Closed Captions Audio Described

Dr. Monica May (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) examines the Lewis and Clark Expedition through a medical lens, exploring the Corps' health challenges, period medicine practices, and the crucial role Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara knowledge—particularly in herbs, plants, nutrition, and hygiene—played in the expedition's survival and success in North Dakota.

Transcript

0:03 I know you can't see the slides very well. But, uh, I'm, can you see them at all? Ok. Good. My name is Monica Mayer and, uh, my Indian name is [speaking Native American language] And I'm an enrolled member of the three affiliated tribes, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. And I was born and raised here on the Fort Berthold Indian reservation,
0:26 attended schools here all my life. I'm the oldest daughter of Avis Baker Mayer and the oldest granddaughter of May Howard Coffey. And it's proper for us to introduce ourselves through our mother's lineage because of the matriarchal uh lineage, uh heritage. And, uh, you might wonder why a physician would be interested in the Lewis and Clark. Well,
0:48 back when I was attending school here, when we all went to school, you would check a book out with writing your name on a white card on the inside cover of the book. Well, they don't do that anymore. They scan them and a young girl came up to my house about 10 years ago and she had this book, um, that somebody had signed on in 1972 and it had my name on there.
1:11 That was the last person that signed that book out. And the title of the book was the Upper Missouri River, Indians and Lewis and Clark. So I guess I've been reading about this to this topic for a very, very long time and I became very interested in my personal history and bought every book I could get on the Three Affiliated Tribes. And
1:33 We are intimately tied with the Lewis and Clark. It's hard to separate us. So then of course, I got all the journals and read the journals. In fact, I have the Gary Moulton edition. Uh, the one that's like $3,000 that I don't let anybody touch. And I'm very obsessive compulsive about. That's my primary, um, my primary source that I use to obtain most of my information. But,
1:57 you know, books are wonderful things because they can change our lives. And I, I think young people don't read as much as we did here in this, in this room because of their access to computers and so forth. But certainly my medical books have changed my life dramatically. But also I think the Lewis and Clark as well has as, as well as just understanding my personal history, which, you know,
2:21 I do every day as a physician here in Newtown. And when I left here in 1978 I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I got an associate of arts and education or business and management. After accounting two, I decided that's enough of that. So I became a school teacher and taught high school for
2:43 a while and came back after my father had passed away and me and my two younger sisters, uh all went to the University of North Dakota and I received my doctorate there. And while I was there, I joined the army to be all that I could be and get my school paid for.
3:02 And uh with six years in the military, my youngest sister, I finished my doctorate there. My younger sister Holly, who works here in Newton is the director of Public Health Nursing and she received her nursing degree. And my baby sister Renee, uh is the tribal social services director here and received her master's in social work. So our mother was very um obsessive compulsive too about reading and going to school and so forth.
3:26 So, and it wasn't good enough to go to school. You had to come back home with your skills and practice here. So I'm very honored and privileged to practice medicine here. I've been in Newtown for eight years. I work for Trinity Medical Center out of Minot and run my own clinic in the city of Newtown where it's a real opportunity to take care of all people in our community. So
3:49 I think it makes perfect sense that somebody like me would be interested in Lewis and Clark from a historical, from an educational, from a medical standpoint of view. And so that's where my interests lied. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and go into the powerpoint presentation I entitled it, that we proceeded on. Let's take a quick look at the general overview in the medical world
4:11 and how they got ready and come up to Missouri to North Dakota. And by the way, for those of you not from North Dakota, I am a staunch North Dakotan. I don't really care what Lewis and Clark did before North Dakota or did after North Dakota just in North Dakota. I didn't mean to be insult to anybody on that.
4:34 At any rate, let's take a quick overview of Lewis and Clark. This will be like history 101. And we're going to go really, really fast today because we're on a short time schedule because I thought I was on at 11:30 so I apologize for being late. Let's take a look at Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark. And you know, it, it Thomas Jefferson was such an interesting man,
