Monica May – Mandan

I know you can't see the slides very well but uh I'm can you see them at all okay good my name is Monica May and uh my Indian name is H SES and I'm an enrolled member of the three affiliated tribes the Mandan hiad and orara was born and raised here on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation attended schools here all my life I'm the oldest daughter of Avis Baker mayor and the oldest granddaughter of May Howard coffee 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 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 him 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 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 time 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 phil8 tribes and we are intimately tied with the lwis 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 Molton Edition the 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 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 I do every day as a physician here in New Town 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 management after accounting to I decided that's enough of that so I became a school teacher and taught high school for 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 and uh was 6 years in the military my youngest sister I finished my doctorate there and my younger sister Holly who works here in New Town 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 masters in social work so our mother was very um obsessive compulsive too about reading and going to school and so forth so and it wasn't good enough to go to school you had to come back home home with your skills and practice here so I'm very honored and privileged to practice medicine here I've been in New Town for8 years I worked for Trinity Medical Center out of minet and run my own clinic in the city of Newtown where it's a real opportunity to take take care of all people in our community so I think it makes perfect sense that somebody like me would be interested in lwis and Clark from a historical from an educational from a medical standpoint of view and so that's where my interest lied and and with that I'm going to go ahead and go into the PowerPoint presentation I entitled it we proceeded on let's take a quick look at the general overview in the medical world and how they got ready and come up the Missouri to North Dakota and by the way for those of you not from North Dakota I am a staunch North Dakota I don't really care what lisis and Clark did before North Dakota or did after North Dakota just in North Dakota I didn't mean to be insultive to anybody on that 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 shorttime schedule cuz I thought I was on at 11:30 so I apologize for being late let's take a look at Thomas Jefferson Maryweather Lewis and William Clark and you know it Thomas Jefferson was such an interesting man 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 monello he entertained people and so forth like that 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 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 do do you all remember the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky ordeal no 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 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 the purple area is the Louisiana purchased 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 United States if you look the people were crossing over that Mississippi River and coming into the Louisiana purchased 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 France and a new world power cuz he wanted to be the emperor of the world not just France but the world now just look at that 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 cinjun me meal today if he'd had been successful right well fortunately for us he wasn't he um put those 28,000 people on ships and just imagine what what that had to be like and they got to the South tip of Florida where one of their territory Santa Domingo was a rebellion going on and out of those 28,000 soldiers less than a thousand returned to France and they never did get to New Orleans why not Weaponry small poox malaria yellow fever so disease sets the stage and changes the course of history and it's 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 by 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 Waring with seems like Great Britain wared with everybody huh at any rate he sold this land for 15 million Acres at 3 cents an acre the Bess that'll be the best real estate deal ever to go down on the planet Earth huh and so he purchases the territory and he leaves St Louis he has to get ready and of course he goes to Congress to get the money he had to fangle this because you know the Congress didn't they didn't think this was a good idea to buy this Louisiana purchased territory and then of course he had Sally hemings hanging over his back but he got $2,500 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 in 1805 this way we shall delate 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 Lewis was a Virginia 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 melanine which is a bipolar dis disease such as we know today as manic depressive 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 deduced from your own deductions and evidence and documentation you read but I I think most historians would agree that he did commit suicide 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 M uh Thomas Jefferson at Montello when he died and further more 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 kind of 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 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 and he had brought his slave uh York with him and he lived a full long successful political life I put the core Discovery men up here and you can't see it very well but Sergeant Ordway Patrick gas 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 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 coffee and you know it's all in the mind of the reader uh December 11 1804 the journals enter this private Thomas Howard he jumped the fort fence to get back in because the doors closed that night and three Mandan warriors were with him and he got caught by lwis and Clark and he was punished for doing such an act and showing these mam Warriors how to get get in and 100 flocks well you know again it's all in the mind of the reader interpretation so I'm thinking to myself okay December cold winter in North Dakota what is a man doing out in the middle of nowhere and takes 100 Vlogs for it 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 everybody got paid and they signed their letter X and many of the men returned back to the bandan villages we cannot prove it but I have a very sneaky hunch that I'm probably a descendant of the