you could boil the willow bark down, scrape residue out of the pot. that s the basic ingredient for aspirin. it was an early pain killer. one of my favorite they used was a tree called tickle tongue. that s what they would use prior to dental work. you can suck on it and it would make your mouth go numb. as good as novocain? no, but better than nothing. we ll move to the back, which was basically the doctor s dental office and also the pharmacy. there would be jars and vials of ground up powders and whatnot. he would make his own pills and his own medicines that way. of course, like i said, they use things to grow naturally. some of them actually did have medicinal purposes and would work. some of them did not. a lot of these recipes, even called them prescriptions, they used for medicines called for things that were poisonous. there s recipes that call for, believe it or not, require you put three drops of hemlock in it. hemlock is very poisonous. there s several that call for crushed up buckeye seeds. buckeyes are poisonous. so the rule of thumb was a little could cure you and a lot could kill you. so the doctor would have his pharmacy, his scales for weighing powders and whatnot, the way he needed it. this also would become the dental office as we will. dental work in my opinion, outside of surgery, was one of the scariest things people would have had to have done during this time period. look here we have our dental chair and drill. the drill is a treadel drill. it runs off a treadel, like a sowing machine, belts and pulleys. ours is missing several pieces. you would use foot power to get the belts turning. you can hear it s nice and squeaky. so you can imagine that dental drill sound. you would have that, that would go up. that will cause the drillbit to turn and the dentist would use it to drill your teeth. it s a medical chair, this one used circa 1856 by a local doctor, dr. g.a. frierson, south of town here. true blue medical care and the reason we know true blue, number one by design. you know if you foot pedal here, the chair can lean back, a lot of angle to the patient laying in the chair. the good thing is the absence of any arm on the chair. in order for the doctor to pull the tooth, he had to keep you as immobile as he could. the patient would sit in the chair, the doctor himself would step over the patient and pin him to the chair so he could work on the patient s mouth and basically keep his body from moving around so much. the teeth, the novocain they would give you, pliers were used to remove an impacted tooth. one of my favorite was a tool called a tooth key. a tooth key consists of a handle, a shaft and a hook. it s a hinged hook. we ll pretend my fingertip is a tooth. you would hang that at the base of the gum right on the edge of the tooth and rotate it around. and then using just manpower and leverage, you would rotate the tooth out of the gum line. always hear about george washington having wooden teeth. they weren t always wooden. as the years would go by, eventually they would start making dentures and false teeth. if we look, we have ivory teeth that would be used, or porcelain, porcelain was used a lot, too. the unique things about these dentures is that they are toxic. because that the base they made and used, they used led to hold these in place. you pop them in your mouth, they are fairly absorbent and they are putting in toxins left and right. they didn t know about led poisoning at the time. stay off your feet. you re not going to wear your dentures in bed so you set them on the table. you get to feel better. you put them back in and get sick again. you could get led poisoning from wearing dentures at the time. we talked about the doctors themself, when we look at 1830s to 1940s, 1849, the records show there were only 87 doctors in the western half of louisiana. that s pretty scares when you talk about a whole state. these doctors, we talk about them moving around. these doctors were much needed. i always tell kids on the tours when we do our tours, next time you go to the doctor, be sure to hug his or her neck or shake his or her hand and say thank you because of the amount of time they issued into their schooling and everything they have done to help bring us into this modern world. all weekend on american history tv featuring shreveport, louisiana. learn more about shreveport and find out where c-span s local content vehicles are going next online at c-span do the or c-span.org/localcontent. you re watching c-span3, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. coming up next, southern historical association president talks about the legacy and impact of jim crow on populations of native americans living in the south. this is about an hour. thank you very much. i very much appreciate you coming here. i would like to acknowledge special people, my son, stepson and his wife. a member of the cherokee nation tribal council and my graduate students lined up here on the front. if they would just stand, i would very much appreciate it. nothing in my professional career has brought me more pleasure than them. so this address is for you. in 1935, secretary of interior and commissioner of indian affairs john collier staged a meeting with the delegation of seminoles at west palm beach, florida. their purpose was to encourage support for the recently enacted indian reorganization act that promised to halt indian land laws, promote tribal sovereignty and reviolationize iiz iziz izi revitalize. they had assisted removal militarily. the second seminole war had ended without a peace treaty. it willy the seminole tribe and united states remained in a state of war. a circumstance that came to the attention of a number of white civic leaders and businessmen in south florida. these boosters saw the visit by ickes and collier as an opportunity to stimulate purpose meeting they proclaimed it a peace conference and added the possibility of seminoles performing a plain style sundance, something that was never going to happen. when the boosters implied that the washington dignitaries intended to present for signature a treaty formally ending the seminole war, the indians became badly frightened. 