A MOVE TO LONDON

During the initial debates over his band membership, Dr. Oronhyatekha moved to London in 1875 and re-established his medical practice there. He was also appointed as physician to the nearby Oneida of Thames reserve. Like his appointment to Tyendinaga, this appointment may have resulted from his friendship with John A. Macdonald, although Macdonald was no longer prime minister (after 1874). Clearly they were still friends. Dr. Oronhyatekha wrote to congratulate Macdonald on his re-election to the seat of Kingston, and asserted that his return to the office of prime minister was just a matter of time. In conclusion, Dr. Oronhyatekha said he and his family all loved the name of “Sir John.” In fact, if his recently born baby girl, Annie Edith, had been a boy, he would have named him John Alexander as an expression of his feelings.⁴¹ However the appointment arose, Dr. Oronhyatekha visited the Oneida reserve every week for over a decade⁴² and opened a private medical practice in downtown London. Little is known of his practice there, but he became well known in the city, attested to by his entry in a local history. The author wrote that the
pleasant results that have followed his practice warmly testify to his ability and popularity as a physician; and to his natural qualifications as a medical practitioner he brings a mind well stored with medical learning, and an experience which others might well desire. A clever student, he avails himself of the latest and most popular works of medicine, keeping thoroughly posted with the progress of this science. Not only professionally, but as a citizen, in both private and public circles, the doctor has become well and favorably known.
Another London publication stated that Dr. Oronhyatekha was “almost too well known as to require comment.”⁴³
Part of his fame stemmed from the controversial letters he wrote to newspapers, largely in defence of First Nations culture and society. A reader of the Toronto Mail wrote a letter to the editor in November 1875 ridiculing the idea that prohibition improved society. He used native society as proof of his argument. “The North American Indians enjoyed perfect prohibition,” he wrote. “They were certainly not industrious; their morality was questionable; their treachery and inhumanity were proverbial,” he concluded.
Dr. Oronhyatekha’s response was typically humorous but scathing. He assumed the author of the letter, a Mr. R.W. Phipps, was a white man, because all the statements he made except for one were false, and “that, according to our experience, is about the average truthfulness of the average white man.” Native peoples, while not “’hewers of wood and drawers of water,’” were assiduous and perseverant in their occupations as warriors and hunters. In fact, the Haudenosaunee, he said, commanded the respect of all native groups from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River. Their confederacy was an “enduring monument to their wisdom, patriotism, and statesmanship,” and their constitution “might well have been copied by the framers” of Canadian confederation. As for immorality, Dr. Oronhyatekha continued, certainly it had increased, but that stemmed from contact with white men. “Let Mr. Phipps visit the Six Nations, and he will find that a simple stick or broom placed against the door of a house, indicating that there is nobody at home, more effectually protects the property in that house than all the locks and bars, watchmen, and police are able to do for property in the city of Toronto. Then, again, an Indian cannot curse and swear till he has learned the English or some other language than his own.” Still, he didn’t think that Canadians were especially immoral, but certainly he thought that “the Indians are ten-fold better than they are, and in the earlier times … the Indians were ten-fold better than they are now.” The Haudenosaunee had a golden rule, Dr. Oronhyatekha wrote: “’Do unto others as they do unto you;’ and if Mr. Phipps or any other white man has ever suffered treachery or inhumanity at the hands of Indians, it has been in consequence of the above Golden Rule.
A further exchange appeared from “B.A.” of Peterborough, attacking native treatment of women. Both Dr. Peter E. Jones and Dr. Oronhyatekha responded. It was true that Haudenosaunee women worked while the men were hunting or at war, Dr. Oronhyatekha agreed, but they never made them “do all the drudgery while we were engaged in drinking and carousing in some neighbouring beer-shop … at any rate not till the ’average’ white man taught us their superior way of treating women.” He asked if B.A. knew that hundreds of women worked in mills and factories in England in drudgery to support their husbands. In comparison, Haudenosaunee women were the holders of political power; they determined who became chief and were consulted by council about matters that concerned the confederacy. In fact, the Haudenosaunee were “so much better than white people owing in a measure to the exalted and untrammelled position our women occupy.”
