,' hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers and self-styled 'New Age shamans' and their followers."² In addition, the Declaration denounced "plastic shamans," members of Lakota cultural communities who shared knowledge with outsiders for profit, without the authorization of the community of Lakota spiritual leaders.

The New Age community was a primary target of the Declaration. The authors took issue with ongoing New Age commodification and appropriation of Lakota spiritual traditions, highlighting the damage and insult caused by the "expropriation and commercialization" of traditional practices. This occurred through the creation of imitation objects and the production of books, videos, classes, and other materials that purported to train non-Native individuals in the spiritual ways of the community. The authors of the declaration "[declared] war against all persons who persist in exploiting, abusing, and misrepresenting the sacred traditions and spiritual practices of [their] Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people," calling on community members on reservations and in urban areas to resist instances of exploitation through "whatever specific tactics are necessary and sufficient."³

Lakota spirituality has not been the only target. The appropriation of spiritual and medical practices has become a significant topic among scholars and practitioners of many Native American religions. These discussions often focus on New Age religion as the primary realm in which the commodification and appropriation of Indigenous religious beliefs, practices, and objects has occurred.⁴ Indeed, since the 1960s, practitioners of New Age religion have drawn on an eclectic array of spiritual practices, including those originating in Asian and Indigenous communities, for inspiration.⁵ Often, Indigenous and Asian traditions are intermingled in these practices.⁶ Yet despite the swell in popularity of these practices in the middle of the twentieth century, the commodification and appropriation of Native American practices began well before the dawning of the New Age. Furthermore, focusing on New Agers—a diffuse set of individuals with few commonalities except an unorthodox personal approach to spirituality⁷—risks disregarding the widespread, mainstream appropriation of Indigenous religions that has occurred via mass consumption.⁸

This article contributes to discourse on cultural and spiritual appropriation by examining "Indian medicine companies," US-based patent medicine companies that developed and marketed Native American-themed medicinal products to the American public in the late nineteenth century. Before the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which mandated the systematic regulation of pharmaceuticals, many Euro-Americans sought out "Indian medicines" as alternatives to harsh biomedical remedies.⁹ Re-branded as commodities rather than components of religious traditions, "Indian medicines" appealed to consumers through their "all-natural" allure. Examining facets of material culture produced by Indian medicine companies reveals a significant feature of the power dynamics at play in non-Native commodification of Indigenous ideas and practices: in addition to peddling remedies, these business enterprises also sold racialized narratives about Native American religion, culture, and history to consumers.

This article demonstrates that the themes of cultural commodification and appropriation—and the attendant issues of race, colonialism, and political power—are pertinent in discussions about American religion, spirituality, and healing traditions. Instances of historical appropriation, in eras marked by overt state-sponsored attacks on Indigenous medicine and spirituality, provide a necessary contextual backdrop for subsequent debates about the commodification of Native American religions and healing practices.

In what follows, I first offer an overview of debates about the appropriation of religion and culture, with particular reference to the appropriation of Indigenous religious practices. I then discuss the historical phenomenon of medicine companies that appropriated representations of Native Americans to sell their products. I focus on the Kickapoo Indian Medicine company, one of the most famous of its kind. Founded by two Euro-American men, the company produced numerous patent medicines, which they marketed to white consumers throughout the US using a variety of techniques. Their advertising materials promoted ideas about Native American culture, spirituality, and medicine at the same time that they promoted products. The final section describes how this company's portrayals of Native American life were at odds with the medical realities facing Native Americans of the day. I conclude with a critical analysis of two primary narratives that the Kickapoo Indian Medicine company's printed materials promoted: the cultural and medical supersession of Euro-Americans over Native Americans and the idea that Native people fundamentally wished to sacrifice their knowledge for non-Natives. These narratives justified the ongoing commodification and non-Native appropriation of Indigenous knowledge and practices. Through widely distributed newspaper advertisements, booklets, and other forms of printed ephemera, the company promoted a narrative of Native American cultural decline while advocating for mainstream, Euro-American use of "Indian" medical practices.¹⁰

Examining these historical instances of cultural appropriation offers a useful backdrop for understanding more recent forms of appropriation that developed over the course of the twentieth century, including New Age appropriation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we can more easily see the racialized power dynamics at play in the mass consumption of so-called Indian remedies. The popularity of Indian patent medicines among non-Natives in the late nineteenth century stands in stark contrast to the federal government's attacks on traditional Native American medicinal practices during the same era. Ironically, during the same period in which Indian patent remedies became popular among Euro-Americans, federal regulations greatly restricted traditional Indigenous spiritual and medical practices. US Indian agents sought to limit the influence of Native healers and spiritual leaders on reservations, and government physicians pressured Native Americans to give up longstanding healing traditions in favor of bio-medical treatments administered by federal agents.¹¹ In promoting the health of non-Native consumers over Native communities, this company served as an ideological predecessor to later enterprises that would capitalize on Indigenous spirituality. Demonstrating how the narratives promoted by Indian medicine companies were at odds with the experiences of Native Americans during the same era, the historical example of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company underscores and amplifies a primary concern of Indigenous religious practitioners with regard to spiritual and cultural appropriation: the power of products to fuel cultural misunderstanding.

