I read in this article that
some ancient North American native healers injected medicine beneath the skin. Making the most of the materials at hand, they fashioned hypodermic needles out of hollow bird bones and small animal bladders.
But it doesn't get more specific about when, what tribe(s), or how we know the way such implements were used. Can anyone provide further insight or, dare I hope, link to a picture?
Based on the wording, it sounds like they're referencing Melvin Gilmore's Use of Plants by Indians of the Missouri River Region by way of Virgil Vogel's American Indian Medicine. Referencing the the Dakota, Omaha, Ponca, Oto, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago, as he called them), Gilmore writes:
Prior to contact with Europeans the Indians made their own syringes, an animal bladder being used for the bulb and a hollow cylindrical bone, as the leg bone of a prairie chicken, turkey, goose, or other bird, was used for the tube. The bulb was attached to the tube by sinew wrapping.
Unfortunately, there's no accompanying illustrations or photographs here.
Vogel also mentions syringes in use by "Canadian Indians" in 1721 and the independent invention of the syringe by "South American Indians" who used a rubber bulb instead of animal bladders. Vogel's sparse on details here, and, unfortunately, I don't have his other sources handy to look up what they say on the matter. When / If I get time to hunt those down, I'll swing back around and let you know. If we're lucky, someone else might know more and beat me to it.