THE MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE.

BY

JOHN G. BOURKE,
Captain, Third Cavalry, U. S. Army.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

Washington, D. C., February 27, 1891.

Sir: Herewith I have the honor to submit a paper upon the paraphernalia of the medicine-men of the Apache and other tribes.

Analogues have been pointed out, wherever possible, especially in the case of the hoddentin and the izze-kloth, which have never to my knowledge previously received treatment.

Accompanying the paper is a bibliography of the principal works cited.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

John G. Bourke,
Captain, Third Cavalry, U. S. Army.

Hon. J. W. Powell,
Director Bureau of Ethnology.

THE MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE.
By John G. Bourke.

CHAPTER I.
THE MEDICINE-MEN, THEIR MODES OF TREATING DISEASE, THEIR SUPERSTITIONS, PARAPHERNALIA, ETC.

The Caucasian population of the United States has been in intimate contact with the aborigines for a period of not less than two hundred and fifty years. In certain sections, as in Florida and New Mexico, this contact has been for a still greater period; but claiming no earlier date than the settlement of New England, it will be seen that the white race has been slow to learn or the red man has been skillful in withholding knowledge which, if imparted, would have lessened friction and done much to preserve and assimilate a race that, in spite of some serious defects of character, will for all time to come be looked upon as "the noble savage."

Recent deplorable occurrences in the country of the Dakotas have emphasized our ignorance and made clear to the minds of all thinking people that, notwithstanding the acceptance by the native tribes of many of the improvements in living introduced by civilization, the savage has remained a savage, and is still under the control of an influence antagonistic to the rapid absorption of new ideas and the adoption of new customs.

This influence is the "medicine-man."

Who, and what are the medicine-men (or medicine-women), of the American Indians? What powers do they possess in time of peace or war? How is this power obtained, how renewed, how exercised? What is the character of the remedies employed? Are they pharmaceutical, as we employ the term, or are they the superstitious efforts of empirics and charlatans, seeking to deceive and to misguide by pretended consultations with spiritual powers and by reliance upon mysterious and occult influences?

Such a discussion will be attempted in this paper, which will be restricted to a description of the personality of the medicine-men, the regalia worn, and the powers possessed and claimed. To go farther, and enter into a treatment of the religious ideas, the superstitions, omens, and prayers of these spiritual leaders, would be to open a road without end.

As the subject of the paraphernalia of the medicine-men has never, to my knowledge, been comprehensively treated by any writer, I venture to submit what I have learned during the twenty-two years of my acquaintance with our savage tribes, and the studies and conclusions to which my observations have led. While treating in the main of the medicine-men of the Apache, I do not intend to omit any point of importance noted among other tribes or peoples.

First, in regard to the organization of the medicine-men of the Apache, it should be premised that most of my observations were made while the tribe was still actively engaged in hostilities with the whites, and they cannot be regarded as, and are not claimed to be, conclusive upon all points. The Apache are not so surely divided into medicine lodges or secret societies as is the case with the Ojibwa, as shown by Dr. W. J. Hoffman; the Siouan tribes, as related by Mr. J. Owen Dorsey; the Zuñi, according to Mr. F. H. Cushing; the Tusayan, as shown by myself, and other tribes described by other authorities.

The Navajo, who are the full brothers of the Apache, seem to have well defined divisions among their medicine-men, as demonstrated by Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. Army; and I myself have seen great medicine lodges, which must have contained at least a dozen Apache medicine-men, engaged in some of their incantations. I have also been taken to several of the sacred caves, in which solemn religious dances and other ceremonies were conducted under the same superintendence, but never have I witnessed among the Apache any rite of religious significance in which more than four or five, or at the most six, of the medicine-men took part.

The difficulty of making an accurate determination was increased by the nomadic character of the Apache, who would always prefer to live in small villages containing only a few brush shelters, and not needing the care of more than one or two of their "doctors." These people show an unusual secretiveness and taciturnity in all that relates to their inner selves, and, living as they do in a region filled with caves and secluded nooks, on cliffs, and in deep canyons, have not been compelled to celebrate their sacred offices in "estufas," or "plazas," open to the inspection of the profane, as has been the case with so many of the Pueblo tribes.

Diligent and persistent inquiry of medicine-men whose confidence I had succeeded in gaining, convinced me that any young man can become a "doctor" ("diyi" in the Apache language, which is translated "sabio" by the Mexican captives). It is necessary to convince his friends that he "has the gift," as one of my informants expressed it; that is, he must show that he is a dreamer of dreams, given to long fasts and vigils, able to interpret omens in a satisfactory manner, and do other things of that general nature to demonstrate the possession of an intense spirituality. Then he will begin to withdraw, at least temporarily, from the society of his fellows and devote himself to long absences, especially by night, in the "high places" which were interdicted to the Israelites. Such sacred fanes, perched in dangerous and hidden retreats, can be, or until lately could be, found in many parts in our remote western territory. In my own experiences I have found them not only in the country of the Apache, but two-thirds of the way up the vertical face of the dizzy precipice of Tâaiyalana, close to Zuñi, where there is a shrine much resorted to by the young men who seek to divine the result of a contemplated enterprise by shooting arrows into a long cleft in the smooth surface of the sandstone; I have seen them in the Wolf Mountains, Montana; in the Big Horn range, Wyoming; on the lofty sides of Cloud Peak, and elsewhere. Maj. W.S. Stanton, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army, ascended the Cloud Peak twice, and, reaching the summit on the second attempt, he found that beyond the position first attained and seeming then to be the limit of possible ascent, some wandering Indian had climbed and made his "medicine."

While it is regarded as a surer mode of learning how to be a medicine-man to seek the tuition of some one who has already gained power and influence as such, and pay him liberally in presents of all kinds for a course of instruction lasting a year or longer, I could learn of nothing to prohibit a man from assuming the rôle of a prophet or healer of the sick, if so disposed, beyond the dread of punishment for failure to cure or alleviate sickness or infirmity. Neither is there such a thing as settled dogma among these medicine-men. Each follows the dictates of his own inclinations, consulting such spirits and powers as are most amenable to his supplications and charms; but no two seem to rely upon identically the same influences. Even in the spirit dance, which is possibly the most solemn function in which the Apache medicine-men can engage, the head-dresses and kilts adhered closely enough to the one pattern, but the symbolism employed by each medicine-man was entirely different from that adopted by his neighbors.

Schultze, Perrin du Lac, Adair, and others allude to "houses of mercy," the "right of asylum" in certain lodges and buildings, or even whole villages, to which if the pursued of the tribe or even an enemy could obtain admission his life was secure. Frank Gruard and others who have lived for years among the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and other tribes of the plains have assured me that the same right of asylum obtains among them for the fugitive who takes shelter in the medicine lodge or the council lodge, and almost parallel notions prevail among the Apache. I have heard that the first American who came into one of their villages, tired and hungry, was not molested in the slightest degree.

It is stated by Kelly[1] that all warriors who go through the sun dance of the Sioux rank thereafter as medicine-men. This statement seems to me to be overdrawn. Nothing of the kind was learned by me at the sun dance of the Sioux which I noted in 1881, and in any event the remark would scarcely apply to the medicine-men of the Apache, who have nothing clearly identifiable with the sun dance, and who do not cut, gash, or in any manner mutilate themselves, as did the principal participants in the sun dance, or as was done in still earlier ages by the galli (the priests of Cybele) or the priests of Mexico.