DEBATES OVER RELIGIOUS BORROWING AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

Religious traditions are always changing. Hybrid religious practices reflect the reality that practitioners may adopt new ideas when they encounter other cultures.¹² In what is today the United States, members of many cultural groups have long histories of encounter and intermixing through which they have shared goods, ideas, and practices. These forms of contact have naturally produced new forms of cultural expression. Cultural borrowing and exchange are common among Indigenous communities. For example, many Native communities throughout North America have adopted and adapted sweat lodge practices originating among Plains communities.¹³ Many practitioners of New Age religion see themselves as engaging in genuine spiritual exploration based on admiration and appreciation.¹⁴

Some scholars have noted that, at some point, cultural and religious borrowing becomes more insidious, particularly through appropriation. No scholarly consensus exists on when this line is crossed, but often borrowing becomes problematic when unequal power dynamics are at play. In her book on religious appropriation, Liz Bucar suggests that the term appropriation applies "to cases where individuals or entities of the dominant culture take from the culture of marginalized communities, resulting in some harm or offense."¹⁵ In some cases, religious borrowing can be dangerous or even deadly for religious outsiders. In 2009, for example, the New Age leader James Arthur Ray hosted a "spiritual warrior retreat" weekend that featured a sweat lodge ritual derived from Plains Indian practices. A botched ritual in the poorly constructed lodge resulted in the death of two of the participants.¹⁶

Beyond the harm that can befall non-Native participants in imitation rituals, scholars and practitioners are particularly concerned about the ways that these New Age practices constitute an ongoing form and feature of colonialism. Their primary concerns revolve around the dissemination of sacred or secret tribal information and the romanticization of Native people.¹⁷ Scholars have likened cultural appropriation to gendered and sexual violence. In this line of argument, the perpetrator, an appropriator, extracts the resource of knowledge from the target and uses this knowledge for the perpetrator's gain only, against the wishes of the target and at the target's loss.¹⁸

One of the key concerns about cultural appropriation stems from a pronounced difference in political power and resources that differentiates Indigenous communities from the non-Native communities who turn to them for inspiration. As the "Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality" states, the larger problem with appropriation is the way it creates "a momentous obstacle in the struggle of traditional Lakota people for an adequate public appraisal of the legitimate political, legal and spiritual needs of real Lakota people."¹⁹ Those who commodify and appropriate features of Native American religions create confusion about legitimate practices originating in the community itself, making it more difficult for members of Indigenous spiritual communities to control narratives about the history and purpose of their spiritual traditions. Non-Natives who find Native practices appealing often romanticize Indigenous peoples and trivialize practices that Indigenous people take seriously. The process of commodification results in the obfuscation of histories of violence against Native people as well as current social and economic struggles Native people face.²⁰

Thus, a primary issue in cultural appropriation is control over religious and cultural narratives. In the process of commodifying spirituality, creation necessitates narration. The act of commodifying culture involves shaping narratives about a product and its context. In order for an aspect of tangible or intangible culture to be commodified—turned into a product or appropriated, adopted, adapted, taken out of its context—it must first be packaged. This "packaging" necessarily involves standardizing or fixing the aspect in some way—determining its concrete qualities, substance, and limits. One must actively specify the chapters in a book, the lessons in a spiritual retreat, the size and shape of a ritual object, the exhibitions in a cultural museum. This process also involves the abstraction of commodities from their original cultural context. It requires creators to locate the commodities within the broader cultural milieu and to make an argument about how and why they exist, contributing to particular cultural narratives. Thus, the process of creating spiritual commodities determines more than details of the commodity itself—what the object is and how, why, and by whom it is used. It reflects and contributes to larger ideas about the nature, purpose, history, and future of religious communities.

Taking a longer historical perspective on religious and cultural appropriation helps to illuminate just how the process of cultural appropriation involves the creation of cultural narratives that misrepresent the lived experiences of Native communities. Scholars in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies have demonstrated that non-Natives have long drawn on images of Indians to serve their own purposes.²¹ Native American studies scholar Philip Deloria argues that non-Natives, primarily Euro-Americans, have adopted images and practices of Native Americans for their own benefit since before the founding of the United States.²² Deloria emphatically argues that issues of cultural commodification, imitation, and appropriation must be linked with power structures. He notes that "the ways in which white Americans have used Indianness in creative self-shaping have continued to be pried apart from questions about inequality, the uneven workings of power, and the social settings in which Indians and non-Indians might actually meet."²³ These "uneven workings of power" are especially pronounced in the late nineteenth century. The reality of a long history of appropriative activities should encourage scholars of religion to explore historical predecessors to twentieth-century New Age spiritual appropriation.

These earlier historical practices set an ideological and economic foundation for later forms of commodification. It is true that New Age religion can be linked to cultural appropriation. Many participants in New Age communities view medicine and spirituality as intricately connected, and thus often pursue complementary and alternative medicine.²⁴ However, focusing a discussion of appropriation solely on New Agers can cause scholars to overlook the appropriation that existed before the turn of the twentieth century. In addition, the focus on a small, countercultural New Age movement ignores appropriative products and practices that appealed to a much wider, mainstream American audience. Considering earlier forms of appropriation allows us to see more clearly the inaccurate narratives furthered by Native American-themed products. In the late nineteenth century, descriptions of "Indian" healing practices, which the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company and others used to sell cures, differed from actual Indigenous healing practices of the same era, many of which were connected to religious systems.²⁵ Euro-Americans approved of Native healing and spiritual practices that were created for use by non-Native populations while finding fault with the religious and healing practices of Indigenous people themselves. By contrasting the narratives furthered in Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertisements with the historical record, we may see more plainly how the consumption of imitation Indian remedies fueled misinformation about the lives, practices, and concerns of Native communities. This set the tone for future instances of appropriation, from "New Age" appropriations to the practices of "white possessivism" that scholar of religion Amanda Lucia documents in her recent ethnographic study of spiritual retreats and alternative healing festivals.²⁶