100 years after the threat of removal sparked the conflict, the seminoles who managed to avoid removal and stay in florida worried that a treaty even now would mean the loss of their homes. consequently most seminole bands refused to participate in the palm beach ceremony. although it actually focused on the present, not the past, whites and seminoles linked to the event in west palm beach to removal, an indication that the century old expulsion of the large indian nations from the southeast cast a long shadow over the region. removal normally marks the end of the inclusion of indians in southern history. but tonight that is where i want to begin. the indian removal act passed in 1830 accomplished the dispossession of the five large southern indian nations that held land in common. the cherokees, chickasaw, choctaws, creeks and seminoles. by 1842, most of their citizens and tribal governments are in what is today eastern oklahoma. nonetheless, a few remained behind. cherokees in southern apalachicola, a, creeks on the gulf coastal plain and choctaw scattered over central mississippi and louisiana. in addition, thousands of indian people, whom the united states never threatened with removal lived in the region on small tribal plots, individually owned farms or public lands. as they took up former i saidian land, white southerners stopped thinking very much about the indian people who remained in the region. they kept some indian place names, especially for natural features but also make changes so mountain peaks came to commemorate white men, indian scriptures lakes and waterfalls and settlements with new names rose on the ruins of native towns. newcomers interested in the productivity of the land and in the labor of enslaved african-americans not in the survival of indian people. as a result of indian removal, the nonwhite population of the region became overwhelmingly slaves, a circumstance that relieves southerners of a racial contradiction that a free flourishing indian people had presented. little challenge the convention of anti-bell um white southerners, that be of color, african-american or indian, were inferior and slavery was a blessing. after the civil war they focused on their situation instead of reflecting on indian removal. when the subject came up, the response was predictable. in 1881, the atlanta constitution ridiculed helen hunt jackson s a century of dishonor in which she recounted wrongs to cherokee and other indian people by suggesting if the president named her secretary of interior, she would, and i quote, give each indian squaw an opera coat and spring bonnet. views of removal shifted quickly in the late 19th century, however, and a little over two decades later, the tea cups club in spartanburg, south carolina, included jackson as one of the famous women who members were studying. they devoted an entire program to a century of dishonor. in many respects, the growing attention white southerners paid indians at the end of the 19th century mirered popular culture in the rest of the country. they joined other americans in the revival of longfellows song of hi watt, a and poems took place in hundreds of southern venues. hiawatha reflected the south. a region where he could not serve. southerners latched onto their own native embodiness of nobility and honor. southerners needed to whiten their indians and link native virtues to those associated with the lost cause. in 1878, a biography of the creek warrior william weatherford who fought with the red sticks explained he battled the u.s. army not because he was a savage, but because and i quote the first transgressions were committed by the white people and he was fighting for the liberties of his nation. weatherford was a hero with whom white southerners could identify. following the war, he returned to alabama and established himself as a planner. although he died before removal, most of weatherford s descendants remained in the south where, according to his biographer they intermarried with whites which we will nigh extinguished all indian blood in his descendants, the weatherford became white. osceola, the seminole warrior began life that way, at least partly, if one accepts accounts that his father was a white man, which by the late 19th century was a genetic necessity, at least for a southern indian who displayed such bravery and sense of honor. osceola had precipitated the second seminole war in 1835 by killing the seminoles agent and leading the attack that wiped out lieutenant francis dade s command. the united states captured osceola and imprisoned him under a flag of truth in south carolina where he died. following his death, many americans saw a piece of osceola, his painted image, his clothing, his weapons, items of personal adornment. his hair and even his head, which the physician attending him removed before burial and reportedly displayed in his drugstore in st. augustine, florida. the fascination of non-indians with osceola follows a national pattern of conveying celebrity on deceased warriors, ex tolling their powers and victories. for white southerners osceola s victory in his homeland took on significant in the 19th century and they regarded him less as a worthy opponent than one of his own because he seemed to share love of homeland, valiant defense for a way of life, defeat and sorrow. furthermore they captured regarded his capture with a blush of shame, according to the atlanta constitution and scornfully assigned blame for that shameful act not on southerners but to the united states government, to which they now regrettably owed allegiance. nowhere was the link between the indians and the lost cause more evidence than south carolina where city fathers erected a statue in the 1900 to memorialize veterans of the confederacy. the monument depicted a bare chested warrior with flowing headdress, bow, arrow, reminiscent of buffalo bill s wild west. on the base was a buffalo and the name of catawba veterans. there were about 20 that served in the confederacy. the lot of the indian life paralleled the loss of the confederacy so closely that a single monument commemorated both. white southerners infused the past with sent mentality, wept over historical tragedies, even mystical ones, shared tragedy lengd them to other people and other times. they found a term that appropriately sentimentalized indian removal. now commonplace, the phrase trail of tears did not appear in print until 1908 when a history of oklahoma used it to describe removal. despite its origins among the choct choctaws, the phrase came to be associated with cherokees, although the horrors of removal were by no means confined to them. collapsing all of removal history into one sentimental narrative featuring the cherokees simplified the past for non-indians while, in effect, denying the suffering of many other native peoples. but it was not the i saidians that white southerners were really interested in, it was themselves. by mourning the tragedy of removal sourpers ab sold themselves of guilt of their ancestors and responsibility of the plight of indians who remained. in 1900 white southerners were becoming more secure as americans into southerners. ferguson recognized the legitimacy of segregation, sharecropping peonage, agriculture