Nevertheless, Dr. Oronhyatekha was “liberal enough to admit that there are some white men who very nearly approach the high standard of morality and true nobility of the Indians.” But when he saw his people slandered in a newspaper, he was compelled to show that “the Indian has always been, is now even in his degenerate days, and ever will be, better than any white man on the face of the earth.” In fact, he offered his “cordial sympathy” to B.A. “for having been so unfortunate as not to have been born an Indian.” ⁴⁴
In 1877, he drew media attention in the St. Thomas Journal for his comments on the so-called discovery of the grave of Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader who was most known in Ontario as an ally of the British in the War of 1812. In the nineteenth century, there were numerous attempts to locate and excavate Tecumseh’s bones. The idea of finding Tecumseh’s burial ground originated with supporters of William Henry Harrison, during his American presidential campaign of 1840, who wished to honour him by collecting artifacts from his military triumphs over native groups. The resulting excavation in Ontario was met with outrage, although it seemed unlikely that the bones found were, in fact, Tecumseh’s. Subsequently, various communities and historical societies took up the cause to erect a monument near Tecumseh’s grave or at a place deemed honourable for his re-interment. One of these groups was the United Canadian Association, whose general mandate aimed to boost Canadian nationalism. Members of this association conferred with Chief George H.M. Johnson, Dr. Oronhyatekha’s cousin, who apparently owned a map that indicated the location of Tecumseh’s burial based on oral tradition. These directions indeed led to a grave, which the United Canadians excavated. They called upon Daniel Wilson, Dr. Oronhyatekha’s old professor from Toronto University, to examine the bones and verify that it was Tecumseh. Instead, Wilson pronounced the bones to be an assortment of human and animal bones, likely buried as a decoy.
Not all Canadians believed that Tecumseh should be immortalized with a monument, and several wrote to the St. Thomas Journal deriding such an idea. Author “E.D.H.” called Tecumseh and other natives savage, pagan, cruel, cowardly, lazy, thieving, and dirty. Dr. Oronhyatekha answered back in anger. If some natives now possessed the traits listed, it was because of the contact they had had with white men, he wrote. In fact, countered Dr. Oronhyatekha, “many of the most cruel and diabolical outrages … are done by white men disguised as Indians — by white men who, perhaps, are able to discern only a little less between right and wrong, between justice and intolerant bigotry,” than E.D.H. himself. With another sharp dig, he said he was “quite prepared to admit that my race are not what they once were — brave, just and honest; but my only wonder is that having been in more or less constant intercourse with white gentlemen like ’E.D.H.’ for a century or so they are not ten times worse than they are.” Further, he cited prominent anthropologists of the time who argued that First Nations possessed many admirable traits. In response, E.D.H. acknowledged that there were exceptions to his characterizations, including Dr. Oronhyatekha himself who had accomplished much. ⁴⁵
In 1879, Dr. Oronhyatekha again appeared in local newspapers during his temporary appointment as physician to the Moraviantown reserve during a smallpox outbreak. ⁴⁶ At first, it was not recognized as smallpox, delaying the use of quarantine. Moraviantown’s physician, Dr. George Tye, began to vaccinate everyone, but when some refused to be quarantined, he resigned. Other local doctors also refused to visit the reserve. Chief C.M. Stonefish and the Indian Agent Thomas Gordon called upon the Department of Indian Affairs to ask Dr. Oronhyatekha to attend the community. Ellen and the children worried that he would also fall sick, and, in fact, Dr. Oronhyatekha did not feel safe. But he did not see how he could refuse, since all other doctors had deserted them.