THE KICKAPOO INDIAN MEDICINE COMPANY

John Healy and Charles Bigelow, two Euro-American men, founded the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company in 1881. Previously business associates in other small-scale medicine-selling endeavors, Healy and Bigelow had both participated in various odd jobs that prepared them for sales and entertainment, factors that contributed to the success of their enterprise. Healy had been a minstrel singer, which itself is an appropriative practice, and had spent time selling medicines. Bigelow, originally from Texas, adopted the moniker "Texas Charlie" as a young man and presented himself as a specialist in Indian-style medications. After meeting in 1879, they began to envision a larger, more comprehensive brand and advertising format to sell their products. They turned to an emerging market: patent Indian medicine.²⁷

The appeal to nature was a key element in nineteenth-century healing and religious practices.²⁸ This era brought many developments in approaches to health, personal well-being, and medicine. Prior to the nineteenth century, doctors' usual approaches to sickness and disease often took the form of "heroic medicine." Healthcare professionals believed sicknesses were best confronted by combative tactics. Practices such as bloodletting were thought to remove impurities. Medical doctors often prescribed calomel, a mercury compound with toxic effects. Other mineral compounds had similar results. To the public, wary of the effects of these remedies, these medicines were little more than poisons. In the eyes of many patients, practitioners of this "heroic" brand of medicine, or "regular" medicine, often created as many problems as they solved.²⁹ As a response, in the early nineteenth century, forms of so-called "irregular medicine" became popular alternatives. These "natural" remedies continued to enjoy popularity over the course of the nineteenth century.

In the late nineteenth century, concerns over industrialization led to an increased interest in nature and naturalism in many cultural realms, from literature to medicine. Native Americans represented a model in this return to nature.³⁰ Recognizing the public's interest in alternative medical cures, entrepreneurs and alternative medical practitioners, including Healy and Bigelow, were eager to develop products and services to fulfill this demand.³¹ Many Euro-Americans were especially interested in the medicines that purported to draw on Native American medicinal knowledge.³² Healy and Bigelow developed the concept for the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, which marketed medication allegedly derived from Kickapoo Indians. The creation story of one of their most popular cures, Indian Sagwa, promoted this professed connection between the entrepreneurs and the Kickapoo nation. Recounted in publications such as Life Among the Indians, the story began by relating how Texas Charlie was once on a deathbed in some remote part of the West. A wise Kickapoo healer supposedly treated him with Sagwa, and his health was restored. Afterward, Bigelow claims he managed to persuade the healer to divulge the secret ingredients, which he and Healy generously provided to the public.³³ This creation story parallels narratives that the company promotes in their advertising materials: that Native Americans are happily willing to sacrifice their knowledge for the aid of non-Natives.

In advertisements, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company asserted that their medicine was authentically "Indian." A number of imitation companies were inspired by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. These product spinoffs challenged the sales of Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company medicines, so they placed advertisements that suggested their medications were the only "authentic" Indian remedies:

IMITATION INDIAN REMEDIES

Are far more dangerous than imitation Indians, because the health and life may depend upon the genuineness of the Indian medicine. The success of Kickapoo Indian Remedies has led to Imitation Indian remedies that are Indian in nothing but the name, and are in every way a fraud, and a dangerous deception. There is but one firm genuinely engaged in manufacturing pure Indian remedies, –The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co. at New Haven.³⁴

In addition, they explained to audiences that their shows offered glimpses at "authentic" Indians. One advertisement described that their traveling shows would include "the assistance of a half dozen genuine Kickapoo indians [sic], who give their war-dances and other sports so long in vogue among the red men, making an interesting and pleasant entertainment."³⁵ Thus, though its relations with actual Kickapoo people was minimal, the company marketed what it described as "authentic" Indianness.

In contrast to this story about the origin of their first product, however, Healy and Bigelow evidently knew no Kickapoo people. They apparently thought the name was amusing and completely fabricated the "Sagwa" story. The premise for the company was successful, however. After starting the company in Providence in 1881, they moved company headquarters to Boston, then to New York, and finally to New Haven in 1887.³⁶ Kickapoo Indian medicines became one of the most popular forms of "Indian medicines." These products were stocked in pharmacies and sold via "medicine shows," traveling bazaars that mixed entertainment with advertising.³⁷ The Kickapoo shows included a variety of components, blending education, entertainment, and salesmanship to encourage participants to purchase their wares. Sales strategies in Indian medicine shows developed out of historical forms of persuasive salesmanship: they manipulated the supply of medications, making their wares appear scarce and therefore more valuable, they created an atmosphere in which audiences would be receptive to buying, and they performed demonstrations of the healing powers of the medicines.³⁸ To promote their wares, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertised in newspapers and produced an array of booklets, pamphlets, cards, and other forms of printed materials, which they distributed via medicine shows, mailings, and stores. These materials reveal the narratives the company used to convince consumers to purchase their products.³⁹

Healey and Bigelow intended their products to be accessible to a broad array of consumers. Unlike New Age practices, which typically occupied a countercultural realm, Kickapoo Company remedies were marketed to the mainstream public, and they advertised their wares throughout the United States. They did have local consumers, as gauged by advertisements published in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont. Advertisements appeared in papers in larger cities in the Midwest and Western part of the United States, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Austin, San Francisco, and Portland. They also appeared in smaller local or regional papers throughout the US, including Wisconsin, Idaho, Kansas, Colorado, and North Dakota. Healy and Bieglow's medicines could be purchased anywhere medicines were sold—they were not simply specialty items. While it is impossible to gauge the precise range and number of consumers who purchased these medicines, it is clear through their advertising practices that Kickapoo Company medicines were widely available and intended to be accessible to all—not to a small subset of the population.

