Old West History Archives

Indian Cures

Indian CuresOctober 9, 1892, Call, San Francisco, California – In the depths of the forest, an Indian breaks his leg or arm, said Dr. Hingston is his address at the British Medical Association meeting at Nottingham.  Splints of softest material are at once improvised.  Straight branches are cut, of uniform length and thickness.  These are lined with down-like moss or scrapings or shavings of wood or with fine leaves interlaid with leaves, if in summer; or with the curled-up leaves of the evergreen cedar or hemlock, in winter; and the whole is surrounded with withes of willow or osier or young birch.  Occasionally it is the soft but sufficiently unyielding bark of the poplar or the bass wood.  Sometimes when near the marshy margin of our lakes or rivers the wounded limb is afforded support with wild hay or reeds of uniform length and thickness. Thus is the genius of Indian cures.

To carry a patient to his wigwam or to an encampment a stretcher is quickly made of four young saplings, interwoven at their upper ends, and on this elastic, springy couch the injured man is borne away by his companions.  When there are but two persons and an accident happens to one of them two young trees of birch or beech or hickory are used.  Their tops are allowed to remain to aid in diminishing the jolting caused by the inequalities of the ground.  No London carriage maker ever constructed a spring which could better accomplish the purpose.  A couple of crossbars preserve the saplings in position, and the bark of the elm or birch cut into broad bands and joined to either side forms an even bed.  In this way an injured man is brought by his companion to a settlement, and often it has been found on arrival that the fractured bones are firmly united and the limb is whole again.  This is affected in less time than with the whites, for the recuperative power of these children of the forest is remarkable.  In their plentitude of health osseous matter is poured out in large quantities and firm union is soon affected.

The reparative power of the aborigines when injured is equaled by the wonderful stoicism with which they bear injuries and inflect upon themselves the severest torture.  They are accustomed to cut into abscesses with pointed flint; they light up a fire at a distance from the affected part (our counter-irritation; they amputate limbs with their hunting-knives, checking the hemorrhage with heated stones, as surgeons were accustomed to do in Europe in the time of Ambrose Pare, and sometimes they amputate their own limbs with more sang fiord than many young surgeons will display when operating on others.  The stumps of limbs amputated in this primitive manner are well formed, for neatness is the characteristic of all Indians’ handiwork.

The Indians are familiar with and practice extensively the use of warm fomentations.  In every tribe their old women are credited with the possession of knowledge of local bathing with hot water and of medicated decoctions.  The herbs they use are known to a privileged few and enhance the consideration in which their possessors are held.

The Turkish bath, in a simpler but not less effective form, is well known to them.  If one of their tribe suffers from fever or from the effects of long exposure to cold a steam bath is readily improvised.  The tent of deerskin is tightly closed, the patient is placed in one corner, heated stones are placed near him, and on these water is poured until the confined air is saturated with vapor.  Any degree of heat and any degree of moisture can be obtained in this way.  Europeans often avail themselves of this powerful sudatory when suffering from rheumatism.

The Indians have their herbs—a few, not many.  They have their emetics and laxatives, astringents and emollients, all of which are proffered to the suffering without fee or reward.  The “Indian teas,” “Indian balsams” and other Indian cures —the virtues of which it sometimes takes columns of the daily journals to chronicle— belong to nature and are not theirs.  To the white man is left this species of deception.

Some New Arithmetic

April 15, 1882, Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California – Some New Arithmetic: Some New ArithmeticIn a schoolroom are twelve benches and nine boys on a bench.   Find who stole the teacher’s gad.

A laundress takes in twelve shirts and has four stolen from her line.  How many are left and what are the losers going to do about it.

A farmer sold eleven bushels of potatoes, with the product purchased two gallons of whisky at 90 cents per gallon.  How much per bushel did he get for his tubers, and where did he keep the jug.

What velocity must a locomotive have to pick up a dead man walking on the track and fling him so high that six cars pass before he comes down?

A boy earned 20 cents a day for 18 days and bought his mother a muskrat muff costing $2.10.  How much did he have left to go to the circus with?

A mother standing at the gate calls to her boy who is just 68 feet distant.  It takes two minutes and twenty-two seconds for the sound to reach him.  Find from this the velocity with which a woman’s voice travels.

A woman earned 42 cents a day by washing, and supported a husband who consumed $1 worth of provisions per week.  How much was she in debt at the end of each month up to the time he was sent to the workhouse.

 A father agreed to give his son four and a half acres of land for every cord of wood he chopped.  The son chopped tree-sevenths of a cord and broke the ax and went off hunting rabbits.  How much land was he entitled to?

A certain young man walks five-sevenths of a mile for seven nights in the week to see his girl, and after putting in 112 nights he gets the bounce.  How many miles did he foot it altogether, and how many weeks did it take him to understand that he wasn’t wanted?

Two men agreed to build a wall together.  One does four-fifths of the bossing and the other three-tenths of the work, and they finally conclude to pay a man $18 to finish the job.  What is the length and height of the wall?

The Jersey Lily Mine

Jersey Lily MineMarch 31, 1897, Weekly Journal-Miner, Prescott, Arizona – In company with Gil S. Ferguson, a former owner of the Jersey Lily mine, the editor of the Journal Miner visited the above property this week, and was very courteously received and hospitably entertained by General Manager W. C. Bashford and Superintendent J. E. Clark.  The underground workings were visited and examined—not in the capacity of an expert, but simply out of curiosity.

