It’s easy to forget that Crazy Horse was once actually a real person, even if the historical record is often frustratingly incomplete. But Castle McLaughlin’s latest publication brings readers into the world of the real Crazy Horse. Her book, titled A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn, also delves into one of the more intriguing art historical “Who-Done-Its” in recent memory.
In 1930 the estate of Boston philanthropist George White donated a ledgerbook filled with drawings by Native American artists to Harvard’s Houghton Library. For 70 years it sat on the shelves, unnoticed, until the late Tom Ford, a member of the library’s staff, brought it to the attention of McLaughlin, the curator of North American ethnography at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.
Ledgerbooks by Native Americans are relatively common, but most of them date from after the Indian Wars, when Native prisoners in Florida composed and sold them to tourists for much-needed cash. This book stands out because of its early (and quite specific) production date. As McLaughlin documents in detail, a US soldier discovered the book near the scaffold burial of an Indian Chief on the Little Bighorn Battlefield, shortly after Custer’s defeat. It was made not for tourists, but rather is an actual Native American “War Book,” made by Native Americans, for Native Americans, and filled with drawings of war exploits.
The 77 drawings in the book record warfare and horse stealing on the plains; 11 show the protagonist killing, wounding, or striking a US Soldier or civilian, often with uniforms or guns that are rendered so precisely that we can date the drawing to its conception. Most of the drawings are clearly autobiographical, showing diary-like depictions of day-to-day warrior life.
For Native American warriors, such drawings recorded history. They acted as a means to boast about their battlefield accomplishments and to improve their status among fellow warriors. They also believed the images resulted in “good magic” for future conflicts.
This specific book contains drawings that portray episodes from Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868), during which Cheyenne and Lakota warriors – including Crazy Horse – defended the Yellowstone and Powder River Valleys. It was the only war ever “won” by western Native Americans, who forced the US military to retreat from the Bozeman trail.
At first glance, the drawings may look childish. But as Picasso has pointed out, a drawing’s intelligence isn’t simply a matter of academic technique. Under McLaughlin’s masterful guidance, we come to recognize that, in fact, the drawings in this book exhibit extraordinary intelligence of observation. Every detail is telling, whether it’s a dragonfly painted on a shield or the way war paint was applied to the horses.
As McLaughlin explains, these drawings are as rich and informative as any Euro-American literary text, although they speak in the language of images rather than letters, and shape reality within parameters set by a very different cultural framework. It’s a remarkable lesson in the importance of examining something very closely, of learning to look at images in new ways.
Since no names accompany the drawings, McClaughlin designated each artist with a letter – A through F – and, through careful analysis, set out to discover who the artists might have been. Artist E, for example, drew himself connected to a bird in the sky with a wiggly line. He may well have been the warrior Thunderhawk, who, after the murder of Crazy Horse, returned the body to Crazy Horse’s wife. Then there’s artist B, who showed himself killing a bugler. This could be High Backbone, a friend of Crazy Horse’s who appears to have killed a US Army bugler in the Fetterman fight.
But the focus of McLaughlin’s detective work is artist D, who, in one drawing, drew himself streaked with yellow body paint, and depicted his horse with lightning bolts lining its legs. It’s just how Amos Bad Heart Bull – a nephew of Red Cloud – portrays Crazy Horse and his mare in a separate drawing of Crazy Horse in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Could artist D be Crazy Horse? The episode shows the death of a US army officer and sergeant, which precisely corresponds with a December 1866 skirmish in which Crazy Horse killed Lieutenant Horatio S. Bingham and Sergeant Gideon R. Bowers.
Did Crazy Horse draw this image?
MS Am 2337, Houghton Library, Harvard University
There’s also something about the drawings that fits with what we know of Crazy Horse: they seem to possess a peculiar and distinct energy. Even among his peers, Crazy Horse was known for possessing a mystical aura – a presence that set him apart from the others. As his cousin and contemporary Black Elk once explained:
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world…. It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt.