Herodotus tells us that the priests of Egypt, or rather the doctors, who were at one time identified with them, were separated into classes; some cured the eyes, some the ears, others the head or the belly. Such a differentiation is to be observed among the Apache, Mohave, and other tribes; there are some doctors who enjoy great fame as the bringers of rain, some who claim special power over snakes, and some who profess to consult the spirits only, and do not treat the sick except when no other practitioner may be available. Among the Mohave, the relatives of a dead man will consult one of these spirit-doctors and get him to interview the ghosts who respond to his call and learn from them whether the patient died from ignorance or neglect on the part of the doctor who had charge of the case. If the spirits assert that he did, then the culprit doctor must either flee for his life or throw the onus of the crime upon some witch. This differentiation is not carried so far that a medicine-man, no matter what his class, would decline a large fee.

The right of sanctuary was conceded to all criminals who sought shelter in the vanquech or temple of Chinigchinich.[2]

The castration of the galli, or priests of Cybele, is described by Dupuis.[3]

Diego Duran asserts that the Mexican priests "se endian por medio los miembros viriles y se hacian mil cosas para volverse impotentes por no ofender á sus Dioses."[4]

The hierophants at Athens drank of the hemlock to render themselves impotent, that when they came to the pontificate they might cease to be men.[5]

One class of the Peruvian priests, the Huachus, made auguries from grains of corn or the excrement of animals.[6]

Balboa tells us[6] that the Peruvian priesthood was divided into classes, each with its appropriate functions—the Guacos made the idols for the temples, or rather, they made the idols speak; the others were necromancers and spoke only with the dead; the Huecheoc divined by means of tobacco and coco; the Caviocac became drunk before they attempted to divine, and after them came the Rumatinguis and the Huachus already mentioned.

The Oregon tribes have spirit doctors and medicine doctors.[7]

The Chinese historians relate that the shamans of the Huns possessed the power "to bring down snow, hail, rain, and wind."[8]

In all nations in the infancy of growth, social or mental, the power to coax from reluctant clouds the fructifying rain has been regarded with highest approval and will always be found confided to the most important hierophants or devolving upon some of the most prominent deities; almighty Jove was a deified rain-maker or cloud-compeller. Rain-makers flourished in Europe down to the time of Charlemagne, who prohibited these "tempestiarii" from plying their trade.

One of the first requests made of Vaca and his comrades by the people living in fixed habitations near the Rio Grande was "to tell the sky to rain," and also to pray for it.[9]

The prophet Samuel has been alluded to as a rain-maker.[10]

There does not seem to have been any inheritance of priestly functions among the Apache or any setting apart of a particular clan or family for the priestly duties.

Francis Parkman is quoted as describing a certain family among the Miami who were reserved for the sacred ritualistic cannibalism perpetrated by that tribe upon captives taken in war. Such families devoted more or less completely to sacred uses are to be noted among the Hebrews (in the line of Levi) and others; but they do not occur in the tribes of the Southwest.

One of the ceremonies connected with the initiation, as with every exercise of spiritual functions by the medicine-man, is the "ta-a-chi," or sweat-bath, in which, if he be physically able, the patient must participate.

The Apache do not, to my knowledge, indulge in any poisonous intoxicants during their medicine ceremonies; but in this they differ to a perceptible degree from other tribes of America. The "black drink" of the Creeks and the "wisoccan" of the Virginians may be cited as cases in point; and the Walapai of Arizona, the near neighbors of the Apache, make use of the juice, or a decoction of the leaves, roots, and flowers of the Datura stramonium to induce frenzy and exhilaration. The laurel grows wild on all the mountain tops of Sonora and Arizona, and the Apache credit it with the power of setting men crazy, but they deny that they have ever made use of it in their medicine or religion. Picart[11] speaks of the drink (wisoccan) which took away the brains of the young men undergoing initiation as medicine-men among the tribes of Virginia, but he does not say what this "wisoccan" was.

In Guiana,[12] the candidate for the office of medicine-man must, among other ordeals, "drink fearfully large drafts of tobacco juice, mixed with water." The medicine-men of Guiana are called peaiman.

I have never seen tobacco juice drank by medicine-men or others, but I remember seeing Shunca-Luta (Sorrel Horse), a medicine-man of the Dakota, chewing and swallowing a piece of tobacco and then going into what seemed to be a trance, all the while emitting deep grunts or groans. When he revived he insisted that those sounds had been made by a spirit which he kept down in his stomach. He also pretended to extract the quid of tobacco from underneath his ribs, and was full of petty tricks of legerdemain and other means of mystifying women and children.

All medicine-men claim the power of swallowing spear heads or arrows and fire, and there are at times many really wonderful things done by them which have the effect of strengthening their hold upon the people.

The medicine-men of the Ojibwa thrust arrows and similar instruments down their throats. They also allow themselves to be shot at with marked bullets.[13]

While I was among the Tusayan, in 1881, I learned of a young boy, quite a child, who was looked up to by the other Indians, and on special occasions made his appearance decked out in much native finery of beads and gewgaws, but the exact nature of his duties and supposed responsibilities could not be ascertained.

Diego Duran[14] thought that the priesthood among the Mexicans was to a great extent hereditary, much like the right of primogeniture among the people of Spain. Speaking of the five assistants who held down the human victim at the moment of sacrifice, he says:

Los nombres de los cinco eran Chachalmeca, que en nuestra Lengua quiere tanto decir como Levita ó ministro de cosa divina ó sagrada. Era esta dignidad entre ellos muy suprema y en mucha tenida, la cual se heredaba de hijos á padres como cosa de mayorazgo, sucediendo los hijos á los Padres en aquella sangrienta Dignidad endemoniada y cruel.

Concerning the medicine-men of Peru, Dorman[15] says:

The priestly office among the Peruvians appears to have been hereditary; some attained it by election; a man struck by lightning was considered as chosen by heaven; also those who became suddenly insane. Mr. Southey says that among the Moxos of Brazil, who worshiped the tiger, a man who was rescued from but marked by the claws of the animal, was set apart for the priesthood, and none other.

I shall have occasion to introduce a medicine-woman of the Apache, Tze-go-juni, or "Pretty-mouth," whose claims to preeminence among her people would seem to have had no better foundation than her escape from lightning stroke and from the bites of a mountain lion, which had seized her during the night and had not killed her.

I remember the case of an old Navajo medicine-man who was killed by lightning. The whole tribe participated in the singing, drumming, and dancing incident to so important an event, but no white men were allowed to be present. My information was derived from the dead man's young nephew, while I was among that tribe.

Among the Arawak of South America there are hereditary conjurers who profess to find out the enemy who by the agency of an evil spirit has killed the deceased.[16]

Picart says of the medicine-men of the tribes along Rio de la Plata: "Pour être Prêtre ou Médecin parmi eux, il faut avoir jeûné longtems & souvent. Il faut avoir combatu plusieurs fois contre les bêtes Sauvages, principalement contre les Tigres, & tout au moins en avoir été mordu ou égratigné. Après cela on peut obtenir l'Ordre, de Prêtrise; car le Tigre est chez eux un animal presque divin."[17]

The medicine-men of the Apache are not confined to one gens or clan, as among the Shawnee and Cherokee, according to Brinton,[18] neither do they believe, as the Cherokee do, according to the same authority, that the seventh son is a natural-born prophet with the gift of healing by touch, but upon this latter point I must be discreet, as I have never known an Apache seventh son.

