Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Summer/105/Section 08/Aunt Granny Lula Russeau

Overview
Aunt Granny Lula Russeau was a midwife of Native American descent, interviewed by Gertha Couric as a part of the Federal Writer's Project on December 15, 1938.

Early Life
During the first year of the civil war in the town of Eufaula, Alabama, Aunt Granny Lula Russeau was born on August 15, 1861, in her master’s backyard. Both of her parents were Native American; her mother was a Chickasaw Indian from Virginia, and her father was from a tribe in South Carolina. Sadly, however, Russeau’s mother raised her all alone because Russeau’s father died when she was only a few months old. Russeau was quite proud of her Native American heritage and did not hide her contempt for white people as she referred to them as “white trash.” Although the end of the Civil War granted their freedom, Russeau and her mother stayed with their masters. In fact, after emancipation, Eufaula’s economy struggled as they were left without a labor force when the slaves for agricultural production were all freed.

Middle Life
Russeau had learned all her skills from her mother, from cooking to cleaning to all the superstitions and remedies she needed to know to be a midwife. In addition, Russeau emphasized her mother’s reliance on “no doctors.” The distrust towards doctors was reinforced when Russeau had witnessed an “ignorant” doctor refuse to acknowledge that he did not know what to do with a woman that was stuck in labor for four days. In the end, using her knowledge on superstitions, Russeau revealed to the doctor that she had hidden a knife under the mattress to “cut dem labor pains” out because the “push medicine” doctors would give was “too newfangled.” In contrast to the doctor's medicine, Russeau was taught herbal remedies such as "pine tops for bad colds, mullein leaves too; bitter weed for chills and fever; sage and catnip leaves...for babies to cure hives."

Later Life
By the time Russeau was interviewed in 1938, she had been a midwife for over fifty years in Alabama. Russeau claimed to have aided in over five hundred births. Lastly, the interview does not mention Russeau's death.

The Chickasaw Nation in the Civil War
Before the Civil War, the Chickasaw Nation was removed, from their ancestral grounds filled with Chickasaw history and tribal religion, to the Indian Territory as part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Civil War of 1861 is known for being a battle between the southern Confederate States of America and the northern United States of America. However, a lesser-known fact about the Civil War is that it was on Indian Territory, and the Chickasaw Nation chose to fight alongside the Confederate Army because the United States government failed to keep their promises of protection. Furthermore, many Chickasaw men lost their lives protecting not only the Indian Territory, but also their way of life.

Midwives versus New Science in the Nineteenth Century
Leading up to the nineteenth century, women helped each other out during childrearing, despite social, racial, and class differences, because miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths were likely. Furthermore, men completely avoided childbirth. However, the Civil War caused an advancement in medicine, leading into male physicians intervening into childrearing with new medicines. However, women felt distrust towards the doctors because they had no prior knowledge or experience like midwives. Moreover, their distrust was not completely ungrounded, as it was later discovered that the main ingredient in the blue mass pills distributed by doctors, to treat the pains of childbirth, was mercury, a poisonous metallic element.