Likewise the work of artist D differs from the other drawings. As McLaughlin notes: “His drawings testify that he is a deeply spiritual man whose success in war follows from his relationships with higher powers, especially the thunder beings…Artist D’s dynamic, colorful, well-executed drawings…seem to express a contained inwardly focused energy that sets them apart from the rest of the images in the book.”
While the evidence is circumstantial, McLaughlin’s patient accumulation of evidence is powerfully persuasive. By the time you reach the end of her account, it’s hard to avoid the eerie feeling that you’re in the presence of drawings by Crazy Horse himself.
The image from the ledgerbook appears in A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon,” by Castle McLaughlin (2013). Houghton Library Studies 4, Houghton Library of the Harvard Library and Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
By Henry Adams, Case Western Reserve University
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Well, scientifically, there’s no debate. In combination with clean water and sanitation, vaccines are one of the most effective public health measures ever introduced, saving millions of lives every year.
Those who claim there is a “debate” will cite a series of canards designed to scare people away from vaccinating, but, if you’re not familiar with their claims, you could easily be convinced by anti-vaccine rhetoric.
So what is true and what is not?
Let’s address just a few of the common vaccine myths and explain why they’re wrong.
The myth that vaccines are somehow linked to autism is an unsinkable rubber duck. Initiated in 1998 following the publication of the now notorious Lancet paper, (not-a-Dr) Andrew Wakefield was the first to suggest that the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine might be linked to autism.
What he didn’t reveal was that he had multiple conflicts of interest including that he was being paid by lawyers assembling a class action against the manufacturers of MMR, and that he himself had submitted an application for a patent for a single measles vaccine.
It eventually unravelled for Wakefield when the paper was retracted in 2010. He was struck from the medical register for behaviour classified as “dishonest, unethical and callous” and the British Medical Journal accused him of deliberate fraud.
But once the idea was floated, scientists were compelled to investigate, particularly when it stood to impact public health so dramatically. One of the most powerful pieces of evidence to show that there is no link between vaccines and autism comes from Japan where the MMR was replaced with single vaccines mid-1993. Guess what happened? Autism continued to rise.
After this door closed, anti-vaxers shifted the blame to thimerosal, a mercury-containing component (not be confused with the scary type that accumulates in the body). Small amounts of thimerosal were used as a preservative in some vaccines, but this never included MMR.
Thimerosal or ethyl-mercury was removed from all scheduled childhood vaccines in 2000, so if it were contributing to rising cases of autism, you would expect a dramatic drop following its removal. Instead, like the MMR in Japan, the opposite happened, and autism continues to rise.
Further evidence comes from a recently published exhaustive review examining 12,000 research articles covering eight different vaccines which also concluded there was no link between vaccines and autism.
Yet the myth persists and probably for several reasons, one being that the time of diagnosis for autism coincides with kids receiving several vaccinations and also, we currently don’t know what causes autism. But we do know what doesn’t, and that’s vaccines.
It’s precisely because of vaccines that diseases such as smallpox have disappeared.
India recently experienced two years without a single case of polio because of a concerted vaccination campaign.
Australia was declared measles-free in 2005 by the World Health Organization (WHO) – before we stopped being so vigilant about vaccinating and outbreaks began to reappear.
The impact of vaccine complacency can be observed in the current measles epidemic in Wales where there are now over 800 cases and one death, and many people presenting are of the age who missed out on MMR vaccination following the Wakefield scare.
In many ways, vaccines are a victim of their own success, leading us to forget just how debilitating preventable diseases can be – not seeing kids in calipers or hospital wards full of iron lungs means we forget just how serious these diseases can be.
Although this sounds counter-intuitive, it’s actually true, but it doesn’t mean that vaccines don’t work as anti-vaxers will conflate. Remember that no vaccine is 100% effective and vaccines are not a force field. So while it’s still possible to get the disease you’ve been vaccinated against, disease severity and duration will be reduced.
With pertussis (whooping cough), for example, severe complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis (brain inflammation) occur almost exclusively in the unvaccinated.
So since the majority of the population is vaccinated, it follows that most people who get a particular disease will be vaccinated, but critically, they will suffer fewer complications and long-term effects than those who are completely unprotected.