4:55 brilliant and a visionary of this whole entire United States. And he was raised by a physician and carried many, many different hats, but he was most proud of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, which is a wonderful document if you have not read it. And he, you know, his beloved Monticello, he entertained people and so forth like that.
5:20 And you know, Thomas Jefferson he created the first photocopy machine. He wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote with his quill. He took a piece of wood and hooked it to another quill. So every time he'd write, he'd have a photocopy of the document that he had. And he wrote tens of thousands of documents. And um what a wonderful scientist and visionary he was, and
5:44 he, he was controversial in the fact that he did have an affair after his wife had passed away. He never remarried and her name was Sally Hemings who fathered four children, four sons. And, um,
6:01 do you all remember the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky ordeal?
6:08 I really loved my name Monica until that Monica Lewinsky went and blew it for all of us. You know, had Thomas Jefferson in his time, had the media and the, and the newspapers and the radio and so forth. His legacy may not have been what it was, you know, today had, um, that been available in his time, but Congress knew about it
6:30 and they persecuted him for that because it was a very big issue of his time. At any rate, he failed four times before he got this off. And I always tell young people it's in our failures that we become successful. And when he finally became president, he had the vision to purchase the Louisiana purchase territories. If you'll take a look, and I don't know how well you can see but
6:53 the purple area is the Louisiana purchase territories owned by France, then Spain, and then back to France in 1800. At that time, Napoleon was the emperor of France. You know, they got that little man syndrome? That's him. In the United States, if you look, the people were crossing over that Mississippi river and
7:15 coming into the Louisiana purchase territory areas and and Napoleon didn't like that. And so he gathered 28,000 soldiers to come across and stop those colonists and build a new Viva la France and a new world power because he wanted to be the emperor of the world. Not just France, but the world.
7:37 Now, just look at that. I, I if, if he'd had those 28,000 soldiers reach New Orleans, we're sitting on what would be French territories, y'all would be having some sort of lunch like Cajun meal meal today if he'd have been successful, right? Well, fortunately for us, he wasn't, he um, put those 28,000 people on ships and just imagine
8:01 what, what that had to be like. And they got to the south tip of Florida where one of their territories, Santo Domingo was a rebellion going on and out of those 28,000 soldiers, less than 1,000 returned to France and they never did get to New Orleans. Why? Not weaponry-- smallpox, malaria, yellow fever.
8:25 So disease sets the stage and changes the course of history. And it's a very interesting story and, uh, this is Napoleon. He looks very little man, doesn't he? So, we sum it up this way, you know, and Jefferson wanted this land, he was going to take it by force, but preferably buy.
8:46 And so when those 28,000 soldiers were decimated by disease, um, it annihilated basically, uh, Napoleon's army. So he sold it because he didn't want Great Britain to have it, who he was warring with. Seems like Great Britain wared with everybody, huh?
9:06 At any rate, he sold this land for 15 million acres at three cents an acre. The best, that will be the best real estate deal ever to go down on the planet Earth. Huh? And so he purchases the territory and he leaves Saint Louis. He has to get ready and of course he goes to Congress
9:28 to get the money and he had to finangle this because, you know, the Congress didn't, they didn't think this was a good idea to buy this Louisiana purchase territory. And then of course, he had Sally Hemings hanging over his back, but he got $2500 to get started. But you know how the federal government is, they inflated it up to $38,000. So, and he summed his Louisiana purchase territory in a document he wrote
9:52 in 1805 this way: we shall delineate with correctness, the great arteries of this country and those who come after us will extend the ramifications as they become acquainted with them and fill up the canvas we begin. And we're all doing that today. Let's take a look at these two fellows, Lewis, Clark.
10:16 Lewis was a Virginian. He actually was raised to do a plantation and he was taught a lot about plants and herbs to his mother who was a herbologist in Virginia. He was only 29 when he went on this expedition, pretty young. He was described as melancholy, which is a bipolar dis disease, such as we know today as manic depressive.
10:39 And he was a very, very heavy drinker and very controversial in that was his death a suicide or was it homicide? And I think a lot of, you know, that's the glory of history. We really never know you can kind of deduce from your own deductions and evidence and documentation to read. But I think most historians would agree that he did commit suicide
