The department of the physician has always been a discouraging one. The
government, for twenty-five years, has furnished a physician free, and
yet it is difficult to induce the Indians to rely on him. There are
three reasons for this: (1) The natural superstition an Indian has about
sickness. This has been quite fully discussed under the head of native
religion. (2) The Indian doctor does not like to have his business
interfered with by any one. It is a source of money and influence to
him, and he often uses his influence, which is great among the Indians,
to prevent the use of medical remedies. (3) If a medicine given by the
physician does not cure in a few doses, or, at least, in two or three
days, they think it is not strong, or it is good for nothing--so often
when medicine is given, with directions how to use it, it is left
untouched or thrown away. When using medicine they often employ an
Indian doctor, and his practices often kill all the good effects of
medicine, so that sometimes the physicians have felt that, when Indian
doctors were employed, it was almost useless for them to do any thing.
At the same time there have been some things which have aided our
methods very materially. Under the head of native religion, two cases
have been given, where it seemed to the Indians as if their mode was
true. This has occasionally been the effect with older people. But with
young children, too young to go to school, the opposite has been true.
Infants have continually died. Their mortality has been very great, when
they lived at home, where they could have all the Indian doctors they
wanted with no one to interfere. The medicine-men have been especially
unfortunate in losing their own children. One Indian doctor has buried
twelve and has only three left. Another has buried four and has one
left. And others have lost theirs in like proportion. On the other hand,
in the school, where we could have more control over them, both as to
observing the laws of health and the use of medicine, when they were
sick there have been very few deaths. Only five children in ten years
have died in school, or been taken fatally sick while there, while the
attendance has been from twenty-five to forty.
During November and December, 1881, we passed through a terrible
sickness. It seemed to be a combination of scarlet fever, diphtheria,
measles, and chicken-pox, about which the physician knew almost nothing.
It was a new hybrid disease, as we afterward learned. The cases were
mostly in the school and in the white families, there being
comparatively few among the outside Indians. There were sixty cases in
five weeks, an average of two new ones every day. At one time every
responsible person in the school was down with it. A number of the
children, while all the physician’s family, himself included, had it,
and one of them lay dead. Five persons died with it, but not one of them
was a scholar. There were then twenty-four scholars, and all but three
had it. Nineteen outside Indians had it, of whom three died. The rest,
who were sick and died, belonged to the white families and the Indian
apprentices and employees. The favor which was shown to the school in
saving their lives was of great value to it.
And now the older Indians are gaining more and more confidence in the
physician, slowly but steadily, some within a year having said that
they will never have an Indian doctor again. In the winter of 1883-84,
four Indian children died, and not an Indian doctor was called. In one
case the parents had just buried one, and another was fatally sick. The
parents came to me and said: “If you can tell us what medicine will cure
the child, we will go to Olympia and get it (thirty miles distant). We
do not care for the expense, we do not care if it shall cost fifty
dollars, if you will only tell us what will cure it.” The child died,
but they had no Indian doctor, although its grandfather strongly urged
the calling of one. After the death of these two children, the family
went to live with an aunt of the mother’s, where they remained about
five months. At that time a child of this aunt was sick, and an Indian
doctor was called, whereupon the bereaved family left the house, because
they did not wish to remain in a house where such practices were
countenanced, even if those doing so were kind relations.