Long Charlie and his sweat house

Title: Long Charlie and his sweat house
LC Subject: Indians of North America
Description: Long Charlie is the tallest Indian on the Reservation (6 1/2 feet). Here you seem him heating the stones in front of his sweat house where he is about to take a treatment to relieve the suffering resulting from a fight of the day before the "sitting." The red mark on his arm is a wound received from another Indian's knife. These sweat houses are found all along the rivers and creeks. They are made by forcing both ends of long switches into the ground, thus forming a sort of miniature blind tunnel. When the patient is ready for his sweat bath he covers these over with his blankets (sometimes with sods) and builds a fire in front, where he warms his stones. When these are well heated he rolls them into the sweat house with sticks, and taking a vessel of water, he goes in, closing the flap behind him. He pours the water on the hot rocks and remains inside until he is sweating freely. He, then, rushes out and into the cold river, on the bank of which his house is built, coming immediately out of the water and rushing back in until he is thoroughly cooled. This mode of treatment is a sort of panacea for the Indians (especially the older ones and resulted in great mortality in smallpox and measles epidemics, as well as in the more recent "flu" epidemic.
Work Type: lantern slides
Date: 1900/1910
Identifier: P217:07:22
Rights: No Copyright - United States
Local Collection Name: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides, 1900-1940 (P 217)
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Primary Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Is Part Of: Set 11 - Northwest Indians
Institution: Oregon State University