Vaccination is not just a personal issue, it’s a community responsibility, largely because of a concept known as “community immunity”. This describes a level of vaccination that prevents epidemics or outbreaks from taking hold and spreading.
Some people question the validity of this concept, sometimes referred to as herd immunity, but the impact of it breaking down can be easily observed in places where vaccination levels fall dangerously low – take the current measles outbreak in Wales, for example.
The other important factor about community immunity is it protects those who, for whatever reason, can’t be vaccinated or are not fully vaccinated. This includes very young children, immunocompromised people (such as cancer sufferers) and elderly people.
A cursory search of Google for vaccine ingredients pulls up a mishmash of scary-sounding ingredients that to the uninitiated can sound like “franken-science”.
Some of these claims are patently untrue (there is no anti-freeze in vaccines), or are simple scaremongering (aborted foetuses – in the 1960s some cells were extracted from a foetus to establish a cell line that is still used in labs today). Some of the claimed chemicals (and remember everything is made of chemicals) are present, but are at such low levels as to never reach toxicity.
The simple thing to remember is the poison is in the dose – in high enough doses even water can kill you. And there’s 600 times more formaldehyde in a pear than a vaccine.
Also, if you ever read the claim that “vaccines are injected directly into the blood stream” (they’re not), be sceptical of any other claims made.
The concept of “too many too soon” was recently examined in a detailed analysis of the US childhood immunisation schedule by The Institute of Medicine. Experts specifically looked for evidence that vaccination was linked to “autoimmune diseases, asthma, hypersensitivity, seizures, child developmental disorders, learning or developmental disorders, or attention deficit or disruptive disorders”, including autism. The researchers confirmed that the childhood vaccination schedule was safe.
The amount of immune challenges that children fight every day (between 2,000 to 6,000) in the environment is significantly greater than the number of antigens or reactive particles in all their vaccinations combined (about 150 for the entire vaccination schedule).
So the next time you hear these myths about vaccination, hopefully you’ll have some evidence up your sleeve to debunk them.
By Rachael Dunlop, University of Technology, Sydney
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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By 1970, legislation codified cannabis as one of the nation’s most dangerous drugs: the Controlled Substance Act classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it possessed high potential for abuse and had no acceptable medical use. Over 40 years later, the classification remains.
But research has shown that marijuana, while still criminalized at the federal level, can be effective as a substitute for treating opioid addicts and preventing overdoses. Massachusetts, which recently legalized medical marijuana – and where heroin overdoses have soared – could be a fertile testing ground for this potentially controversial treatment.
The medical case for marijuana
Before being criminalized, marijuana was used in the US to cure depression and a variety of other mental health ailments. Many studies have supported the therapeutic benefits of cannabinoids, along with the ability of marijuana’s psychoactive ingredients to treat nausea, help with weight loss, alleviate chronic pain, and mitigate symptoms of neurological diseases.
Other research, however, contradicts claims regarding the benefits of cannabidiol treatment. Some say marijuana actually poses a risk for psychosis and schizophrenia. Although the FDA has approved some synthetic cannabinoids for medical treatment, federal agencies do not support marijuana as a legitimate medicine until more clinical studies have been conducted.
The scientific debate over the harms and benefits of marijuana has impeded federal lawmakers from moving forward on marijuana legislation reform. As a result, in 23 states, medical marijuana has become legalized by popular vote.
Marijuana policy dilemma
With each state crafting unique medical marijuana regulations, we find ourselves at a crucial turning point in drug policy. Public health professionals claim the road map used by “big tobacco” will be copied with legal marijuana, and addiction rates for marijuana will increase to those we see for tobacco. Others warn that if medical marijuana is used indiscriminately and without focused education on the uses and forms of medical marijuana, a prescription pain pill-like crisis could occur.
Among drug treatment specialists, marijuana remains controversial. Although some research has shown marijuana to be an alternative treatment for more serious drug addiction, addiction treatment specialists still view marijuana as highly addictive and dangerous. These views handicap policy reform, but despite its status as a Schedule 1 drug, recent research shows marijuana could be part of the solution to the most deadly drug epidemic our country has seen in decades.
