“Hoe Handle Medicine”: Medicinal Labor at the Ford Motor Company and Lancaster General Hospital

Chapter 2 introduces the concept of medicinal labor as a productive ideological lens through which to analyze the gendered experiences of Indian workers enrolled in two vocational “partnerships” facilitated by the Carlisle Indian School. Records relating to Indian men who trained to become automotive mechanics at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan, and Indian wome who trained as nurses at the General Hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, form the basis of this chapter. Considering contested experiences of labor and punishment, this chapter argues that hoe handle medicine is an apt metaphor for diffuse settler labor that “cured” by exploiting adult Indian women and men in the homes, factories, and fields of white America.