The Cherokee still preserve the custom of consecrating a family of their tribe to the priesthood, as the family of Levi was consecrated among the Jews.[19]

The neophytes of the isthmus of Darien were boys from ten to twelve years "selected for the natural inclination or the peculiar aptitude and intelligence which they displayed for the service."[20]

Peter Martyr says of the Chiribchis of South America: "Out of the multitude of children they chuse some of 10 or 12 yeeres old, whom they know by conjecture to be naturally inclined to that service."[21]

The peculiarity of the Moxos was that they thought none designated for the office of medicine-man but such as had escaped from the claws of the South American tiger which, indeed, it is said they worshiped as a god.[22]

Contrary to what Spencer says, the chiefs of the tribes of the Southwest, at least, are not ipso facto medicine-men; but among the Tonto Apache the brother of the head chief, Cha-ut-lip-un, was the great medicine-man, and generally the medicine-men are related closely to the prominent chiefs, which would seem to imply either a formal deputation of priestly functions from the chiefs to relatives, or what may be practically the same thing, the exercise of family influence to bring about a recognition of the necromantic powers of some aspirant; but among the Apache there is no priest caste; the same man may be priest, warrior, etc.[23]

"The juice of the Datura seed is employed by the Portuguese women of Goa: they mix it, says Linschott, in the liquor drank by their husbands, who fall, for twenty-four hours at least, into a stupor accompanied by continued laughing; but so deep is the sleep that nothing passing before them affects them; and when they recover their senses, they have no recollection of what has taken place."[24]

"The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to bring on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure. In Peru the priests who talked with the 'huaca' or fetishes used to throw themselves into an ecstatic condition by a narcotic drink called 'tonca,' made from the same plant."[25]

The medicine-men of the Walapai, according to Charlie Spencer, who married one of their women and lived among them for years, were in the habit of casting bullets in molds which contained a small piece of paper. They would allow these bullets to be fired at them, and of course the missile would split in two parts and do no injury. Again, they would roll a ball of sinew and attach one end to a small twig, which was inserted between the teeth. They would then swallow the ball of sinew, excepting the end thus attached to the teeth, and after the heat and moisture of the stomach had softened and expanded the sinew they would begin to draw it out yard after yard, saying to the frightened squaws that they had no need of intestines and were going to pull them all out. Others among the Apache have claimed the power to shoot off guns without touching the triggers or going near the weapons; to be able to kill or otherwise harm their enemies at a distance of 100 miles. In nearly every boast made there is some sort of a saving clause, to the effect that no witchcraft must be made or the spell will not work, no women should be near in a delicate state from any cause, etc.

Mickey Free has assured me that he has seen an Apache medicine-man light a pipe without doing anything but hold his hands up toward the sun. This story is credible enough if we could aver that the medicine-man was supplied, as I suspect he was, with a burning glass.

That the medicine-man has the faculty of transforming himself into a coyote and other animals at pleasure and then resuming the human form is as implicitly believed in by the American Indians as it was by our own forefathers in Europe. This former prevalence of lycanthropy all over Europe can be indicated in no more forcible manner than by stating that until the reign of Louis XIV, in France, the fact of being a were-wolf was a crime upon which one could be arraigned before a court; but with the discontinuance of the crime the were-wolves themselves seem to have retired from business.[26] In Abyssinia, at the present day, blacksmiths are considered to be were-wolves, according to Winstanley. The Apache look upon blacksmiths as being allied to the spirits and call them "pesh-chidin"—the witch, spirit, or ghost, of the iron. The priestly powers conceded to the blacksmith of Gretna Green need no allusion here.

According to Sir Walter Scott,[27] trials for lycanthropy were abolished in France by an edict of Louis XIV.

Parkman[28] describes, from the Relations of Pére Le Jeune, how the Algonkin medicine-man announced that he was going to kill a rival medicine-man who lived at Gaspé, 100 leagues distant.

The Abipones of Paraguay, according to Father Dobrizhoffer, "credit their medicine-men with power to inflict disease and death, to cure all disorders, to make known distant and future events; to cause rain, hail, and tempest; to call up the shades of the dead and consult them concerning hidden matters; to put on the form of a tiger; to handle every kind of serpent without danger, etc.; which powers they imagine are not obtained by art, but imparted to certain persons by their grandfather, the devil."

The medicine-men of Honduras claimed the power of turning themselves into lions and tigers and of wandering in the mountains.[29]

"Grandes Hechiceros i Bruxos, porque se hacian Perros, Puercos i Ximios."[30]

Gomara also calls attention to the fact that the medicine-men, "hechiceros" and "brujos," as he calls them, of the Nicaraguans, possessed the power of lycanthropy; "segun ellos mismos decian, se hacen perros, puercos y gimias."[31]

Great as are the powers claimed by the medicine-men, it is admitted that baleful influences may be at work to counteract and nullify them. As has already been shown, among these are the efforts of witches, the presence of women who are sometimes supposed to be so "antimedicinal," if such a term may be applied, that the mere stepping over a warrior's gun will destroy its value.

There may be other medicine-men at work with countercharms, and there may be certain neglects on the part of the person applying for aid which will invalidate all that the medicine-man can do for him. For example, while the "hoop-me-koff" was raging among the Mohave the fathers of families afflicted with it were forbidden to touch coffee or salt, and were directed to bathe themselves in the current of the Colorado. But the whooping cough ran its course in spite of all that the medicine-men could do to check its progress. When the Walapai were about to engage in a great hunt continence was enjoined upon the warriors for a certain period.

Besides all these accidental impairments of the vigor of the medicine-men, there seems to be a gradual decadence of their abilities which can be rejuvenated only by rubbing the back against a sacred stone projecting from the ground in the country of the Walapai, not many miles from the present town of Kingman, on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Another stone of the same kind was formerly used for the same purpose by the medicine-men of the pueblos of Laguna and Acoma, as I have been informed by them. I am unable to state whether or not such recuperative properties were ever ascribed to the medicine stone at the Sioux agency near Standing Rock, S. Dak., or to the great stone around which the medicine-men of Tusayan marched in solemn procession in their snake dance, but I can say that in the face of the latter, each time that I saw it (at different dates between 1874 and 1881), there was a niche which was filled with votive offerings.

Regnard, a traveler in Lapland, makes the statement that when the shamans of that country began to lose their teeth they retired from practice. There is nothing of this kind to be noted among the Apache or other tribes of North America with which I am in any degree familiar. On the contrary, some of the most influential of those whom I have known have been old and decrepit men, with thin, gray hair and teeth gone or loose in their heads. In a description given by Corbusier of a great "medicine" ceremony of the Apache-Yuma at Camp Verde, it is stated that the principal officer was a "toothless, gray-haired man."[32]

Among many savage or barbarous peoples of the world albinos have been reserved for the priestly office. There are many well marked examples of albinism among the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, especially among the Zuñi and Tusayan; but in no case did I learn that the individuals thus distinguished were accredited with power not ascribable to them under ordinary circumstances. Among the Cheyenne I saw one family, all of whose members had the crown lock white. They were not medicine-men, neither were any of the members of the single albino family among the Navajo in 1881.

It is a well known fact that among the Romans epilepsy was looked upon as a disease sent direct from the gods, and that it was designated the "sacred disease"—morbus sacer. Mahomet is believed to have been an epileptic. The nations of the East regard epileptics and the insane as inspired from on high.