core Discovery as well as the mha people now every nobody got paid on this Expedition except for one person sakaka the only female yeah yeah all the girls in the crowd I always say and 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 and so we got to 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 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 practice medicine he had a great disdain for it and he had his own medicine chest 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 a Medics disease of balls by Purge inflammation by bleeding being syphilis by Mercury and if you don't know what's going on give him a little bit of opium 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 but they did not know about bacteria and basic hygiene diet nutrition and preventive medicine that were just starting to kind of really try to grasp now in a 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 and bathe and wash themselves and put grease in their hair you know the men of leis 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 and the colonists didn't know much either more than that you know 200 years ago only five medical schools or only 250 people with a degree 100 years ago only 100 only one in 10 doctors had a degree you wouldn't even think about coming to see me if I wasn't through medical school with a 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 going to take I see Dr Nordell in the back and her and I go to the Caribbean once a year ask two women to pack for 10 days hello try packing for 2 and A2 years what are you going to take and you don't got no doctor so you know Jefferson had to consult with Dr Benjamin Rush who who by the way did have a degree and he was one of five doctors that signed this declaration of independence 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 cuz they have a bad spirit in their body and he wrote 10 healthc care 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 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 caused of take Purge of two pills every 4 hours until you operate freely all right we got to stop for a second here they didn't have pills back then Dr 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 xlxs took that whole box at one time that would equal one of Dr Rush's pills it was made of jalup and cill a little mercury and another ingredient so uh 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 if you imagine yourselves as being the men on the Lewis and Clark Trail you got to go up the Missouri it's hot cuz 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 denter and scurvy and you go up to Captain Clark you say Oh Captain Clark I don't feel very good and so he says to you here take a Dr Rush's pill boy those poor guys they must have pooped all the way up to Missouri and all the way back down huh un usual positiveness is often a sign of disease and when you feel it take one or two of the pills where salt cannot be had with your meat steap it a day or two in common line 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 I cataloged all the medicines here and um listed all of the 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 Dr Rush's pills for five bucks $969 for 29 people for 2 and a half years today if you got sick I gave you an antibiotic augmenting for 10 days $120 one person 10 days that's inflation medicines up there say four penis Duo and I had gone through each one of these to figure out what they utilized them for while they had a it it looks like a pen syringe and the men had pretty rampant veneral disease and they would insert this pen and put inject mercury in there for the STDs and the men in the crowd always go ooh 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 got to gather all this information and you're going up this River it's hot you leave at 5: every morning 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 banda hiza and Aika two Mandan villag and three HDs of villages each while one had about 4 or 6,000 people no flushing toilets and matrial lineal primarily and in North Dakota it's located at these sites here a little bit south of our reservation and incidentally you know um small pox hit in 1837 after Lewis and Clark left the villages were burned down to the ground Chief forbears Jed July 30th 1837 from small pox our casino and our Bridge our name in his honor and they traveled further up to like a fishook village which pox then infested them and then eventually up to Alba woods and Independence and then the Garrison diversion project in the ' 50s flooded us out 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 3234 and this is a picture of sakuya'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 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's language hiza there was Rika there was Shi there was French there was English 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 forbears he was just a boy when Lis and Clark came 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 in the earth Lodge they're very well constructed and um were very famous for these architectural Geniuses designed by the women and there was a child that had an absis on his back that a mother um took to men leis and Clark who made a scalpel amputated his toes the mother was so grateful she carried a 100 pound 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 assistant of sakaka delivering her child 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 um not only plants did we share and uh other contribution of sweats and 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 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 8,000 M Journey it was more than a well stocked Medicine Chest it was it's my personal opinion it was their devoted attention to healthc care that contributed most to the success and their diplomatic Su success is how they devoted health 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 hza and the rarra whose way of life would be recorded by many and they shared their ideas their Foods their medicines and knowledge freely with the core in a spirit of cooperation 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 Dr mayor thank you very much ently we have run out of time for Dr mayor but to let her and and mic's still on all right to allow you to H answer your questions that I'm sure you have for Dr mayor we will set her table up outside of our Tena many voices to the left there and she can have a more of a one-on-one conversation with you all if you have further questions about the mesons of the Expedition or um or further in her program of for PowerPoint coming up next we have uh gentleman Fred Baker who's going to be talking about Mand and had Mandan Hada culture in history and they'll be here in about 10 minutes so please allow us to uh to gather Dr mayor's stuff and bring it outside e