11:03 primarily because he was prone to depression. He had large gaps in his journals that probably where he cycled in depression. He drank very heavily and he was ordered by the President to produce his journals and he did not have them. He was on his way to present them to Mon uh Thomas Jefferson at Monticello when he died.
11:28 And furthermore, uh he was broke. You know, after this expedition, everybody got paid. And you know, just imagine when, when our astronauts went to the moon, we kinda had a pretty good idea what was up there? And when they came back, we had great big parades and parties in Washington. I'm sure these guys did too. And he partied like a monster for a year and spent all his money.
11:51 So he's broke, he's prone to heavy drinking, prone to depression and didn't have his journals. And I think that's the evidence that most people look at and most likely he contributed to his probable suicide. Whereas William Clark, he was more of the muscle. Lewis was the brain, Clark was the muscle known as redhead by the Indians.
12:15 And he had brought his slave uh York with him and he lived a full long successful political life. I put the Corps discovery men up here and you can't see it very well. But Sergeant Ordway, Patrick Gass, and Joseph White House are all highlighted because these three individuals could read and write. The rest of them couldn't besides Lewis and Clark.
12:39 And if you look at the very bottom on the left side, I have highlighted here Private Thomas Howard. Now, Private Thomas Howard, I highlighted that if you recall, I introduced myself as being the oldest granddaughter of May Howard Coffey. And you know, I'm, it's all in the mind of the reader.
13:02 Uh December 11, 1804 the journals enter this Private Thomas Howard. He jumped the fort fence to get back in because the doors closed at night and three Mandan warriors were with him. And he got caught by Lewis and Clark and he was punished for doing such an act and showing these Mandan warriors how to get back, get in
13:25 and hundred flogs. Well, you know, again, it's all in the mind of the reader's interpretation. So I'm thinking to myself, ok, December, cold winter in North Dakota. What is a man doing out in the middle of nowhere and takes a hundred flogs for it?
13:49 Yeah, this is a fast crowd, right? Some crowds just don't, they don't follow me with that. Well, I have an aunt who works as the public relations for our tribe, Glenda Embry. I'm sure she's around here taking pictures. Her and I were just fascinated with that passage and I read it over and over. We tried to trace that. But, you know, at the end of the expedition,
14:12 everybody got paid and they signed their letter X and many of the men returned back to the Mandan villages. We cannot prove it. But I have a very sneaky hunch that I'm probably a descendant of the Corps Discovery as well as the MHA people. Now, everybody got paid on this expedition except for one person.
14:36 Sakakawea, the only female. Yeah. Yeah. All the girls in the crowd. I always say I know all the women. Oh, you know, anyway, medicine back then they didn't have anything. Basically nothing. No school, no journals, no trained doctors. And if you got sick it's because you have a bad spirit in your body.
14:59 And so we gotta make you throw it up, poop it out or bleed you. You know, and that's kind of interesting because, you know, George Washington, most historians by its description, he had strep throat, but he believed in this bleeding process so faithfully that he actually died from hemorrhaging. And so, you know,
15:22 I always wonder, gosh, you know, this guy down here, he might be too, not very ill. So I think I'll take a half a pint from him. But, oh, gosh, this guy over here, you know, three or four pints. And so, you know, Thomas Jefferson just did not like the way they practiced medicine. He had a great disdain for it and he had his own medicine chest,
15:43 which incidentally this picture, it's upside down. But he summed up medicine this way 200 years ago when they practiced medicine: Thus, fullness of the stomach we relieve by medics, disease of bowels by purge, inflammation by bleeding, syphilis by mercury. And if you don't know what's going on, give him a little bit of opium.
16:05 Well, you know, some of us still do that I think. Now the army didn't know much more. They didn't have any doctors and lots of diseases and you know, poor hospitals, but they knew about fevers and everything was called a fever, camp fever, yellow fever, jail fever, you catch diseases, drink clean water, put your toilet downstream, and bury your bodies away from the camp.
16:30 But they did not know about bacteria and basic hygiene, diet and nutrition and preventive medicine that were just starting to kind of really try to grasp now in the New Millen New Millennium. And interesting about basic hygiene, the men of Lewis and Clark were very, very astonished to find that the Indian people would clean every day
