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. For details,
see http://fi nnjohn.com. To
contact him or suggest a topic:
fi nn2@offb eatoregon.com or
541-357-2222.
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