“Indian” Patent Medicines

Over the summer, we were lucky to have Ted Fredericksen (New Paltz '28) as our summer intern. For his final project he created a new exhibit for us, "Indian" Patent Medicine. Using bottles from the museum's collection, he traced the history of many of the major purveyors of patent medicines who attempted to increase the legitimacy of their products by tying them to Native American themes and ingredients. The exhibit also traces how ethnocentric ideas of indigenous "savagery" and "primitiveness" were used to imply products that were pure and more natural than those of competitors, even though all of them were essentially snake oil.