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6A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • DECEMBER 19, 2018 Off beat Oregon: Ka-Ton-Ka was Oregon’s own nationwide patent-medicine sensation Finn J.D. John For The Sentinel T here was a time, in the late 1800s, when one of the most popular med- icines in the country was a product painstakingly brewed by members of the Warm Springs Indian tribe of Central Oregon, using natural ingredi- ents harvested from the beau- tiful virgin forests and fruitful plains of their home hunting grounds. Or so the manufacturers of “KA-TON-KA, Th e Great In- dian Medicine” would have their customers believe. “Th e ingredients of Ka- Ton-Ka are all gathered by the Warm Springs Indians in Oregon and Washington Ter- ritory,” exults Page 5 of “Th e Warm Springs Indians and their Medicine,” a 36-page booklet published by the com- pany in the late 1880s. “Th ey prepare them in their own pe- culiar manner; and no drug- gist can duplicate that simple Indian preparation.” No specifi cs are off ered about those ingredients, of course; but each bottle of Ka- Ton-Ka gives full details about what kind of benefi ts one can expect from regularly taking Ka-Ton-Ka: “A cure for all blood diseases, stomach and liver diffi culties!” it shouts. “Such as — Dyspepsia; Bil- iousness; Syphilis; Scrofula; Salt Rheum; Erysipelas; Ca- tarrh; Liver Complaint; Rheu- matism; Enlargmement of the Liver; and Diseases of the Kid- neys!” And, at the bottom, in bold type: “OREGON INDIAN MEDICINE CO.” — followed, in the smallest letters on the entire label, by the line, “Cor- ry, Pa.” — the actual city where the stuff was actually made, by the ton, in a factory. K a-Ton-Ka Tonic was, of course, a simple patent medicine, one of thousands that the country was awash in throughout the late 1800s. Unlike some others, Ka-Ton- Ka was at least fairly harmless; it was made with sugar, aloes, baking soda, and booze (it was 20 percent alcohol). It was one of the most popular patent remedies, sold by traveling troupes of Native American entertainers at elaborate wild- west shows staged at small- town community halls and parks all over the rural parts of the country. Th e product, and the com- pany, was the fruit of a part- nership between a colorful New York native named “Col- onel” T.A. Edwards, and a half-Cayuse mountain man named Donald McKay. Donald McKay was the son of Hudson’s Bay Co. trapper Th omas McKay and She- Who-Rides-Like-The-Wind Umatilla, a member of the Cayuse tribe. Th e young McK- ay worked early in life as a trapper and trader, then as an Indian interpreter for the U.S. Government. Th en in 1872, McKay was put in charge of the Warm Springs Indian Scouts (a de- tachment of the U.S. Army) and sent to do battle with “Captain Jack,” the leader of the Modocs, who were then in the process of humiliating the regular Army by hiding out in the lava beds and defeating ev- ery force sent against them. In 1873, the Modocs were defeated with the help of McKay and his Scouts — and news of the action, spun as heroic Wild-West action sto- ries, made McKay nationally famous. And it was about that time that he met Edwards, who was working for the U.S. Secret Service and had been sent out to Oregon to help with the Modoc situation. Edwards was one of those larger-than-life promoter types with which the Wild West seemed to abound. Por- traits of him from the time show keen eyes, long hair combed back, a walrus mus- tache and an “Imperial” goa- tee — very much like “Buff alo Bill” Cody. And, in every way that counts, he was in the same business as Buff alo Bill. Capitalizing on the half-Na- tive scout’s momentary fame, Edwards squired McKay around the U.S. and Europe on an exhibition tour as the “hero of the lava beds.” Th is was at about the same time Buff alo Bill was doing the same thing; Wild West shows of the type that would soon make Buff alo Bill famous were just getting started. But rather than taking his Western Hero and going into direct competition with Buf- falo Bill, Edwards chose an- other path. In the mid-1870s he organized the Oregon In- dian Medicine Company, with Donald McKay as a sort of hero-mascot; and got to work peddling Indian folk reme- dies, the formulas for which McKay supposedly learned at his grandmother’s knee. Ka-Ton-Ka was the fi rst one, of course, and it was soon joined by a whole fl eet of spurious Warm Springs medical breakthroughs: Nez Perce Catarrh Snuff , Indian Cough Syrup, Modoc Oil, War Paint Ointment, Warm Springs Consumption Cure, Wasco Cough Drops, Quillaia Soap, something called Mox- Ci-Tong, and Donald McKay’s Indian Worm Eradicator. Th is last, by the way, con- sisted of large pills made of rolled-up waterproof paper. In the stomach, the candy coating would dissolve and the paper would unravel, so that at the suff erer’s next “call of nature,” there would be vis- ible “evidence” of tapeworm eradication in the toilet bowl. One imagines Donald McKay not being too happy about that particular medicine having his name on it. But none of these nostrums had any real medical value beyond their alcohol content, except as antacids. And per- haps McKay’s ego was soothed a bit by the extraordinarily fl attering full-color portrait of himself