One aspect that made Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company remedies attractive to a broad audience was the claim that they improved a great number of ailments. Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, a form of liquid medication and one of the company's most popular remedies, was marketed to cure internal ailments, particularly problems with "vital organs" and blood. Advertisements claimed that it "restores the stomach, liver and kidneys to a state of perfect health; and if these organs are in good condition you need not fear disease [including] Rheumatism, Dyspepsia, Liver complaint, Disease of the Kidneys, Nervous Troubles, Scrofula, Erysipelas and all blood disorders."⁴⁰ While Sagwa cured internal disorders, another famous remedy, Kickapoo Indian Oil, helped ease external ailments. An advertisement in the Minneapolis newspaper The Penny Press claimed that: "The tortures of Rheumatism—Neuralgia—Sciatica—Lumbago—Earache/ Headache—Toothache—Backache—Strains—Sprains—/Cuts—Burns—Bruises—Cholera-Mumps—Colic—Cramps/And all Surface Inflammations/ Yield to Kickapoo Indian Oil instantaneously, and are quickly and effectually cured by its continuous use."⁴¹ The gender-specific Indian Prairie Plant medicine was specifically marketed to those suffering "female troubles." This medicine promised to cure "any derangements of the female organs."⁴² Other medicines included Buffalo Salve, Worm Killer, Cough Cure, and Kickapoo Indian Pills used for the complexion. Appealing to those suffering from many different forms of ailments, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company branded itself as a comprehensive healthcare provider, with specific remedies that would cure a large number of health problems.

In their advertised ability to cure a broad scope of ailments with a few formulas, Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company remedies were presented as veritable miracle cures that would be helpful for members of the American mainstream public. Those who used the drugs often testified to the instantaneous improvements in their conditions, in ways similar to evangelical Christians who testified to moving conversion experiences. During a free give-away of Kickapoo remedies, one article described that, "as hundreds of people can testify who have had occasion to use Kickapoo Indian Oil during the past few days for pains and aches of various degrees of intensity, the effect is almost magical."⁴³ This promise of a "magical" change would have appealed to many people who were dealing with sickness.

In order to substantiate these instances of miraculous healing, advertisements often included personal accounts on the part of individuals who had been cured by one or more Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company remedies. Many advertisements were in the form of articles and appeared in "Arts and Entertainment" or "News" sections as well as advertisement sections. A typical advertisement included a description of a particular patient, explaining their occupation, town of residence, and problems they were suffering. The transcript of a letter sent to the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company often began by describing the ways the person was healed. Features of these letters were similar to conversion narratives, describing the consumer's suffering state before the use of the medicine, their point of conversion to the use of the medicine, and the happy state of their life afterward. Advertisements claiming that "Thousands are living to-day who owe their lives to its use" encouraged the uninitiated to partake in the cures.⁴⁴ In this way, those who had not tried the medicine were evangelized, encouraged to come into the folds of satisfied customers. One advertisement included an appeal that explicitly illustrates the evangelical nature of the cures:

The Kickapoo Indian Remedy Company have the courage of their convictions. They know their remedies will do all that they claim they will. They want every one else to know it too, and in order to accomplish this end they have adopted a plan which will not only prove of advantage to them in the end, but will alleviate no little amount of suffering at this time of year when humanity in general is undergoing more or less pain resulting from rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lumbargo, earaches, toothaches and kindred afflictions that always are prevalent after a severe winter.⁴⁵

Describing a life of suffering before trying their medicines, Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertisements suggested that the medicines could help to make "life worth living."⁴⁶ Rather than simply improving an ailment, advertisements promised the use of Kickapoo medicines would be life-changing. This appeal fit in with a common goal in the nineteenth century to achieve total well-being.⁴⁷

Euro-Americans have long drawn on racialized assumptions about Indigenous communities being essentially tied to nature.⁴⁸ The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company drew on and furthered these ideas. One of the most significant features seen in Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertisements was a claim to the "natural" quality of their remedies. Advertisements entreated those who "feel 'run down' or lack appetite, don't sleep well, have a bad taste in the mouth, [or] pains in any part of the body," to "respond to the cry of nature, and with Kickapoo Indian Sagwa cleanse and fortify [his or her] system and cast off sickness." In this advertisement, Kickapoo Indian Sagwa was described as a "harmless and valuable compound of roots, barks and herbs."⁴⁹ This appeal suggested that what is "natural" is best for one's health. Kickapoo medicines were in this way presented as an alternative to "regular," allopathic remedies.⁵⁰ In fact, implicit, or even explicit, in these advertisements was a case against regular medicine, with its reliance on compounds that induced unpleasant effects in patients. One advertisement suggested that "The best physicians are now beginning to abandon the use of poisonous minerals—alkalies [sic] and acids—realizing that, though temporary relief may be obtained, troubles worse than the original disease are apt to follow."⁵¹ A number of advertisements asserted that Kickapoo Indian Remedies were not made from minerals, like the calomel so popular among "regular" physicians. Kickapoo medicines are frequently presented as a more "natural" alternative to these harsh chemical compounds used by allopathic physicians. A longer passage from an advertisement describes the dangers of regular forms of medicine: "Remember, too, that in taking Kickapoo Indian Sagwa you are not filling your system with mineral poison that 'braces you up' for a while, only to leave you worse off than before. Beware of mineral medicines! They are dangerous! They often kill. Remember, 'Kickapoo Indian Sagwa contains no mineral or other harmful ingredients.'"⁵² Advertisements assured customers that this natural quality ensured the safety of their products, explaining "these medicines are harmless, although powerful in their effect; as they contain no poisonous ingredient of any description."⁵³ To patients familiar with the effects of "heroic" medicine, a less invasive strategy was likely appealing. Setting itself apart from these "regular" forms of medicine, like many other producers of alternative medicinal forms, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company sought to appeal to anyone and everyone who was searching for a cure.

