A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Associate Faculty in Cultural Heritage, and Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Margaret Bruchac will describe the lives and work of several 19th-century Indigenous healers, including Rhoda Rhoades (1751-1841), who treated people in Northampton and other western Massachusetts locales.

Rhoades doctored people at her home in “Indian Hollow,” a section of Huntington later destroyed by the construction of the Knightville Dam. She cured illnesses using special diets and traditional medicines made with boneset, Joe Pye weed, wake robin, and other indigenous plants. Rhoades’ neighbors recalled that she grew, “every kind of flower imaginable,” and used them to make an herbal medicine called “The Extract.”

Dr. Bruchac will discuss her research on these gifted Native healers, revealing how their knowledges were exploited by patent medicine peddlars and Yankee physicians. She will also discuss her approach to restorative research, including living history performances in the character of “Molly Geet, the Indian Doctress” at Old Sturbridge Village museum.