Page 10 - North Haven Magazine Special Edition Issue 13 2020

THE KICKAPOO
INDIAN MEDICINE COMPANY
ast night I watched an old movie (“Life with Fa-
Lther”) set in New York City during the 1880s. In the
movie two brothers in their teens needed some money
so they took jobs selling a “patent medicine” door-to-
door. When their mother complained one morning
of feeling unwell, the boys slipped some of the remedy
into her coffee and told potential customers that even
their own mother used the stuff. The “cure” subse-
quently made their mother seriously ill, and the boys
were forced to return all the money they earned from
their sales. These medicines were wildly popular at the
end of the nineteenth and into the beginning of the
twentieth centuries, before regulations were enacted
to protect unknowing consumers. One of the most
well-known of these medicine companies was based in
North Haven – the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Com-
pany.
If you drive out Route 22 toward Northford Center, you
cross some railroad tracks – that is where the Kickapoo
Indian Medicine Company was located. It is unclear
where the business originated, but it certainly was not
with any Native American tribes. Doctors were not
trusted during this time, and the Native Americans
were believed to have ancient remedies derived from
nature that had been used effectively for hundreds of
years. In England various patent medicine companies
started manufacturing concoctions that could suppos-
edly cure common ailments. Here in the US similar
companies were born – one of these products was made
by Dr. E.H. Flagg and called Flagg’s Instant Relief. He
teamed up with John Healy to market his medicine, re-
naming it Kickapoo Indian Oil in the hopes that this
marketing ploy would increase its sales by capitalizing
on the reputation of and the nostalgia associated with
rapidly disappearing Native tribes. Healy and Flagg
then hired Charles Bigelow to sell these “miracle cures”
by touting them as Native American formulations,
traveling from town to town with a Medicine Show
complete with real “Indians”, minstrels, acrobats, and
vaudeville acts. These shows were much anticipated
entertainment in sleepy little towns, and sales explod-
ed. Bigelow hired hundreds of native tribesmen to join
his medicine show (although none were actually from
the Kickapoo Tribe) and they were housed in dormi-
tories, called principal wigwams, first in Boston, then
New York, and finally on Grand Avenue in New Haven.
At the height of their popularity more than 100 trav-
eling shows could be found from here to Chicago and
as far south as the West Indies. Although the business
center of the medicine company eventually relocated to
North Haven, there is no evidence in the historical so-
ciety archives that a principal wigwam was ever located
here.
10
by Susan A. Iverson
One of the most engaging characters in the Kicka-
poo Medicine Show was John Johnson, a medicine
man from the Mi’kmaq Tribe of Nova Scotia. How-
ever, John was actually born to settlers in Maine and
kidnapped by the Mi’kmaqs at a very young age. He
was raised as Mi’kmaq and learned the indigenous
people’s ways, becoming knowledgeable in their tra-
ditional medicines. Johnson did not become aware
of his heritage until he was an adult, and he chose
to remain a Mi’kmaq. He traveled extensively with
the Kickapoo show and later apprenticed with a phy-
sician, ultimately becoming a practicing physician
himself.
During the first three decades of the 20th century the
Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company was located in
North Haven, offering many products including the
following: Kickapoo Indian Cough Cure, Kickapoo
Liver Pills, Kickapoo Oil, Indian Sagwa, Kickapoo
Salve, and Kickapoo Worm Killer. Although Healy
and Bigelow appear to have sold the business about
1901 (when the company moved to North Haven),
Kickapoo medicine shows continued to be popular
until the late 1920s. When the Pure Food and Drug
Act was enacted in 1906, misleading advertising tac-
tics eventually came to an end. At first the Kickapoo
Medicine Company was happy to have the Pure Food
and Drug Act in place, because it eliminated many of
the smaller patent medicine companies that it com-
peted with. But in 1911 the law established that the
Kickapoo Indian Cough Cure was in violation be-
cause it was misbranded, not properly disclosing the
extraordinary amount of alcohol it contained!
Although some “patent medicines” have survived
and continue to serve as effective treatments (like
Vick’s VapoRub and Bayer Aspirin!), The Kickapoo
Indian Medicines did not. Its North Haven facility
has long since been torn down, and the only evidence
of its existence is a quantity of colorfully labeled bot-
tles and advertising ephemera still found across the
country. When the North Haven Historical Society
can once again reopen, stop in to see our small col-
lection of Kickapoo artifacts.
There are many articles out there about the Kickapoo In-
dian Medicine Company; my thanks to these for the infor-
mation in this article:
New England Historical Society
With thanks to Step Right Up by Brooks McNamara
The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company by Digger Odell
Publications c. 1998
North Haven Magazine - Special Edition 2020