Historians have tracked images of Indians, arguing that the "Noble Savage" stereotype represents a positive image of Native people that non-Natives use to represent ideals of truth, beauty, and a simple life outside the city.⁵⁴ While seemingly positive, these stereotypes furthered racialized assumptions about their inherent connections to nature.⁵⁵ Many of Healy and Bigelow's advertisements exploited this image, explaining that Indians are the ultimate healers due to "their close communion with nature, discovering roots, barks and herbs, the great medicinal properties of which are unquestioned by the highest medical authorities to-day."⁵⁶ Advertisements presented the image of the Indian as emblematic of the alternative health movement. Another advertisement described how

the Indian has ever been given a marvelous Insight Into the hidden secrets of Nature. She has shown to him her pitfalls and has likewise taught him not only to avoid these, but has taught him her own secret ways of restoring health and prolonging life when her laws had been disregarded by them, her children.⁵⁷

This advertisement presents Indians as having direct, instinctive connections to nature. The "secret ways" of natural healing had been forgotten by non-Natives in their rush to industrialize, but through the Indian, non-Natives would be able to reconnect to nature.

At times, the advertisements highlighted the knowledge of Indians, whom the advertisers portrayed as wise in their ability to utilize nature's gifts. One article suggested that "Many of his pale faced brothers have turned to him for his medicines, and have praised the day that they allowed themselves to be advised by the Indian."⁵⁸ These advertisements suggested that respect was due to Indians for their products, and most importantly, for sharing them with non-Natives. Another advertisement suggested that a non-Native man owes not only his own life,

but that of his wife and children, to the Indian's wonderful skill and sagacity. He, like thousands of others who have passed through similar experiences, realize their escape from death, or a life of a miserable invalid, has been due to that greatest of medicines—originated and used for centuries by the Indians, to which they, too, owe their proverbial longevity and perfect health, Kickapoo Indian Sagwa⁵⁹

These advertisements held up the image of the Indian as a positive contributor to health and American society at large.

In addition to Native Americans' skills and knowledge, a common appeal used in Kickapoo Indian Remedies advertisements drew on the idea of Indians as classic models of health. Drawing on stereotypes of Indians as hardier than Euro-Americans by nature—with help from the medicine they use—advertisements suggested that "the health and longevity of the Indian proves the potency of the Indian's medicine. Indian Sagwa keeps him well."⁶⁰ One advertisement encouraged readers to "look at the Indians as examples of health and strength. Consider their long lives. Think of the food they ate and the great exposures they were obliged to undergo and yet sickness never once entered into their lives. The remarkable longevity that they were endowed with is to-day a matter of wonder."⁶¹ Kickapoo Indian remedies allow users to "enjoy the long life which has made the Indian famous."⁶²

Advertisements for gender-specific medical products also emphasized the health of Native Americans. Generally speaking, representations of Indians in American literature and popular media presented Plains Indian men as "typical" Indians; images of women did not appear as commonly.⁶³ The Indians presented in Kickapoo images were generally male except in advertisements for Prairie Plant, their primary product designed specifically for women. Medicines developed for women were common by the time Healy and Bigelow established the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. The most famous female-specific product was Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, which the Pinkham family began selling in 1875 and was marketed as helping with gender-specific ailments from the derangement of organs to fatigue.⁶⁴ The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company utilized the image of Indianness to appeal to this market, portraying Native women as naturally healthier than non-Native women:

The Indian women were proverbially strong, healthy and hearty. Such diseases are as common with women of today were unknown to them. They were worthy, indeed, to be the mothers of a race that has become known to history as possessing lives of great duration free from pain and sickness. The reason was due simply to the then great knowledge of the Indians as how to cure disease by the aid of Nature's remedies.⁶⁵

This advertisement suggested that Native women did not experience the gender-specific "female troubles" that non-Native women encountered. According to the company, "such diseases are as experienced by their white sisters were unknown. They did not consider child birth a time of terrible pain and misery, and in spite of all this they were exposed to the elements continually and were able to do as much work, and many of them more, than the men of their tribes."⁶⁶ The image of the Indian woman was a figure of health. Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company medications promised customers equally healthy lives.