16:51 and bathe and wash themselves and put grease in their hair. You know, the men of Lewis and Clark did not bathe that frequently and, you know, interestingly here in North Dakota in 1910 when they homesteaded our great state, it was unchristian like to take a bath more than once a week. And so that's a very interesting aspect that they documented and wrote down.
17:15 And the colonists didn't know much either more than that, you know, 200 years ago, only five medical schools are only 250 people with a degree. 100 years ago, only 100 only one in ten doctors had a degree. You wouldn't even think about coming to see me if I wasn't through medical school with a
17:37 residency trained and board certified and years of experience, you know, you just, you wouldn't. So we've come a very long way in a short distance. Now, just imagine yourselves getting ready for this expedition. What are you gonna take? I see Doctor Nordell is in the back and her and I go to the Caribbean once a year. Ask two women to pack for 10 days.
18:00 Hello, try packing for two and a half years. What are you going to take? And you don't got no doctor. So, you know, Jefferson had to consult with Doctor Benjamin Rush, who, who by the way did have a degree and he was one of five doctors that signed this Declaration of Independence
18:20 and he carried a lot of titles. You know, he was one of these, the bleeder they called him. You know, he'd go around cutting everybody and bleeding them because they have a bad spirit in their body. And he wrote 10 healthcare commandments and I put them up just the way he had them. Flannel worn next to the skin, especially in the winter. Always take a little raw spirits after being very wet or
18:42 much fatigued and as little as possible at any other time. When you feel the indisposition, fasting and resting, diluting drinks for a few hours, take a sweat, and if positive take a purge of two pills every four hours until you operate freely. All right, we gotta stop for a second here. They didn't have pills back then.
19:05 Doctor Rush created a pill. And if you've ever had a yogurt covered peanut, that's what they look like. Kind of these big round white nuggets. If you went downtown to our local, you know, drugstore, bought a box of Ex-lax, took that whole box at one time,
19:26 that would equal one of Doctor Rush's pills. It was made of jallup and calomel, a little mercury and another ingredient. So, um this crowd can understand that concept of the potency that these pills had. And you know, again, it's in the mind's reader again, just think those poor guys,
19:48 if you imagine yourselves as being the men on the Lewis and Clark Trail, you gotta go up to Missouri. It's hot because you leave in May and it's, you know, June, July, August mosquitoes and flies and you're sore and you're tired and you're only eating meat with flour and salt pork and no fruits and vegetables. You got boils and dysentery and scurvy
20:10 and you go up to Captain Clark. He said, oh, Captain Clark, I don't feel very good. And so he says to you here, take a Doctor Rush's pill. Boy, those poor guys, they must have pooped all the way up to Missouri and all the way back down. Huh? Unusual causativeness is often a sign of disease. And when you feel it, take one or two of the pills.
20:34 Where salt cannot be had with your meat, steep it a day or two in common lye. Difficult prizes, eat sparingly, more safe to your health. Wash your feet with spirit when chilled and molasses with your drinks, shoes without heels and lay down when you're tired. You know, I cataloged all the medicines here and, um,
20:57 listed all of them by name and how much they took. We still use a lot of these medicines today and take a look. There's 50 dozen of Doctor Rush's pills for five bucks, $90.69 for 29 people for two and a half years. Today, if you got sick, I gave you an antibiotic augmenting for 10 days.
21:19 $120, 1 person, 10 days. That's inflation on medicines. Up there, it says four penis duo and I had gone through each one of these to figure out what they utilized them for, well they had a, it, it looks like a pen syringe. And the men had pretty rampant venereal disease and they would insert this pen and put,
21:43 inject mercury in there for the STDs. And the men in the crowd always go, oh, and the women look at him and, I don't feel sorry for you. So here you go. You're men on the Lewis and Clark trail. You gotta gather all this information and you're going up this river. It's hot. You leave at five every morning.
22:06 You're only eating 9 to 10 pounds of meat a day with no, you know, no fruits and vegetables. You got scurvy boils on your skin because you don't have the proper vitamins and you enter North Dakota in sad pitiful poor shape and you meet a well known group of people, the Mandan and Hidatsa, and Arikara. Two Mandan villages and three Hidatsa
22:29 villages each while one had about four or six thousand people. No flushing toilets. And, uh, matrilineal primarily. And in North Dakota, it's located at these sites here a little bit south of our reservation. And incidentally, you know, um, smallpox hit in 1837 after Lewis and Clark left,