Massachusetts: a case study
In 2012 Massachusetts became the 18th state to legalize medical marijuana, though the first 11 dispensaries are not scheduled to open until sometime in the coming year. This situation presents an opportunity to implement sensible, research-based policy.
Massachusetts, like many states across the US, has seen a dramatic rise in opioid addition fueled by the increase in opiate prescription pills. In Boston, heroin overdoses increased by 80% between 2010 and 2012, and four out of five users were addicted to pain pills before turning to heroin.
Meanwhile, the leading cause of death among the Boston’s homeless population has shifted from AIDS complications to drug overdoses, with opiates involved in 81% of overdose deaths. This is an alarming finding given recent expansion in clinical services for the city’s homeless.
Addiction specialists and health care professionals in Boston have been at the forefront of integrating behavioral and medical care. Naloxone and methadone are currently the main solutions to address the growing opiate addiction and overdose problem. But Naloxone is an overdose antidote, not a cure or a form of preventative therapy.
Methadone, like heroin and other opioids, has a very narrow therapeutic index (the ratio between the toxic dose and the therapeutic dose of a drug). This means that a small change in dosage can be lethal to the user. Marijuana, however, has one of the safest (widest) therapeutic ratios of all drugs.
Research shows that marijuana has been used as a form of self-treatment, where users take cannabis in lieu of alcohol, prescription opiates, and illegal drugs. That’s one reason why researchers are calling for marijuana to be tested as a substitute for other drugs. In this capacity, marijuana can be thought of as a form of harm reduction. While researchers don’t seek to discount some of the drug’s potential negative effects, they view it as a less damaging alternative to other, harder drugs. Despite these findings, marijuana is rarely incorporated in formal drug treatment plans.
A recent study might change this policy. Comparing states with and without legalized medical marijuana, it found a substantial decrease in opioid (heroin and prescription pill) overdose death rates in states that had enacted medical marijuana laws. In their conclusions, the researchers suggested that medical marijuana should be part of policy aimed to prevent opioid overdose.
Outside marijuana’s harms and benefits, missing in this discussion is the social environment of drug use. Drug use is social in nature. Where and with whom drugs are used influences why and how they are used. Socially acceptable or moderate use of drugs can be learned through social rituals in socially controlled settings.
Studies in the Netherlands found that using marijuana in Amsterdam coffeehouses encouraged a “stepping-off” hard drug use. These studies also found that when young people used marijuana in a controlled coffeehouse setting instead of a polydrug-using environment, they learned to use marijuana moderately without combining with other drugs. Along with providing access to marijuana, it’s important to instruct users on safe and effective medical marijuana consumption.
Since Massachusetts has not yet opened its medical marijuana dispensaries, it is too early to see if medical marijuana legislation will help reduce opiate addiction in the Commonwealth. Using recent research findings, Massachusetts policymakers have a unique opportunity to implement medical marijuana policies that address its contemporary opiate overdose. Medical marijuana could be part of drug treatment for heroin and opiates.
For homeless people, however, getting a marijuana card is expensive and buying medical marijuana from a dispensary is beyond their economic means. Street drugs are more prevalent in their social setting, easier to obtain, and can be much cheaper. From a policy perspective, addressing the alarming rates of overdose deaths among the homeless in Boston could mean distributing medical marijuana cards to homeless addicts for free and providing reduced cost medical marijuana.
What if medical marijuana cards were offered to homeless addicts?
Formerly demonized and later legislated as a Schedule 1 substance, marijuana could diminish the damage wrought by harder drugs, like heroin. While opioid use is a nationwide epidemic, Massachusettes – long at the forefront of developing scientifically based public policy – has the opportunity to be at the forefront of cutting-edge, socially-informed drug policy.
By Miriam Boeri, Bentley University
This is the second in a series of three articles on alternative strategies to treat addiction. To read the first in the series, click here.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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