In addition to short newspaper advertisements like those described above, the company also published advertising pamphlets and booklets. In these publications, more so than shorter newspaper advertisements, Healey and Bigelow conflated supposedly Indigenous remedies with Christian motifs as well as other types of spiritual and divinatory practices that they normalized for their consumers. In their publications Kickapoo Indian Dream Book and A Book of Dreams: Fleeting Images of the Night, the company included dream interpretations alongside advertisements for their numerous remedies and testimonials from satisfied customers. According to the Dream Book, for example, if someone dreams that they are with angels, "it indicates that [they] will have sweet fellowship with agreeable friends."⁶⁷ A Book of Dreams indicated that one who dreams of a Quaker will have a "long life full of care."⁶⁸

Some pamphlets were marketed specifically to women. Throughout its forty-four pages, the Family Cookbook offered dozens of recipes as well as advertisements.⁶⁹ The thirty-two-page Kickapoo's Fortune-Telling Book included predictions about finding love and determining how and when a young woman might marry. In addition, the booklet contained numerous sections devoted to spiritualist topics, including palmistry, magnetism, the interpretation of omens, and luck. For any "friendless girls" who yearn to be loved, the pamphlet suggested being polite, avoiding gossip, and using Kickapoo Indian Prairie Plant.⁷⁰ This publication also devoted a page to the "Ten Health Commandments."⁷¹ These commandments included practical information related to food intake, exercise, work, sleep, breathing, and the cultivation of positive attitudes. The last commandment, of course, was to take Kickapoo Indian Sagwa.

In addition to these shorter pamphlets, Healey and Bigelow produced longer, historically themed books and pamphlets. These materials purported to offer objective histories of Indigenous communities as they furthered many of the company's selling points in a longer written format. The free publication Life Among the Indians presented romanticized depictions of Native life, including accounts of religious traditions, while mourning the supposedly inevitable decline of Native communities. An article on the "Dog Dance of the Dacotas [sic]" described the ceremony in a touching manner, and then lamented that "In a year or two not an Indian will be seen on this land, granted to them by the Great Spirit."⁷² The publication included descriptions of ceremonies, including the "Medicine-Dance of the Winnebagoes," a "Dance to the Giant," and a generic "Indian Burial." Articles on the "Death Whoop" and the "Striking the Post" ceremony (which was not ascribed to any particular nation) contain stereotypical imagery of Plains Native people as dangerous warriors.⁷³ While presenting Native Americans as inherently violent, the pamphlet assured readers that "Indian Medicines [are] Harmless."⁷⁴

The company's longest publication, Indian Life and Scenes, contained descriptions of different facets of Native life interspersed with articles on organs and body systems. Many articles discussed Kickapoo culture. Some pertained to other Native nations, including the Dakota and unnamed Western and Northern Nations. In addition, this publication aggregated many of the features of shorter pamphlets, such as the dream interpretations, and points they made in shorter advertisements, including the creation myth of the company and the celebration of Native people as figures of health. Indian Life and Scenes sought to package features of Native life into interesting tidbits, while presenting Healey and Bigelow as authorities on Indigenous culture. The publication concluded with a cry for consumers to "Go forth on thy mission!" of pursing health through the consumption of Kickapoo Indian remedies.

MANUFACTURING NARRATIVES OF HEALTH

While the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company presented seemingly objective accounts of Native life and religion, these were stories meant to sell their products. Comparing the company's advertisements with the historical record reveals the extent to which the company manufactured narratives for economic purposes. The images in advertisements presented Native people as naturally in tune with nature and models of health due to their medicinal wisdom. These representations were at odds with the ways that Europeans and Euro-Americans had long attacked Native bodies and medical practices. Even beyond the ways that Europeans benefitted from the "Old World" sicknesses that had ravaged Native communities in the Americas since earliest instances of contact, Kickapoo Company advertisements furthered narratives that contrasted with the actual state of Native American health and medicine. During the same era in which Indian medicine companies peddled their wares to non-Native consumers, the US government was actively involved in attacking Indigenous healing traditions. As the mainstream public consumed Kickapoo Indian Medicine products, they also consumed a manufactured story about Native health and wellness that directly contrasted broader, state-sponsored threats to Indigenous health and well-being.

While the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company presented Indian medicines as commodities, rather than features of religious traditions, Euro-American missionaries had long recognized the relationship—and used this relationship as a reason to attack traditional practices. In early conversion attempts by Spanish, French, and English missionaries, agents of the Church recognized that many traditional religious leaders were also healers. These missionaries specifically targeted these medicine men and women as they attempted to erode religious practices. For example, historian James Axtell has illustrated how Jesuit priests attempted to convince Native people living in the Northeast that their healers were actually charlatans who tricked others into believing their rituals were effective.⁷⁵ A key feature in Christian conversion processes, then, was the suggestion that traditional Indian healing practices were, at best, ineffective, and at worst, spiritually and physically dangerous.

In addition to eroding beliefs in traditional healing practices, Christian missionaries highlighted the healing powers of Christianity when they sought converts. Diseases introduced by Europeans wrought devastating consequences on Native populations, and Native Americans noticed that missionaries were often impervious to diseases that affected their communities. To take Jesuit missionaries again as examples, Axtell explains how, "when the shamans' power thus reached its nadir, the Jesuits rushed forward with free nursing, comforting if not curative medicines, and a plausible theological explanation for the misfortunes that had taken the natives unawares."⁷⁶ In order to achieve health, Native people were encouraged to cast away their medicinal practices and turn instead to Christianity and European forms of medicine, which the missionaries provided.