Our native tribes do not exactly believe that the mildly insane are gifted with medical or spiritual powers; but they regard them with a feeling of superstitious awe, akin to reverence. I have personally known several cases of this kind, though not within late years, and am not able to say whether or not the education of the younger generation in our schools has as yet exercised an influence in eradicating this sentiment.

Strange to say, I was unable to find any observance of lucky or unlucky days among the Apache. The Romans in the period of their greatest enlightenment had their days, both "fasti" and "nefasti." Neither was I able to determine the selection of auspicious days for marriage; indeed, it was stated that the medicine-men had nothing to do with marriage. Among the Zapotecs the wedding day was fixed by the priests.[33] In this the Apache again stands above the Roman who would not marry in the month dedicated to the goddess Maia (May), because human sacrifice used to be offered in that month. This superstition survived in Europe until a comparatively recent period. According to Picart the Hebrew rabbis designated the days upon which weddings should take place.

Herbert Spencer[34] says that the medicine-men of the Arawaks claimed the "jus primæ noctis." There is no such privilege claimed or conceded among the North American tribes, to my knowledge, and the Arawaks would seem to be alone among the natives of the whole continent in this respect.

In the town of Cumaná, in Amaracapanna, apparently close to Carthagena, in the present republic of Colombia, South America, the medicine-men, according to Girolamo Benzoni, exercised the "jus primæ noctis."[35]

To recover stolen or lost property, especially ponies, is one of the principal tasks imposed upon the medicine-men. They rely greatly upon the aid of pieces of crystal in effecting this. I made a friend of an Apache medicine-man by presenting him with a large crystal of denticulated spar, much larger than the one of whose mystical properties he had just been boasting to me. I can not say how this property of the crystal is manifested. Na-a-cha, the medicine-man alluded to, could give no explanation, except that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see.

The name of an American Indian is a sacred thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration. One may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name and the question will be met with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he can not understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches, the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other. The giving of names to children is a solemn matter, and one in which the medicine-men should always be consulted. Among the Plains tribes the children were formerly named at the moment of piercing their ears, which should occur at the first sun dance after their birth, or rather as near their first year as possible. The wailing of the children at the sun dance as their ears were slit will always be to me a most distressing memory.

The warriors of the Plains tribes used to assume agnomens or battle names, and I have known some of them who had enjoyed as many as four or five; but the Apache name once conferred seems to remain through life, except in the case of the medicine-men, who, I have always suspected, change their names upon assuming their profession, much as a professor of learning in China is said to do.

The names of mothers-in-law are never mentioned and it would be highly improper to ask for them by name; neither are the names of the dead, at least not for a long period of time. But it often happens that the child will bear the name of its grandfather or some other relative who was a distinguished warrior.

All charms, idols, talismans, medicine hats, and other sacred regalia should be made, or at least blessed, by the medicine-men. They assume charge of all ceremonial feasts and dances—such as the nubile dance, which occurs when any maiden attains marriageable age, and war dances preceding battle. Nearly all preparations for the warpath are under their control, and when on the trail of the enemy their power is almost supreme. Not a night passes but that the medicine-men get into the "ta-a-chi," or sweat bath, if such a thing be possible, and there remain for some minutes, singing and making "medicine" for the good of the party. After dark they sit around the fire and sing and talk with the spirits and predict the results of the campaign. I have alluded quite fully to these points in a previous work.

When a man is taken sick the medicine-men are in the zenith of their glory. One or two will assume charge of the case, and the clansmen and friends of the patient are called upon to supply the fire and help out in the chorus. On such occasions the Apache use no music except a drum or a rawhide. The drum is nearly always improvised from an iron camp kettle, partially filled with water and covered with a piece of cloth, well soaped and drawn as tight as possible. The drumstick does not terminate in a ball, as with us, but is curved into a circle, and the stroke is not perpendicular to the surface, but is often given from one side to the other. The American Indian's theory of disease is the theory of the Chaldean, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman—all bodily disorders and ailments are attributed to the maleficence of spirits who must be expelled or placated. Where there is only one person sick, the exercises consist of singing and drumming exclusively, but dancing is added in all cases when an epidemic is raging in the tribe. The medicine-men lead off in the singing, to which the assistants reply with a refrain which at times has appeared to me to be antiphonal. Then the chorus is swelled by the voices of the women and larger children and rises and falls with monotonous cadence. Prayers are recited, several of which have been repeated to me and transcribed; but very frequently the words are ejaculatory and confined to such expressions as "ugashe" (go away), and again there is to be noted the same mumbling of incoherent phrases which has been the stock in trade of medicine-men in all ages and places. This use of gibberish was admitted by the medicine-men, who claimed that the words employed and known only to themselves (each individual seemed to have his own vocabulary) were mysteriously effective in dispelling sickness of any kind. Gibberish was believed to be more potential in magic than was language which the practitioner or his dupes could comprehend. In Saxon Leechdoms, compiled by Cockayne, will be seen a text of gibberish to be recited by those wishing to stanch the flow of blood. (See p. 464.)

In the following citations it will be observed that Adair and Catlin were grievously in error in their respective statements. Adair denies that Indians on the warpath or elsewhere depend upon their "augurs" for instruction and guidance.[36] Gomara is authority for the statement that the natives of Hispaniola never made war without consulting their medicine-men—"no sin respuesta de los ídolos ó sin la de los sacerdotes, que adevinan."[37]

The medicine-men of Chicora (our present South Carolina) sprinkled the warriors with the juice of a certain herb as they were about to engage in battle.[38]

In Chicora "Mascaban los Sacerdotes una Ierva, i con el çumo de ella rociaban los Soldados, quando querian dar batalla, que era bendecirlos."[39]

"Among the Abipones [of Paraguay] the medicine-man teaches them the place, time, and manner proper for attacking wild beasts or the enemy."[40]

"The North American Indians are nowhere idolaters."[41]

Idols were always carried to war by the natives of Hispaniola: "Atanse á la frente ídolos chiquitos cuando quieren pelear."[42]

"Among the primitive Germans * * * the maintenance of discipline in the field as in the council was left in great measure to the priests; they took the auguries and gave the signal for onset."[43]

"In New Caledonia * * * the priests go to battle, but sit in the distance, fasting and praying for victory."[44]

Our hunting songs and war songs may be a survival of the incantations of Celtic or Teutonic medicine-men.

The adoption or retention of obsolete phraseology as a hieratic language which has been noted among many nations of the highest comparative development is a manifestation of the same mental process.

Gibberish was so invariable an accompaniment of the sacred antics of the medicine-men of Mexico that Fray Diego Duran warns his readers that if they see any Indian dancing and singing, "ó diciendo algunas palabras que no son inteligibles, pues es de saber que aquellos representaban Dioses."[45]

Henry Youle Hind says:

The Dakotahs have a common and a sacred language. The conjurer, the war prophet, and the dreamer employ a language in which words are borrowed from other Indian tongues and dialects; they make much use of descriptive expressions, and use words apart from the ordinary signification. The Ojibways abbreviate their sentences and employ many elliptical forms of expression, so much so that half-breeds, quite familiar with the colloquial language, fail to comprehend a medicine-man when in the full flow of excited oratory.[46]

"Blood may be stanched by the words sicycuma, cucuma, ucuma, cuma, uma, ma, a."[47] There are numbers of these gibberish formulæ given, but one is sufficient.

