The Fatal Tradition of Medicine Men
A tragic report from Klickitat County details the violent death of a traditional healer, highlighting the clash between Indigenous medical customs and outside influences.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last year two unsuccessful medicine men of the Yakima tribe were murdered by relatives of deceased patients and their slayers were sentenced to the penitentiary, where one died in confinement. It was thought that this would result in the breaking up of the custom which was so fatal to medicine men, but another case has recently been reported from Klickitat county, where an aged klootch man who practiced the 'art of healing' was cut down with an ax as she was singing the death song of sorrow for one of her patients, who had died of la grippe. This disease was fatal to a large number of Indians, the sweathouse and cold water cure carrying them off very suddenly.
“An aged klootch man who practiced the 'art of healing' was cut down with an ax as she was singing the death song.”
This account captures a period of intense cultural trauma and violence within Indigenous communities during the 1890s, exacerbated by the introduction of Western diseases like influenza ('la grippe') to which native populations had little immunity.
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