in buckskins printed on the side of each box, with the words “DONALD McK- AY, Greatest of Living Scouts” at the top. To sell all this pseudo-In- dian hokum, Edwards and McKay started out by hiring troupes to go forth and stage Wild West Indian Medicine shows around the country. And at fi rst, the story of the Indians brewing medicine in the primeval forest proved a powerful lure. But their centrally con- trolled sales model didn’t scale fast enough to slake all the demand quickly enough to establish market dominance. Th eir main competitor in the Indian medicine racket, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co., promptly borrowed the concept and refi ned it into traveling Indian encampments (complete with painted tipis, a fast-talking bottle-waving “In- dian Agent” to do the selling, and a bubbling cauldron of “medicine” that people could actually watch the “Indian medicine men” brewing). Th ey literally hired more than 500 players — real Indi- ans from any and every tribe, and Native-looking white peo- ple — to pretend to be Kick- apoo Indians for these shows. Th ey were peddling some- thing called “Kickapoo Indian Sagwa,” a tonic almost identi- cal to Ka-Ton-Ka. Edwards decided that in- stead of meeting this challenge head-on, his company would instead corner the market on supplying independent med- icine-peddler troupes with product to sell along with co- pious amounts of promotional posters and fl iers, and let them do the work. He’d get a small- er slice, but there would be no central-offi ce bottleneck to slow its growth. oon all over the rural parts of the country, from the backs of special barouches and wagons and on the stages at community opera houses, in a thousand diff erent ways, trav- eling medicine shows hawked Oregon Medicine. Th e idea of these shows was, basically, the same one that was used in the old sin- gle-sponsor early radio and TV shows like “Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins” or “Th e Camel News Caravan.” Th ere would be copious entertainment — musical performances, sketch comedy, maybe a ventriloquist — followed by a pitch man urging everyone to get their wallets out. Th is, of course, was before radio or television, and many little towns that were visited by these traveling shows were so grateful for the entertainment that they would buy whether they felt they needed it or not. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Ka-Ton-Ka worked just as well as Tums to settle an acid stomach. It wasn’t truly useless — although it certainly wasn’t going to help syphilis suff er- ers, as the label promised, it was fi ne for “dyspepsia.” But it’s worth remember- ing also that in the late 1800s, traveling troupes of Vaudeville players had a terrible reputa- tion, especially in rural com- munities. So many of them were fronts for gangs of card sharpers and prostitutes that the very name “Th eatre” be- came poisonous; if you’ve ever wondered why the communi- ty theater building in towns like Elgin is called an “Opera House” despite likely never having hosted an opera in its entire existence, that’s why. Rural America is peppered with other “opera houses” for the same reason. But if a traveling Vaude- ville company wasn’t welcome for moral reasons, a traveling troupe of healers selling med- icine was fi ne. For one thing, one knew exactly what they wanted — to sell bottles — and didn’t have to worry about immoral hidden agendas; for another thing, if a troupe turned out to be a front for de- S The Cottage Events Venue presents SONGSTRESS pravity, the company could be appealed to. So these elaborate sales pitches were giving rural Ore- gon, and rural America, some- thing they didn’t trust anyone else to give them. Ironic as it sounds, the patent medicine swindlers were the only ones the public could trust, because they had made peace with that particular swindle. No one was going to go to Hell for having bought a bottle of useless medicine, but plenty of rural Americans would con- sider themselves or their loved ones in grave danger of dam- nation if they succumbed to the charms of a Vaudeville tart aft er a variety-theatre show. But over the fi rst couple de- cades of the 20th Century, that changed. First, stock theatre troops like Baker’s Players in Portland started reclaiming the respectability of the stage; and then came motion pic- tures. By the outbreak of the First World War, not even the most straight-laced community had to resort to getting its enter- tainment from sales pitches. By then, the Indian medi- cine shows were already show- ing their age. McKay died in 1894, although his portrait stayed on the boxes till the end. Colonel Edwards died 10 years later. Th e company soldiered on, dwindling in size and chang- ing hands several times, until it sort of faded away just be- fore the First World War. (Sources: Step Right Up, a book by Brooks McNamara published in 1975 by Double- day; “William McKay’s Journal: 1866-67: Indian Scouts, Part I,” an article by Keith Clark and Donna Clark published in the June 1978 issue of Oregon His- torical Quarterly) Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University and writes about odd tidbits of Oregon history. 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