The shaft is 370 feet deep.  It is sunk on the ledge, which pitches at an angle of 44 degrees.  The shaft is one of the best timbered ones in the county, everything being as neat and workman like as it is possible to make it.  In addition to an old level, run at a depth of thirty feet, which is called the grass root level, but which is not now used, there are three levels run, one at each hundred feet of depth.  At the 200 foot level, a south drift is in 250 feet and a north drift 180 feet.  The latter is in good high grade ore all the way, while the former is also in ore, part of which is high grade and part of ore of lower grade, but good milling ore.

At the 300 foot level, the north drift is in 110 feet, with a solid body of ore all the way, averaging from three to four feet, and with a fine body of high grade ore on the face of the drift.  The south drift is in 100 feet, but owing to the pitch of the ore chute on this side, the ore encountered in this is of lower grade, but improving now with every foot of work done.  A small amount of stoping has been done, and the stopes also show up good ore bodies.

In the “grass root” level, a large body of rich honey comb ore, which made the Jersey Lily famous, even in the days of its infancy, remains exposed to view.  It is very high grade, and a moderate fortune can be obtained from it at any time that it may be desired to take it out.  Mr. Bashford has about twenty men at work at the present time, and on April 1st he will increase this force and will sink the shaft to a depth of over 500 feet, and will open up the 400 and 500 foot levels respectively.

The mine is equipped with one of the finest friction hoists in the territory.  It is of sufficient capacity to sink to a depth of 1,000 feet or more.

The Lily Company also owns the Gold Treasure claim, a very promising one, which adjoins the Jersey Lily on the north, but on which very little development work has been done.

The company expects, during the summer, to erect a mill for the reduction of the ore.  This will be done just as soon as the mine is opened up to a depth of 500 feet.

Northwest of the Jersey Lily, W. C. Bashford, J. E. Clark and Fred Smith own a claim, called Point Look Out, from which they have taken ore for shipment which went $250 per ton.

Another Killing For Dodge

Ben Daniels.

April 20, 1886, Globe Live Stock Journal, Dodge, Kansas – On last Thursday evening at about six o’clock, a shooing took place on the south side of the railroad on the sidewalk in front of Utterback’s hardware store, two doors west of Ed Julian’s restaurant, the latter gentleman being the victim in the affray; and his antagonist, ex-assistant city marshal Ben Daniels.

Four shots were fired, all by Daniels, all of which took effect on Julian. While Julian was found to be armed, he however, did not get to fire a shot; there is much diversity of opinion in the matter, some claiming it to have been a deliberate murder, while others assert it to have been justifiable. The evidence taken at the preliminary trial does not fully sustain either. It was a well known fact that these parties had been bitter enemies to each other for a long time, and both had made threats against each other, which fact was not only elicited at the preliminary, but was know to many of our people long before the shooting took place. Ben Daniels, at the preliminary before Justice Harvey McGarry, was placed under a $10,000 bond for his appearance at the next term of court.

The remains of Ed. Julian were taken in charge by the member; of Lewis Post, G. A. R., of this place, who gave them a very respectable burial with appropriate ceremonies. This was a very unfortunate occurrence for this place, and that too at a time when everything appeared to be moving along so harmoniously and quietly. But it appears that no one could have prevented this tragedy, not even our officers, no matter how vigilant they might have been; the bitterness which existed between them was almost certain to bring them together sooner or later, and as many predicted, that one or the other or perhaps both would be mortally wounded, if not killed outright.

Artist Frederic Remington

Artist Frederic Remington Although artist Frederic Remington had the look of an eastern lawyer or banker, on the inside he was a cowboy who could shoot and ride with the best. 
 
Remington was born in New York and went to college at Yale, where his size made him a powerhouse on the football field. Majoring in art, he found the structured classes boring. When Remington was 19 his father died, and Remington dropped out of school.
 
He wasn’t a lady’s man. As a matter of fact, he only painted a picture of one woman, and he destroyed that. But Remington was smitten by an Eva Caten. Denied permission to date her, a dejected Remington went to Montana. His first taste of the open spaces, and the wild, free life, changed him. 
 
While sitting around a campfire on the Yellowstone River he realized that within a few years the west he was experiencing would no longer exist, and he understood the need to chronicle it.
 
Remington spent time in Kansas City, roping and branding during the day, and painting at night. He spent his free time in bars swapping stories with cowboys. Later he headed to the Southwest where he met Comanche, Apache and Mexican vaqueros.
 
His experiences weren’t all pleasant. He failed at sheep ranching, got cheated out of a part ownership of a saloon, and searched fruitlessly for a mystical mine.
 
After countless rejections by publishers, finally on February 26, 1882 Harper’s Weekly published his first illustration. He then sold his entire portfolio to Outing Magazine.
 
Frederick Remington moved from illustrating, to painting, bronzes and stories, all depicting the authentic west. Although he only lived 48 years, the 2,500 paintings and drawings, 25 bronzes, and thousands of words produced by Remington preserves an important time in American history.
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