Over a number of days in late May, Dr. Oronhyatekha finished vaccinating most of the Moraviantown residents, but the disease had already spread. In June, to create an effective quarantine, he established a twelve-bed temporary hospital at the home of Jeremiah Stonefish, the brother of the chief, with Stonefish and his wife as attendants. The local band council also appointed Stonefish as a constable so that he could enforce sanitary regulations and ensure that all the sick were moved to the hospital. Council also enacted a bylaw forbidding visits to homes that had sick individuals, enforced by a fine ranging from two to ten dollars. To supervise the hospital and the general disinfection of homes and the clothing of the sick, Dr. Oronhyatekha hired Dr. Kenwendeshon (John C. Maracle), a Tyendinaga Mohawk who practised in Syracuse, New York. Kenwendeshon was a nephew through Ellen’s family and had apprenticed with Dr. Oronhyatekha in London; out of desperation for assistance, Dr. Oronhyatekha asked him to leave his practice temporarily. Leaving Maracle in charge of the day-to-day hospital operations, Dr. Oronhyatekha checked in each week and also visited families who needed medical treatment unrelated to smallpox. They were afraid, they told him, to see Maracle at the hospital in case they contracted the disease. Dr. Oronhyatekha’s own practice in London suffered because his patients feared exposure to smallpox.
Even though diphtheria and tuberculosis killed more Ontarians than smallpox — there had been just over one hundred deaths in the previous two years — smallpox epidemics were met with widespread dread. Edward Jenner had invented a vaccine in the 1790s, but supplies could be contaminated or ineffective. Further, the public feared that the vaccine actually caused the disease and resisted vaccination. Without compulsory vaccination, public health authorities could only rely on the goodwill of the public and the establishment of quarantine to quell an outbreak. For those who fell sick, all Dr. Oronhyatekha could do was dose them with cream of tartar and extract of malt, typical treatments of the time. ⁴⁷
Public fear meant it was impossible to get food and other supplies for the hospital or for the Moraviantown residents. Merchants refused to deliver goods or to allow residents inside their shops. In the end, Chief Stonefish donated one of his cows to the hospital to provide much needed milk for patients. By late June, local politicians were so concerned that they jointly wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs expressing their fears. These concerns made the local papers, including London’s Free Press. Little had been done, it said. The sick had not been quarantined, and Dr. Oronhyatekha only visited occasionally and then only to vaccinate those not sick. It also described how the sick washed their clothes in streams and rivers, the very same water that other communities used. Very quickly, however, the Free Press printed an apology, describing Dr. Oronhyatekha’s establishment of quarantine and his arrangement for the hospital to be under the constant charge of Dr. Kenwendeshon. The implication that Moraviantown residents had poisoned local water was untrue, it backtracked. Shortly thereafter, Indian Agent Gordon and Dr. Oronhyatekha met with local politicians to reassuringly explain their course of action.
By late July, Dr. Oronhyatekha reported that there were only six patients at the hospital, and several of these would be discharged shortly. There were no new cases, so he hoped that the outbreak was almost over. The hospital closed in mid-August, although Dr. Kenwendeshon stayed two more weeks just in case. In the end, forty-two fell ill with smallpox and of these, thirteen died, but these deaths occurred before the hospital had been established.
Even Dr. Oronhyatekha’s role in stemming the outbreak of smallpox turned political. Originally, he had quoted a fee of twenty-five dollars per visit, but when he realized he would have to continue to visit Moraviantown to treat families who did not have smallpox, he changed his price to a more affordable monthly charge of one hundred and fifty dollars. The Department of Indian Affairs questioned this change, asking why he needed to visit the community so often since Dr. Kenwendeshon was in charge of daily hospital care. This query prompted Chief Frank Wampum to write to Indian Affairs, describing Dr. Oronhyatekha as a “sharp man” who had clearly conspired with Chief Stonefish to increase his profits. Agent Gordon also reported that he had charged for visits not made and that some described him as unprincipled. In the end, however, at a Moraviantown council meeting attended by all chiefs, Gordon, and Dr. Oronhyatekha, these misunderstandings were cleared up, and the chiefs agreed to pay his outstanding charges.