labor and believed people of color were inferior. consequently white southerners felt comfortable writing about the past in ways that served their interest, especially the rightness of their cause, superiority of their culture, and preservation of a racial hierarchy that placed whites on top. southern history emerged as the distinct field within the academic discipline and the dean of southern history, u.b. phillips, made remove an intrinsic part of the southern saga. phillips is better known for his american negro slavery and life and labor in the old south, both of which placed race and white racial superiority at the center of american history. but his first published mono graph, removal. their intentions to sovereignty, he recognized removal was about race. georgia emerged victorious not only in the state s acquisition of indian land but also in trenchment of white power. georgia also bent the federal government to its will, a victory that provided inspiration for subsequent troubles. in the 1960s, for example, mississippi s white citizens council urged them to defy federal intervention and race relations by ignoring brown v. education just as georgia had done in the 1932 wooster decision that recognized cherokee sovereignty. even if georgia was right in the 1830s, presenting indian removed to a 20th century public was tricky. white southerners needed to see themselves as victorious over the federal government rather than as conquerors of historic, tragic, sentimentalized indians. historical tableaus and drama accomplished this feat by melding the past and local interest in making money. in the 1930s, agency superintendent at cherokee, north carolina, sought to capitalize on growing popularity of the recently open great smoke mountain national park by organizing a pageant, spirit of the smokies. hoping to take advantage, white boosters in knoxville provided financial backing. the drama focused on removal with considerable dramatic license. the climax came when martyrdom of main character, sully, at the hands of u.s. soldiers enabled north carolina cherokees to remain in their homeland. while the wild west show furnished costumes for the drama, a wild hillbilly band gave the musical accomplishment. the cast of 350 was mostly cherokee but the audience was almost entirely white. after world war ii the historical association of white businessmen in western north carolina, a professional outdoor drama unto these hills. an oklahoma cherokee living in texas co-wrote the musical score but the scriptwriter and director were non-indians. so were most of the performers, even those who played indian roles once against the fictionlized story was the centerpiece. they flooded in to hotels, gift shops and filling coffers of mostly non-indian entrepreneurs. under these hills enabled a white audience to feel bad about a historical tragedy without having to confront racial implications for either past or present. separated indians from a history of racial oppression by infusing the story with saens of inevitabili inevitability. in eastern carolina, dismal financial failures. central to history, misdemeanor inscription that morphed into a reconstruction alliance of indians, blacks, and poor whites united against depression by an elite. powerful white southerners whose patronage could make or break historical events wanted nothing to do with the commemoration of this one. as willie french lowery, the musician who composed the score for the most recent iteration phrased it, it raised awareness of things white people in nearby lumberton didn t even want to talk about. dramatic interpretations made it to big screen. distant drums released in 1951 and starring none other than gary cooper addressed race in ways that comforted white southerners. cooper played quincy wyatt. rescues captives who include a blond beauty and her african-american servant. wyatt defeats the seminole chief in a river, bare chested fight and the blond beauty decides to remain with wyatt in the island paradise. the seminal role was a backdrop for western.s, savagery of peop of color, the dead dark skinned mother, mixed race child who belongs to neither race, inability of marrying a woman of color and fathering her child, the future that could belong only to the white couple, these transcended the genre. six years later another seminole war movie and. in naked in the sun, a slave trader sets off hostilities by capturing the wife of osceola and holding her in bondage. this interpretation was the cause of the second civil war. this interpretation of the cause of the second seminole war dated back to 1839 when the american anti-slavery almanac made such an argument. filmed in florida with a white cast, the film dealt explicitly with race, and its characterization of white southerners was not flattering. declining to romanticize slavery, naked in the sun depicted indians and africans as victims of a brutal and immoral system. these factors probably explained why it did not enjoy the box office success of distant drums. white southerners addressed the region s native history only if they had firm control of staging. at the tri-racial festival in leak county, mississippi in 1951, choctaws played stickball and danced, and african-americans sang negro spirituals. but whites owned the past. in a pageant portraying negotiation of the treaty in which mississippi treated choctaws, white men played the rolls of indian leaders who acknowledging their racial inferiority acquiesced to the treaty. whites also constructed contemporary race relations to suit themselves. organizers of the tri-racial festival proclaimed. now is the time to show the world that though american democracy is not perfect, we are learning the lesson of the dignity of men and women regardless of class, race or religion and that justice, understanding and goodwill shall increase among us. four years later, a mob lynched emmett till, named for the choctaw treaty signed that forced the choctaw nation west. in 1964 during freedom summer, members of the ku klux klan murdered three civil rights workers in a county where most choctaws remaining in mississippi lived. an indian man found the victims burned-out car on choctaw land near the community. but he was so terrified that he reported his discovery not to t choctaw agency in philadelphia which notified the fbi in washington. in paying tribute to these young men in 2004, choctaw chief philip martin described the racial climate. 40 years ago, three communities, white, black, and choctaw lived in neshoba county separated by fear, ignorance and bigotry. it was hardly the version of race relations portrayed by the organizers of the tri-racial festival but it was the one that indians remembered.