"The third part of the magic[48] of the Chaldeans belonged entirely to that description of charlatanism which consists in the use of gestures, postures, and mysterious speeches, as byplay, and which formed an accompaniment to the proceedings of the thaumaturgist well calculated to mislead."[49]

Sahagun[50] calls attention to the fact that the Aztec hymns were in language known only to the initiated.

It must be conceded that the monotonous intonation of the medicine-men is not without good results, especially in such ailments as can be benefited by the sleep which such singing induces. On the same principle that petulant babies are lulled to slumber by the crooning of their nurses, the sick will frequently be composed to a sound and beneficial slumber, from which they awake refreshed and ameliorated. I can recall, among many other cases, those of Chaundezi ("Long Ear," or "Mule") and Chemihuevi-Sal, both chiefs of the Apache, who recovered under the treatment of their own medicine-men after our surgeons had abandoned the case. This recovery could be attributed only to the sedative effects of the chanting.

Music of a gentle, monotonous kind has been prescribed in the medical treatment of Romans, Greeks, and even of comparatively modern Europeans. John Mason Goode, in his translation of Lucretius' De Natura Rerum, mentions among others Galen, Theophrastus, and Aulus Gellius. An anonymous writer in the Press of Philadelphia, Pa., under date of December 23, 1888, takes the ground that its use should be resumed.

The noise made by medicine-men around the couch of the sick is no better, no worse, than the clangor of bells in Europe. Bells, we are told, were rung on every possible occasion. Brand is full of quaint information on this head. According to him they were rung in Spain when women were in labor,[51] at weddings,[52] to dispel thunder, drive away bad spirits, and frustrate the deviltry of witches;[53] throughout Europe on the arrival of emperors, kings, the higher nobility, bishops, etc.,[54] to ease pain of the dead,[55] were solemnly baptized, receiving names,[56] and became the objects of superstition, various powers being ascribed to them.[57]

Adair, who was gifted with an excellent imagination, alludes to the possession of an "ark" by the medicine-men of the Creeks and other tribes of the Mississippi country, among whom he lived for so many years as a trader. The Apache have no such things; but I did see a sacred bundle or package, which I was allowed to feel, but not to open, and which I learned contained some of the lightning-riven twigs upon which they place such dependence. This was carried by a young medicine-man, scarcely out of his teens, during Gen. Crook's expedition into the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, in pursuit of the hostile Chiricahua Apache. Maj. Frank North also told me that the Pawnee had a sacred package which contained, among other objects of veneration, the skin of an albino buffalo calf.

There are allusions by several authorities to the necessity of confession by the patient before the efforts of the medicine-men can prove efficacious.[58]

This confession, granting that it really existed, could well be compared to the warpath secret, which imposed upon all the warriors engaged the duty of making a clean breast of all delinquencies and secured them immunity from punishment for the same, even if they had been offenses against some of the other warriors present.

The Sioux and others had a custom of "striking the post" in their dances, especially the sun dance, and there was then an obligation upon the striker to tell the truth. I was told that the medicine-men were wont to strike with a club the stalagmites in the sacred caves of the Apache, but what else they did I was not able to ascertain.

Under the title of "hoddentin" will be found the statement made by one of the Apache as to the means employed to secure the presence of a medicine-man at the bedside of the sick. I give it for what it is worth, merely stating that Kohl, in his Kitchi-Gami, if I remember correctly, refers to something of the same kind where the medicine-man is represented as being obliged to respond to every summons made unless he can catch the messenger within a given distance and kick him.

There is very little discrepancy of statement as to what would happen to a medicine-man in case of failure to cure; but many conflicting stories have been in circulation as to the number of patients he would be allowed to kill before incurring risk of punishment. My own conclusions are that there is no truth whatever in the numbers alleged, either three or seven, but that a medicine-man would be in danger, under certain circumstances, if he let only one patient die on his hands. These circumstances would be the verdict of the spirit doctors that he was culpably negligent or ignorant. He could evade death at the hands of the patient's kinsfolk only by flight or by demonstrating that a witch had been at the bottom of the mischief.[59]

Medicine-men, called "wizards" by Falkner, sometimes were killed by the Patagonians, when unsuccessful in their treatment, and were also obliged to wear women's clothing. They were selected in youth for supposed qualifications, especially if epileptic.[60]

In Hispaniola we are told that when a man died his friends resorted to necromancy to learn whether he had died through the neglect of the attending medicine-man to observe the prescribed fasts. If they found the medicine-man guilty, they killed him and broke all his bones. In spite of this the medicine-man often returned to life and had to be killed again, and mutilated by castration and otherwise.[61]

Herrera repeats the story about a patient who died and whose relatives felt dissatisfied with the medicine-man:

Para saber si la muerte fue por su culpa, tomaban el çumo de cierta Ierva, i cortaban las vñas del muerto, i los cabellos de encima de la frente, i los hacian polvos, i mezclados con el çumo, se lo daban à beber al muerto por la boca, i las narices, i luego le preguntaban muchas veces, si el Medico guardò dieta, hasta que hablando el demonio, respondia tan claro, como si fuera vivo, i decia, que el Medico no hiço dieta, i luego le bolvian à la sepultura.

Then the relatives attacked the medicine-man: "I le daban tantos palos, que le quebraban los braços, i las piernas, i à otros sacaban los ojos, i los cortaban sus miembros genitales."[62]

Alexander the Great expressed his sorrow at the death of his friend Hephæstion by crucifying the poor physicians who had attended the deceased.[63]

The medicine-men of the Natchez were put to death when they failed to cure.[64]

The Apache attach as much importance to the necessity of "laying the manes" of their dead as the Romans did. They have not localized the site of the future world as the Mohave have, but believe that the dead remain for a few days or nights in the neighborhood of the place where they departed from this life, and that they try to communicate with their living friends through the voice of the owl. If a relative hears this sound by night, or, as often happens, he imagines that he has seen the ghost itself, he hurries to the nearest medicine-man, relates his story, and carries out to the smallest detail the prescription of feast, singing, dancing, and other means of keeping the spirit in good humor on the journey which it will now undertake to the "house of spirits," the "chidin-bi-kungua." Nearly all medicine-men claim the power of going there at will, and not a few who are not medicine-men claim the same faculty.

The medicine-men of the Apache are paid by each patient or by his friends at the time they are consulted. There is no such thing as a maintenance fund, no system of tithes, nor any other burden for their support, although I can recall having seen while among the Zuñi one of the medicine-men who was making cane holders for the tobacco to be smoked at a coming festival, and whose fields were attended and his herds guarded by the other members of the tribe.

Among the Eskimo "the priest receives fees beforehand."[65]

"Tous ces sorciers ne réfusaient leurs secours à personne, pourvu qu'on les payait."[66]

"Among other customs was that of those who came to be cured, giving their bow and arrows, shoes, and beads to the Indians who accompanied Vaca and his companions."[67] (But we must remember that Vaca and his comrades traveled across the continent as medicine-men.)

"Las sementeras que hacen los Assenais son tambien de comunidad y comienzan la primera en la casa de su Chemisi que es su sacerdote principal y el que cuida de la Casa del Fuego."[68] The Asinai extended as far east as the present city of Natchitoches (Nacogdoches).

