A TUBERCULOSIS PATIENT. BEDDING COVERED WITH FLIES ]
Dr. Joseph A. Murphy is medical supervisor of the Indian Service, and a more competent man cannot be found. I have received a number of reports covering his activities the past two years. That the Indians are suffering, is no fault of Dr. Murphy’s, or his assistants. He has recently established hospitals and increased the medical corps. If the present ratio of increase in physicians and buildings continues, much alleviation will result.
Dark as is our picture, recently it has become brighter. The past two years conditions have greatly improved. There are more adequate appropriations. But this realization of our responsibilities at a late day, does not absolve us from past responsibility. We had been repeatedly told—nay, warned of the consequences, yet we continued our “same old story, in the same old way,” until the white people living in Indian communities complained. Now, when Indians complain we pay little heed, but when the representatives of the white people cry, “menace to public health”, we heed and we speedily send help to allay the fears of the good and substantial citizens. The appeal from Macedonia is not uttered in vain.
We now have hospitals building, and they may take care of a third of the sick. We also enforce stricter sanitary laws. So we may look forward to saving some of those who suffer from the “coughing sickness”, and as to the other scourge, it is so contagious that heroic measures have been adopted, and the light will not go out forever from Indian children’s eyes.
I present two field reports, sent by competent observers who traveled extensively in Wisconsin and Oklahoma, and both of whom have long resided among Indians there.
“When I came to the Lake Superior country in 1878, I found the Indians of Lac Courte Oreille Reservation and of Lac du Flambeau, living almost entirely in birch-bark wigwams, also in Bad River Reserve, near Ashland, Wis. In Courte Oreille, I counted about six log houses, mostly inhabited by French half-breeds. In Bad River Reserve (now Odanah) perhaps about the same number; in Lac du Flambeau also about six log houses. But as soon as the Indians got their pine-money and their allotments, they immediately began to build houses, many of which were large and commodious. Others were of hewn logs, rather small and low and very unhealthy on that account, as there was very little ventilation, and in the winter they would be huddled together, most of them sleeping on the floor in a blanket, or poor bedclothes. The stove was very hot until after the fire went out, when, of course, towards morning they would be shivering with the cold. Cooking, smoking, living, in such a small room would naturally cause colds, and consumption. This may be justly called _the Indian’s Disease_, as it is the most common sickness of which they die; they generally die of consumption, brought on by their total disregard of the laws of health. Sugar-making early in spring, when they used to gather the maple-sap in the woods, walking in the wet snow and cold water, shod with soft moccasins, made of deerskin, and not much better than common stockings; then went the whole day with wet feet—this no doubt laid for many, the seeds of future consumption. Then, gathering cranberries in swamps, wading in the water for hours and hours, was also highly unhealthy. Their cooking was also very poor. Bread, tea, and pork their principal food, the bread badly made, hard and heavy. The Indian’s natural home is the woods, like that of the deer; the white man’s natural home is the clearing, in open country. Civilization is coming on the Indian too fast—it effeminates and weakens him. The Indian woman is naturally industrious, the Indian man is lazy; that’s about the way to put it.