Another noteworthy inconsistency present in the widespread appeal of Native American healing practices lies in mainstream understandings of Native healing in the late nineteenth century. Many historians who championed American expansion viewed 1890 as the year in which the frontier was closed and Native American traditional life was coming to an end.⁷⁷ Governmental policies at the time attempted to encourage assimilation to Euro-American cultural values, practices, and religions.⁷⁸ One of the key elements in the assimilation process of actual Native Americans, at the same time that Kickapoo medicines appealed to Indianness, involved the Native adoption of "regular," allopathic medicine as opposed to traditional healing practices. Thus, despite their appeal to authenticity, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company's representations of Native people did not reflect current understandings about the efficacy and value of Native practices, which were stigmatized at the time—even by close allies to Native Americans. Instead, appeals to Indianness reflected romantic, manufactured notions of American Indian healthcare practices.

Healey and Bigelow actually echoed the perspective of reformers in their era who actively sought to limit the influence of Native American medicine men. This can be seen in the pages of the 1897 report of the Friends of the Indian, an organization considered to be allies of all Native Americans and dedicated to the missionization and Christianization of Native peoples. According to the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Lake Mohonk Indian Conference, held in 1897, one participant explained that they would soon "recommend the passage of a law to suppress the practice of 'medicine men' among the Indians, who kill far more than they cure."⁷⁹ According to this Euro-American participant, "one third of the deaths among these Indians can be traced directly to the malpractice of such men; and, besides, they serve to hinder the Indians from resorting to the use of proper remedies prescribed by white physicians."⁸⁰ Despite their appeal to the wisdom of Native Americans, Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertising materials also reinforced this negative perspective of medicine men. An article in the Life Among the Indians pamphlet offered an exoticized account of the medicine man as inherently untrustworthy conmen: "Though we may forever enumerate the crimes of the medicine-man, we cannot destroy the influence he exerts among his tribe. The veneration for his office is extended to himself; and, however he may wield it, he will hold a secret and mysteriously-used scepter so long as the remnant of an Indian nation is left, in its unchristianized [sic] condition, on the continent."⁸¹

This denigration of the medicine man served a purpose. The Kickapoo company had to balance positive and negative portrayals of Native people in their advertisements in a way that would make Healey and Bigelow themselves the experts on Indian medicine. They presented Native religious practices as obsolete, and Native religious leaders as charlatans—however, secret Native medical knowledge was useful after it was extracted and commodified by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. In Virtual Orientalism, Jane Iwamura describes the process through which wisdom and teachings from Eastern leaders were passed on to Western pupils in the era leading up to the New Age. She argues that "the relationship between Oriental Monk teacher and Western pupil is usually romanticized in order to legitimate the transfer of Eastern spiritual knowledge from one to the other."⁸² In the Kickapoo Company's advertisements, the transfer of knowledge from Native people to Healy and Bigelow (and then to consumers) was similarly romanticized.

Beyond the ways that the Kickapoo Company's advertisements presented consumers with alternative narratives that did not reflect the experiences of Native people's lives, two additional features of Kickapoo advertising served to romanticize this transfer of medical knowledge. One narrative suggested that Euro-Americans had the ability to perfect Indigenous knowledge through science and private enterprise—a form of cultural supersession that held that Euro-Americans could perfect Indigenous knowledge and take it to the next level of efficacy. Healey and Bigelow positioned themselves as cultural translators who could collect, interpret, reproduce, and package Native wisdom for non-Native audiences, in a way similar to the "Oriental Monks" Iwamura analyzes, who translate Eastern wisdom for Western audiences. Another narrative suggested that Native Americans willfully sacrificed their lives and knowledge for cultural outsiders. In this way, Native people are presented as "ideological caregivers."⁸³ Iwamura draws on this term from Sau-ling Wong to emphasize the power that these cultural translators have. As they educate others on one cultural group's traditions, they highlight the value of the traditions not for the cultural insiders, but for the outsiders. In the case of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, Native American culture and spirituality is valuable only insofar as it is useful for others. Taken together, these ideas suggested that the ideal place for Indian medicines were not in the original cultural context, where they would benefit the communities in which the ideas originated, but in the economic sphere, where they could benefit Euro-American consumers.

First, an examination of Kickapoo advertisements reveals the extent to which Healy and Bigelow sought to position themselves as authorities of Indian medical practices—even more so than the healers from whom they supposedly received recipes for medications. In this form of cultural supersession, Healy and Bigelow suggested that the full efficacy of Indian medicines was made possible through economic interventions. Advertisements furthered the idea that the company had improved the medical properties of Indian medicines through science. In addition to drawing on the testimonies of everyday citizens, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company appealed to scientific experts to legitimate the quality of their products. As one advertisement read:

To prove that Kickapoo Indian Sagwa is worthy of public confidence, and that it is a remedy of remarkable curative value, Messrs. Healy and Bigelow of New Haven, the agents for the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co., requested that an analysis of Indian Sagwa should be made by the Professor of Physiological Chemistry at Yale College, considered one of the highest authorities in the country. Thus he did and reported as follows:

"After a chemical analysis of Indian Sagwa, and examining the various substances entering into its composition, I find it to be an Extract of Roots, Barks and Herbs, of Valuable Remedial Action, without any mineral or other deleterious admixtures."

He had no suggestions to offer which could improve Sagwa, as it was a remarkably perfect combination, and it is safe to say that no improvement could be made."⁸⁴

Drawing on the advice of a respectable, unnamed specialist suggested that they were concerned with being taken seriously as a viable medicine company. In addition to advertisements relying on expert scientific evidence, Kickapoo Indian Medicine advertisements encouraged customers to utilize the services of medical professionals employed by the company. They explained in advertisements that they employed a "large force of doctors," who offered free medical advice upon request.⁸⁵ The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company offered consumers the best of both worlds: "natural" cures with scientifically demonstrable efficacy.