Spencer quotes Bernan and Hilhouse to the effect that the poor among the Arawaks of South America (Guiana) have no names because they can not pay the medicine-men.[69]

As a general rule, the medicine-men do not attend to their own families, neither do they assist in cases of childbirth unless specially needed. To both these rules there are exceptions innumerable. While I was at San Carlos Agency, Surgeon Davis was sent for to help in a case of uterine inertia, and I myself have been asked in the pueblo of Nambé, New Mexico, to give advice in a case of puerperal fever.

The medicine-men are accused of administering poisons to their enemies. Among the Navajo I was told that they would put finely pounded glass in food.

MEDICINE-WOMEN.

Fig. 429.—Medicine arrow used by Apache and Pueblo women.

There are medicine-women as well as medicine-men among the Apache, with two of whom I was personally acquainted. One named "Captain Jack" was well advanced in years and physically quite feeble, but bright in intellect and said to be well versed in the lore of her people. She was fond of instructing her grandchildren, whom she supported, in the prayers and invocations to the gods worshiped by her fathers, and I have several times listened carefully and unobserved to these recitations and determined that the prayers were the same as those which had already been given to myself as those of the tribe. The other was named Tze-go-juni, a Chiricahua, and a woman with a most romantic history. She had passed five years in captivity among the Mexicans in Sonora and had learned to speak Spanish with facility. A mountain lion had severely mangled her in the shoulder and knee, and once she had been struck by lightning; so that whether by reason of superior attainments or by an appeal to the superstitious reverence of her comrades, she wielded considerable influence. These medicine-women devote their attention principally to obstetrics, and have many peculiar stories to relate concerning pre-natal influences and matters of that sort. Tze-go-juni wore at her neck the stone amulet, shaped like a spear, which is figured in the illustrations of this paper. The material was the silex from the top of a mountain, taken from a ledge at the foot of a tree which had been struck by lightning. The fact that siliceous rock will emit sparks when struck by another hard body appeals to the reasoning powers of the savage as a proof that the fire must have been originally deposited therein by the bolt of lightning. A tiny piece of this arrow or lance was broken off and ground into the finest powder, and then administered in water to women during time of gestation. I have found the same kind of arrows in use among the women of Laguna and other pueblos. This matter will receive more extended treatment in my coming monograph on "Stone Worship."

Mendieta is authority for the statement that the Mexicans had both medicine-men and medicine-women. The former attended to the sick men and the latter to the sick women. "Á las mujeres siempre las curaban otras mujeres, y á los hombres otros hombres."[70] Some of the medicine-women seem to have made an illicit use of the knowledge they had acquired, in which case both the medicine-woman and the woman concerned were put to death. "La mujer preñada que tomaba con que abortar y echar la criatura, ella y la física que le habia dado con que la lanzase, ambas morian."[71]

Gomara asserts that they were to be found among the Indians of Chicora (South Carolina).[72] He calls them "viejas" (old women).

"Los Medicos eran Mugeres viejas, i no havia otras."[73] In Nicaragua, "Las Viejas curaban los Enfermos."[74]

There were medicine-women in Goazacoalco: "Tienen Medicos para curar las enfermedades, i los mas eran Mugeres, grandes Herbolarias, que hacian todas las curas con Iervas."[75]

Bernal Diaz, in 1568, speaks of having, on a certain occasion, at the summit of a high mountain, found "an Indian woman, very fat, and having with her a dog of that species, which they breed in order to eat, and which do not bark. This Indian was a witch; she was in the act of sacrificing the dog, which is a signal of hostility."[76]

"The office of medicine-man though generally usurped by males does not appertain to them exclusively, and at the time of our visit the one most extensively known was a black (or meztizo) woman, who had acquired the most unbounded influence by shrewdness, joined to a hideous personal appearance, and a certain mystery with which she was invested."[77] Creeks have medicine-women as well as medicine-men. The Eskimo have medicine-men and medicine-women.[78] The medicine-men and women of the Dakota "can cause ghosts to appear on occasion."[79]

Speaking of the Chippewa, Spencer says: "Women may practice soothsaying, but the higher religious functions are performed only by men."[80]

The medicine-men of the Apache do not assume to live upon food different from that used by the laity. There are such things as sacred feasts among the tribes of North America—as, for example, the feast of stewed puppy at the sun dance of the Sioux—but in these all people share.

In the mortuary ceremonies of the medicine-men there is a difference of degree, but not of kind. The Mohave, however, believe that the medicine-men go to a heaven of their own. They also believe vaguely in four different lives after this one.

Cabeza de Vaca says that the Floridians buried their ordinary dead, but burned their medicine-men, whose incinerated bones they preserved and drank in water.[81] "After they [the medicine-men and women of the Dakota] have four times run their career in human shape they are annihilated."[82] Schultze says that the medicine-men of the Sioux and the medicine-women also, after death "may be transformed into wild beasts."[82]

Surgeon Smart shows that among other offices entrusted to the medicine-men of the Apache was the reception of distinguished strangers.[83] Long asserts that the medicine-men of the Otoe, Omaha, and others along the Missouri pretended to be able to converse with the fetus in utero and predict the sex.[84] Nothing of that kind has ever come under my notice. Adair says that the medicine-men of the Cherokee would not allow snakes to be killed.[85] The Apache will not let snakes be killed within the limits of the camp by one of their own people, but they will not only allow a stranger to kill them, but request him to do so. They made this request of me on three occasions.

Several of the most influential medicine-men whom I have known were blind, among others old Na-ta-do-tash, whose medicine hat figures in these pages. Whether this blindness was the result of old age or due to the frenzy of dancing until exhausted in all seasons I am unable to conjecture. Schultze says of the shamans of Siberia: "This artificial frenzy has such a serious effect upon the body, and more particularly the eyes, that many of the shamans become blind; a circumstance which enhances the esteem in which they are held."[86] Some of the medicine-men of Peru went blind from overexertion in their dances, although Gomara assigns as a reason that it was from fear of the demon with whom they talked. "Y aun algunos se quiebran los ojos para semejante hablar [i.e., talk with the devil]; y creo que lo hacian de miedo, porque todos ellos se atapan los ojos cuando hablan con el."[87]

Dunbar tells us that the medicine-men of the Pawnee swallowed arrows and knives, and had also the trick of apparently killing a man and bringing him back to life. The same power was claimed by the medicine-men of the Zuñi, and the story told me by old Pedro Pino of the young men whom they used to kill and restore to life, will be found in "The Snake Dance of the Moquis."

REMEDIES AND MODES OF TREATMENT.

The materia medica of the Apache is at best limited and comprehends scarcely anything more than roots, leaves, and other vegetable matter. In gathering these remedies they resort to no superstitious ceremonies that I have been able to detect, although I have not often seen them collecting. They prefer incantation to pharmacy at all times, although the squaws of the Walapai living near old Camp Beale Springs in 1873, were extremely fond of castor oil, for which they would beg each day.

The main reliance for nearly all disorders is the sweat bath, which is generally conducive of sound repose. All Indians know the benefit to be derived from relieving an overloaded stomach, and resort to the titillation of the fauces with a feather to induce nausea. I have seen the Zuñi take great drafts of lukewarm water and then practice the above as a remedy in dyspepsia.