22:52 the villages were burned down to the ground. Chief Four Bears died July 30th, 1837 from smallpox. Our casino and our bridge are named in his honor. And they traveled further up to Like-a -Fishhook village which pox then infested them. And then eventually up to Elba Woods and Independence and then the Garrison diversion project in the fifties flooded us out,
23:14 and here we are today. This is a beautiful picture that I'm sure you can't see. But George Catlin painted us in 1833, 32, 34. And this is a picture of Sakakawea's village and how grateful we are for the picture to see what we look like, how we lived, how we dressed. And the earth lodges were very well constructed
23:37 and an architectural genius owned by the women. The land was owned by her. The children were owned by her. She took their, they took her last name and she owned the crop and there was lots of friendly exchange between them. And you know, just to say hello to one another, you know, there was Mandan language, Hidatsa, there was Arikara, there was Shoshone, there was French, there was English.
24:00 So just to say hello had to be a very difficult process to do. And Black Moccasin 30 years later, when George Catlin was painting him, said, please say hello to redhead, my friend. And they remembered that 30 years later, I thought that was very interesting. And this is Chief Four Bears. He was just a boy when Lewis and Clark came
24:24 and White Coyote was one of the principal chiefs at the time. And there was again, like I said, lots of friendly exchange. And here's a picture of the replica of the fort down in um Stanton, Washburn area. And I looked at that and I thought, wow, that's a big tall fence that uh Private Thomas Howard had to jump
24:46 in the Earth Lodge. They're very well constructed. And um we're very famous for these architectural geniuses designed by the women. And there was a child that had an abscess on his back that a mother um took to the men of Lewis and Clark who made a scalpel, amputated his toes.
25:06 The mother was so grateful she carried 100 pounds of corn on her back to thank him. And that soup was turned into corn soup, vitamins and minerals rich in many, many uh sources. And so there was lots of friendly exchanges uh that went on there including the assistance of Sakakawea delivering her child.
25:30 And when they left, when they entered North Dakota, they were pitifully poor health, scurvy, boils. And when they left, they left in a perfect state of health. According to this document he wrote. And for the sake of time, I'm going to end my powerpoint with
25:52 um not only plants did we share and uh other contributions of sweats in the corn, but also um the daily bathing and medicinal herbs and plants that we utilize that were so fascinating that led the door open for besides bleeding people to
26:17 um utilize the plants and herbs that we use today. And I think that's how they survived. And I'll end it with this. They made an 8000 mile journey. It was more than a well stocked medicine chest. It was, it's my personal opinion, it was their devoted attention to health care that contributed most to the success and their diplomatic succe success is how they do devoted to health
26:39 care and attention to the Indian people as well. 200 years ago, Lewis and Clark arrived here and met our ancestors here in North Dakota and they met the well known group of people, the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Arikara, whose way of life would be recorded by many. And they shared their ideas, their foods, their medicines and knowledge freely with the Corps in a spirit of cooperation,
27:03 peace, and mutual productivity. If two cultures can do that 200 years ago, most certainly we can do it once again today. My name is Good Medicine. Thank you very much for listening to me and thank our ancestors for, I'm sure they are all with us today and I'll conclude my presentation with: we proceeded on. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doctor Mayer.
27:26 Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we have run out of time for Doctor Mayer but the letter and, and that mic still on. All right, to allow you to answer your questions that I'm sure you have for Doctor Mayer, we will set her table up outside of our Tent of Many Voices to the left there and she can have a bit more of a one on one conversation with y'all.
27:49 If you have further questions about the medicines of the expedition or um or further on her program of her powerpoint coming up next, we have uh gentleman Fred Baker who's gonna be talking about Mandan- Hidatsa culture and history and I'll be here in about 10 minutes. So please allow us to uh, to gather Doctor
28:10 Mayer's stuff and bring it outside.

Tent of Many Voices

Monica May: Medicine, Lewis and Clark, and Mandan Health

Dr. Monica May

Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara

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Monica May: Medicine, Lewis and Clark, and Mandan Health

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