Courtesy Photo | Shown is a Healy & Bigelow’s Kickapoo Indian Oil bottle found during a past...... read more read more
Subscribe
Archaeologists with Colorado State University’s Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands recovered numerous glass bottles and fragments from a farmstead site on Fort McCoy that was last occupied in the early 20th century, including an intact pharmaceutical bottle with embossed lettering that reads “Healy & Bigelow’s Kickapoo Indian Oil.”
The farmstead was operated by Berton S. Hawley until his death, with five standing structures present at the time the property was purchased by the U.S. government from Hawley’s widow in 1936.
This bottle of “medicine” was produced between 1882 and 1906. The concoction was recommended by the company as a cure for rheumatism, earache, cholera, toothache, diarrhea, sore throat, stomachache, burns, and cramps. It was also used as mouthwash. The bottles were sold by both druggists and travelling medicine shows.
The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co. shows employed as many as 300 Native Americans, who would travel from their winter headquarters in New Haven, Conn., across the country to demonstrate “Indian” life while plying their wares.
The “Kickapoo Indians” who traveled with the shows were typically from other tribes, but nonnative performers would also play roles as Quakers, frontier scouts, or fakirs.
Traveling medicine shows were popular near the end of the 1800s and were reminiscent of traveling circuses or fairs. They featured live music, Wild West showcases of shooting prowess, menageries, vaudeville, musical comedy, magic acts, pie-eating contests, and more.
Other offerings from Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co. included a cough cure; liver pills; salve; worm killer; medicated soap; and a prairie plant offered as a “female remedy,” which was later rebranded as a suppository.
The passage of the Food and Drug Act of 1906 brought changes and challenges to the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co., including new packaging that removed the word “Indian” from the labels and advertising. The company continued as the Kickapoo Medicine Co., expanding and establishing laboratories in Philadelphia and St. Louis and advertising in druggist magazines as late as the 1930s.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was coordinated by the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch. Visitors and employees are reminded they can not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals.
Any person who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any historic or prehistoric site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch at 608-388-8214.
(Article prepared by Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands.)
| Date Taken: | 11.21.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 11.21.2018 15:20 |
| Story ID: | 300987 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 2,112 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Healy & Bigelow’s Kickapoo Indian Oil, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