When a pain has become localized and deep seated, the medicine-men resort to suction of the part affected, and raise blisters in that way. I was once asked by the Walapai chief, Sequanya, to look at his back and sides. He was covered with cicatrices due to such treatment, the medicine-men thinking thus to alleviate the progressive paralysis from which he had been long a sufferer, and from which he shortly afterwards died. After a long march, I have seen Indians of different bands expose the small of the back uncovered to the fierce heat of a pile of embers to produce a rubefacient effect and stimulate what is known as a weak back. They drink freely of hot teas or infusions of herbs and grasses for the cure of chills. They are all dextrous in the manufacture of splints out of willow twigs, and seem to meet with much success in their treatment of gunshot wounds, which they do not dress as often as white practitioners, alleging that the latter, by so frequently removing the bandages, unduly irritate the wounds. I have known them to apply moxa, and I remember to have seen two deep scars upon the left hand of the great Apache chief Cochise, due to this cause.

It should not be forgotten that the world owes a large debt to the medicine-men of America, who first discovered the virtues of coca, sarsaparilla, jalap, cinchona, and guiacum. They understand the administration of enemata, and have an apparatus made of the paunch of a sheep and the hollow leg bone.

Scarification is quite common, and is used for a singular purpose. The Apache scouts when tired were in the habit of sitting down and lashing their legs with bunches of nettles until the blood flowed. This, according to their belief, relieved the exhaustion.

The medicine-men of the Floridians, according to Vaca, sucked and blew on the patient, and put hot stones on his abdomen to take away pain; they also scarified, and they seemed to have used moxas. "Ils cautérisent aussi avec le feu."[88]

The medicine-men of Hispaniola cured by suction, and when they had extracted a stone or other alleged cause of sickness it was preserved as a sacred relic, especially by the women, who looked upon it as of great aid in parturition.[89] Venegas speaks of a tube called the "chacuaco," formed out of a very hard black stone, used by the medicine-men of California in sucking such parts of the patient's body as were grievously afflicted with pains. In these tubes they sometimes placed lighted tobacco and blew down upon the part affected after the manner of a moxa, I suppose.[90]

The men of Panuco were so addicted to drunkenness that we are told: "Lorsqu'ils sont fatigués de boire leur vin par la bouche, ils se couchent, élèvent les jambes en l'air, et s'en font introduire dans le fondement au moyen d'une canule, taut que le corps peut en contenir."[91] The administration of wine in this manner may have been as a medicine, and the Aztecs of Panuco may have known that nutriment could be assimilated in this way. It shows at least that the Aztecs were acquainted with enemata.

"Quando la enfermedad les parecia que tenia necesidad de evacuacion, usaban del aiuda ò clister [clyster], con cocimientos de Iervas, i polvos, en Agua, i tomandola en la boca, con yn canuto de hueso de pierna de Garça, la hechaban, i obraba copiosamente: i en esto pudo esta Gente ser industriada de la Cigueña, que con su largo pico se cura, como escriven los Naturales."[92] Smith says that the medicine-men of the Araucanians "are well acquainted with the proper use of emetics, cathartics, and sudorifics. For the purpose of injection they make use of a bladder, as is still commonly practiced among the Chilenos."[93] Oviedo says of the medicine-men: "Conoçian muchas hiervas de que usaban y eran apropiadas á diversas enfermedades."[94] One of the most curious remedies presented in Bancroft's first volume is the use of a poultice of mashed poison-ivy leaves as a remedy for ringworm by the Indians of Lower California.

The Indians of Topia (in the Sierra Madre, near Sinaloa), were in the habit of scarifying their tired legs and aching temples.[95] The Arawaks, of Guiana, also scarified, according to Spencer.[96] The inhabitants of Kamchatka use enemata much in the same way as the Navajo and Apache do.[97] They also use moxa made of a fungus.[98]

It has never been my good fortune to notice an example of trephining among our savage tribes, although I have seen a good many wounded, some of them in the head. Trephining has been practiced by the aborigines of America, and the whole subject as noted among the primitive peoples of all parts of the globe has been treated in a monograph by Dr. Robert Fletcher, U. S. Army.[99]

Dr. Fordyce Grinnell, who was for some years attached to the Wichita Agency as resident physician, has published the results of his observations in a monograph, entitled "The healing art as practiced by the Indians of the Plains," in which he says: "Wet cupping is resorted to quite frequently. The surface is scarified by a sharp stone or knife, and a buffalo horn is used as the cupping glass. Cauterizing with red-hot irons is not infrequently employed." A cautery of "burning pith" was used by the Araucanians.[100]

"It may be safely affirmed that a majority of the nation [Choctaw] prefer to receive the attentions of a white physician when one can be obtained. * * * When the doctor is called to his patient he commences operations by excluding all white men and all who disbelieve in the efficacy of his incantations."[101] "The [Apache] scouts seem to prefer their own medicine-men when seriously ill, and believe the weird singing and praying around the couch is more effective than the medicine dealt out by our camp 'sawbones.'"[102] The promptness with which the American Indian recovers from severe wounds has been commented upon by many authorities. From my personal observation I could, were it necessary, adduce many examples. The natives of Australia seem to be endowed with the same recuperative powers.[103]

After all other means have failed the medicine-men of the Southwest devote themselves to making altars in the sand and clay near the couch of the dying, because, as Antonio Besias explained, this act was all the same as extreme unction. They portray the figures of various animals, and then take a pinch of the dust or ashes from each one and rub upon the person of the sick man as well as upon themselves. Similar altars or tracings were made by the medicine-men of Guatemala when they were casting the horoscope of a child and seeking to determine what was to be its medicine in life. This matter of sand altars has been fully treated by Matthews in the report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1883-'84, and there are several representations to be found in my Snake Dance of the Moquis. "Writing on sand" is a mode of divination among the Chinese.[104] Padre Boscana represents the "puplem" or medicine-men of the Indians of California as making or sketching "a most uncouth and ridiculous figure of an animal on the ground," and presumably of sands, clays, and other such materials.[105]

HAIR AND WIGS.

The medicine-men of the Apache were, at least while young, extremely careful of their hair, and I have often seen those who were very properly proud of their long and glossy chevelure. Particularly do I recall to mind the "doctor" at San Carlos in 1885, who would never allow his flowing black tresses to be touched. But they do not roach their hair, as I have seen the Pawnee do; they do not add false hair to their own, as I have seen among the Crow of Montana and the Mohave of the Rio Colorado; they do not apply plasters of mud as do their neighbors the Yuma, Cocopa, Mohave and Pima, and in such a manner as to convince spectators that the intent was ceremonial; and they do not use wigs in their dances. Wigs made of black wool may still be found occasionally among the Pueblos, but the Apache do not use them, and there is no reference to such a thing in their myths.

It is to be understood that these paragraphs are not treating upon the superstitions concerning the human hair, as such, but simply of the employment of wigs, which would seem in former days among some of the tribes of the Southwest to have been made of human hair presented by patients who had recovered from sickness or by mourners whose relatives had died.[106] Wigs with masks attached were worn by the Costa Ricans, according to Gabb.[107]

Some of the Apache-Yuma men wear long rolls of matted hair behind, which are the thickness of a finger, and two feet or more in length, and composed of old hair mixed with that growing on the head, or are in the form of a wig, made of hair that has been cut off when mourning the dead, to be worn on occasions of ceremony.[108]

Observations of the same kind have been made by Speke upon the customs of the people of Africa in his Nile,[109] concerning the Kidi people at the head of the Nile; by Cook, in Hawkesworth's Voyages,[110] speaking of Tahiti, and by Barcia,[111] speaking of Greenland. Sir Samuel Baker describes the peculiar wigs worn by the tribes on Lake Albert Nyanza, formed of the owner's hair and contributions from all sources plastered with clay into a stiff mass.[112]

Melchior Diaz reported that the people of Cibola "élèvent dans leurs maisons des animaux velus, grands comme des chiens d'Espagne. Ils les tondent, ils en font des perruques de couleurs." This report was sent by the Viceroy Mendoza to the Emperor Charles V. Exactly what these domesticated animals were, it would be hard to say; they may possibly have been Rocky Mountain sheep,[113] though Mr. Cushing, who has studied the question somewhat extensively, is of the opinion that they may have been a variety of the llama.

