“TEXAS CHARLIE” BIGELOW, a U.S. Army scout, was patrolling Indian Territory when he contracted a fever that left him so weak he could barely open his eyelids. An Indian chief took pity on Bigelow and nursed him back to health using a mysterious medicine he called sagwa. When Bigelow begged for the recipe of this wonder drug, the chief sent five tribal medicine men to accompany the scout to the East Coast, where they created “Kickapoo Sagwa,” the magic elixir sold in medicine shows that traveled America from 1881 to 1912.
Or so the story goes, as recounted in countless Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertisements. But the story—like the medicine itself—was totally bogus.
Bigelow was never