In addition to the suggestion that the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company was able to perfect Indian remedies—outside of the realm of Native cultural communities—another narrative suggested that Native people freely sacrificed their knowledge for Euro-Americans. Many Kickapoo advertisements presented Indians as providing medicines that would help non-Natives. However, at times the advertisements went a step further and presented Indians as saviors who specifically bestowed their medicine on Euro-Americans. In one instance, the mythic story of Pocahontas was recounted, and the actions of Pocahontas were held up as illustrative of the Indian's altruistic gift of Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company medicines:

Everyone remembers the story of Pocahontas, who, when John Smith was brought before her father, Chief Powhatan, away back in 1607 and was condemned by him to death, fell upon the white captive's neck as the blow of the executioner was about to descend, and saved his life, afterward marrying him, their descendents to-day, according to tradition, being found among the oldest families of Virginia. This little instance of Indian nature is repeated to us in our every day life.⁸⁶

This advertisement presented Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company medicines as a selfless gift for white Americans. A similar advertisement suggested, "Just as surely as the Indian would today use his strength and energy to save a white brother, toppling on the edge of a precipice, could he be at hand at the critical moment, just so surely is due to the red man the gratitude of thousands of lives saved by the use of these same remedies whose secret, centuries ago, he learned from Nature herself."⁸⁷ Numerous drawings of non-Native people being rescued by Indians reinforced the presentation of Indians as saviors of non-Native people. This striking advertisement featuring Pocahontas summarizes, in one image, the overarching message that the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company conveyed to consumers: Native Americans, according to this company's narratives, freely gave of their own knowledge for the benefit non-Native consumers. While they advertised the authenticity of their products, this message did not reflect the goals and experiences of Native people at the time, who were concerned with the very real threats to the well-being of their own communities.

CONCLUSION

Against a historical backdrop of violence in colonial contact situations, changes of lifestyle due to confinement of tribal nations on reservations, and US government attempts at forced assimilation and acculturation, Native Americans have faced numerous threats to their lives and well-being. Health sciences research indicates that, today, Native Americans continue to face worse health conditions and outcomes relative to the broader US population. Scholars have linked physical problems directly to this history of colonialism and a current lack of resources for Native people living in rural areas, reservations, and urban settings.⁸⁸ Suzanne Crawford O'Brien, a scholar of Native American religions and health, argues that "health and wellness concerns are the most pressing issues facing Native communities today, issues arising directly from the experience of colonialism, racism, and systemic oppression."⁸⁹ The lived experience of illness in Native America, then, is deeply intertwined with the history of contact with Europeans.⁹⁰ These disparities stubbornly persist as Native people in the United States were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic.⁹¹ Thus, one of the concerns that practitioners have with cultural appropriation is that those who engage in Native-themed spiritual and health practices ignore those histories and present-day realities. In this way, participation in pseudo-Native practices engenders participation in colonial narratives.⁹²

In his 2005 book Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality, historian of religion Philip Jenkins argues that Indigenous people in the US should accept the fact that they will continue to face the appropriation of their spiritual traditions.⁹³ While it may be true that non-Native interest in Native religions will continue, Jenkins's suggestion that this process is natural and inevitable leaves unquestioned the dominant understanding of religion as evangelistic and transferable, which provides an ideological basis for the non-Native adoption of Indigenous practices. Indigenous studies scholars including Eva Marie Garroutte, Aileen Moreton-Robison, and Adrienne Keene have documented many instances in which Europeans and Euro-Americans have sought to extract and possess the lands, resources, and wisdom of Indigenous communities.⁹⁴ They argue that these forms of appropriation can have real effects on Native communities. Historical research into Indian medicine companies highlights one of these effects: the production of damaging narratives about Indigenous communities and cultural practices.

Through its production of medications and advertising practices, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company set a philosophical and economic foundation for later mainstream commodification and appropriation of Native American spiritual and healing practices. In promoting its products, the company included stories and images purporting to represent authentic Native American medical practices, which were at odds with the federal government's contemporaneous restriction of Native American spiritual and medical practices. Despite the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company's inaccurate and incomplete presentations of Indigenous medicine and spirituality, the company offered an attractive narrative to consumers, one that privileged non-Native health and promised physical salvation through the consumption of Native-inspired remedies.

Ultimately, the narratives that the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advanced served to justify the ongoing commodification and appropriation of Native knowledge. Ignoring attacks on Native American communities' religious and medical practices, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company's advertisements suggested that Native Americans freely and selflessly offered secret information for the benefit of Euro-American entrepreneurs and non-Native consumers. Two particular narratives present in the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company's advertisements—that of cultural supersession and salvation through appropriation-provided a justification for the extraction of Indian medicine out of the cultural context of Native religious practices.

By exploring medicine companies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an era of stark medical disparities between Native and non-Native people in the US, scholars of American religion can better identify tensions and power dynamics at play in the marketing and selling of culturally based medical and spiritual products. In the case of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, its practices promoted the health of non-Natives over the Native cultural communities that served as inspiration for the company's products. Kickapoo Medicine products fueled the narrative that Indigenous medicinal knowledge belonged not within the domain of Indigenous spiritual traditions and for the benefit of Native communities, but in the domain of the marketplace and for the benefit of cultural outsiders.