Fighting a Two-Front War: Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922

Abstract

New York History Summer 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 408 Fighting a Two-Front War: Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922 Laurence Marc Hauptman, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History Amajor omission from the literature on Native American health in New York is an analysis of the role of state-appointed physicians in the state’s Indian schools. Records held by the New York State Archives and New York State Library offer a valuable picture of the medical practice of an extraordinary physician among the Iroquois [Hodinöhsö:ni’] in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1880 until 1922, Albert D. Lake attended to the medical care of children and adolescents at the state-administered Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indians. This institution, which was renamed the Thomas Indian School in Figure 1. Dr. Albert D. Lake (1846–1923). Lake was the physician at the Thomas Asylum and School and health care advocate for the Senecas and other Hodinöhsö:ni’ from 1880 until 1922. New York State Archives. Hauptman Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922 409 1905, was located at the center of the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in western New York. Dr. Lake served the Native American children residing at the institution for over forty years. Over the course of his career, he fought a two-front war: first against the ever-present contagions that beset children at the school; and second, against state legislative inertia and bureaucratic resistance to supporting improvements in Indian health care delivery. Despite the frustrations caused by these two struggles, Lake made major contributions, which in some instances far outdistanced those of his medical contemporaries in the federal boarding school system.1 1. The best study of federal Indian health policies in this period is Diane T. Putney, “Fighting the Scourge; American Indian Morbidity and Federal Policy, 1897–1928,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1980); see also David H. DeJong, “If You Knew the Conditions”: A Chronicle of the Indian Medical Service and American Indian Health Care, 1908–1955 (New York: Lexington Books, Rowman and Figure 2. The Cattaraugus Reservation in 1890. From: Thomas Donaldson, Comp., The Six Nations of New York. Extra Census Bulletin for the Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890. Washington, D.C.: United States Census Printing Office, 1892. 410 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY While federal Indian health policies have long been the focus of scholars , the history of medical care provided to Native Americans by New York State has yet to be written.2 The Thomas Asylum and School never operated as a federal institution, although at times it received a small allocation from Washington in its stated educational mission to bring “civilization” to the Indians. In the 1870s, the federal government hired doctors to vaccinate the Senecas, temporarily appointed the agency physician , and opened short-lived, underfunded, and undermanned infirmaries. Nevertheless, Washington officials almost entirely deferred to Albany in providing medical care to Native American communities. Indeed, the Indian Health Service (IHS), which was founded as the Indian Medical Service in 1908, did not enter the picture of providing health care delivery in the state until the Seneca Nation of Indians successfully lobbied for and secured these federal services in 1976. Long before Hodinöhsö:ni children were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Native American students in New York were being instructed in district schools operated and administered by state administrators. The first state district schools were established in 1846. From the mid 1850s onward, orphaned and impoverished Hodinöhsö:ni, as well as a few Shinnecock children from Long Island, were sent to reside at and attend the Thomas Asylum and School. Still other children were Littlefield, 2008), 1–58. For health concerns and policies in the federal Indian boarding school system in this era, see Jean A. Keller, Empty Beds: Indian Student Health at Sherman Institute, 1902–1922 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002); David H. DeJong, “‘Unless They are Kept Alive’: Federal Indian Schools and Student Health, 1878–1918,” American Indian Quarterly 31 (Spring, 2007): 256–282; David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction...