Laramie’s Living History —
A Variety of Other Topics
A series of stories prepared for the Albany County Museum Coalition, an alliance of institutions that promote Laramie’s historic and cultural resources. This series originally appeared in the Laramie Boomerang.
Not all Albany County history falls into a specific category; a wide assortment of additional topics are covered on these pages.
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Patent Medicines: they claimed to cure everything-- Worthless or harmful but a boon for advertising
A colorful cardboard box in the Laramie Plains Museum (LPM) collection is labeled “Kickapoo Indian Guide to Health and Longevity.” It’s not clear what was originally in the box; it did have some cut-outs of “Indians,” their horses, tents and blankets that would have appealed to children. Possibly it once had some of the “herbs, barks and roots” advertised on the box as remedies. Turns out that the Kickapoo herbal concoction was made in New Haven, Connecticut; there was nothing “Indian” about it except the name. There is a real Kickapoo tribe that ultimately landed on an Oklahoma reservation, but it gave no medical secrets to the New Haven company.