The Assinaboine used to wear false hair, and also had the custom of dividing their hair into "joints" of an inch or more, marked by a sort of paste of red earth and glue;[114] The Mandan did the same.[115] In this they both resemble the Mohave of the Rio Colorado. "The Algonquins believed also in a malignant Maniton. * * * She wore a robe made of the hair of her victims, for she was the cause of death."[116]

The Apache, until within the last twenty years, plucked out the eyelashes and often the eyebrows, but only a few of them still persist in the practice. Kane says that the Winnebagoes "have the custom of pulling out their eyebrows."[117] Herrera says that among the signs by which the Tlascaltecs recognized their gods when they saw them in visions, were "vianle sin cejas, i sin pestañas."[118]

MUDHEADS.

Reference has been made to a ceremonial plastering of mud upon the heads of Indians. When General Crook was returning from his expedition into the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, in which expedition a few of the enemy had been killed, the scouts upon reaching the San Bernardino River made a free use of the sweat bath, with much singing and other formulas, the whole being part of the lustration which all warriors must undergo as soon as possible after being engaged in battle. The Apache proper did not apply mud to their heads, but the Apache-Yuma did.

Capt. Grossman, U. S. Army,[119] says of the Pima method of purification after killing an Apache, that the isolation of the warrior lasts for sixteen days, during which period no one speaks to him, not even the old woman who brings him his food. The first day he touches neither food nor drink, and he eats sparingly for the whole time, touching neither meat nor salt; he bathes frequently in the Gila River and nearly the whole time keeps his head covered with a plaster of mud and mesquite.

"The boyes [of the Massagueyes] of seven or eight yeeres weare clay fastned on the hayre of the head, and still renewed with new clay, weighing sometimes five or six pounds. Nor may they be free hereof till in warre or lawfull fight hee hath killed a man."[120]

According to Padre Geronimo Boscana, the traditions of the Indians of California show that they "fed upon a kind of clay."[121] But this clay was often plastered upon their heads "as a kind of ornament." These were the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, who strongly resembled the Mohave. After all, the "mudheads" of the Mohave are no worse than those people in India who still bedaub their heads with "the holy mud of the Ganges." Up to this time the mud has been the "blue mud" of the Colorado and other rivers, but when we find Herbert Spencer mentioning that the heads of the Comanche are "besmeared with a dull red clay" we may suspect that we have stumbled upon an analogue of the custom of the Aztec priests, who bedaubed their heads with the coagulating lifeblood of their human victims. We know that there has been such a substitution practiced among the Indians of the Pueblo of Jemez, who apply red ocher to the mouth of the stone mountain lion, in whose honor human blood was once freely shed. The practice of so many of the Plains tribes of painting the median line of the head with vermilion seems to be traceable back to a similar custom.

SCALP SHIRTS.

The shirt depicted on Pl. III, made of buckskin and trimmed with human scalps, would seem to belong to the same category with the mantles made of votive hair, mentioned as being in use among the California tribe a little more than a century ago. It was presented to me by Little Big Man, who led me to believe that it had once belonged to the great chief of the Sioux, Crazy Horse, or had at least been worn by him. Of its symbolism I am unable to find the explanation. The colors yellow and blue would seem to represent the earth and water or sky, the feathers attached would refer to the birds, and the round circle on the breast is undoubtedly the sun. There is a cocoon affixed to one shoulder, the significance of which I do not know.

Plate III.
SCALP SHIRT OF "LITTLE BIG MAN" (SIOUX).

THE RHOMBUS, OR BULL ROARER.

The rhombus was first seen by me at the snake dance of the Tusayan, in the village of Walpi, Ariz., in the month of August, 1881. Previous to that date I had heard of it vaguely, but had never been able to see it in actual use. The medicine-men twirled it rapidly, and with a uniform motion, about the head and from front to rear, and succeeded in faithfully imitating the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind. As explained to me by one of the medicine-men, by making this sound they compelled the wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops. At a later date I found it in use among the Apache, and for the same purpose. The season near the San Carlos Agency during the year 1884 had been unusually dry, and the crops were parched. The medicine-men arranged a procession, two of the features of which were the rhombus and a long handled cross, upon which various figures were depicted. Of the latter, I will speak at another time.

Fig. 430.—Rhombus of the Apache.

Again, while examining certain ruins in the Verde Valley, in central Arizona, I found that the "Cliff Dwellers," as it has become customary to call the prehistoric inhabitants, had employed the same weapon of persuasion in their intercourse with their gods. I found the rhombus also among the Rio Grande Pueblo tribes and the Zuñi. Dr. Washington Matthews has described it as existing among the Navajo and Maj. J. W. Powell has observed it in use among the Utes of Nevada and Utah. As will be shown, its use in all parts of the world seems to have been as general as that of any sacred implement known to primitive man, not even excepting the sacred cords or rosaries discussed in this paper. Three forms of the rhombus have come under my own observation, each and all apparently connected in symbolism with the lightning. The first terminates in a triangular point, and the general shape is either that of a long, narrow, parallelogram, capped with an equilateral triangle, or else the whole figure is that of a slender isosceles triangle. Where the former shape was used, as at the Tusayan snake dance, the tracing of a snake or lightning in blue or yellow followed down the length of the rhombus and terminated in the small triangle, which did duty as the snake's head. The second pattern was found by Dr. Matthews among the Navajo, and by myself in the old cliff dwellings. The one which I found was somewhat decayed, and the extremity of the triangle was broken off. There was no vestige of painting left. The second form was serrated on both edges to simulate the form of the snake or lightning. The third form, in use among the Apache, is an oblong of 7 or 8 inches in length, one and a quarter inches in width by a quarter in thickness. One extremity, that through which the cord passes, is rounded to rudely represent a human head, and the whole bears a close resemblance to the drawings of schoolboys which are intended for the human figure. The Apache explained that the lines on the front side of the rhombus were the entrails and those on the rear side the hair of their wind god. The hair is of several colors, and represents the lightning. I did not ascertain positively that such was the case, but was led to believe that the rhombus of the Apache was made by the medicine-men from wood, generally pine or fir, which had been struck by lightning on the mountain tops. Such wood is held in the highest estimation among them, and is used for the manufacture of amulets of especial efficacy. The Apache name for the rhombus is tzi-ditindi, the "sounding wood." The identification of the rhombus or "bull roarer" of the ancient Greeks with that used by the Tusayan in their snake dance was first made by E. B. Tylor in the Saturday Review in a criticism upon "The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona."

Fig. 431.—Rhombus of the Apache.

The Kaffirs have the rhombus among their playthings:

The nodiwu is a piece of wood about 6 or 8 inches long, and an inch and a half or 2 inches wide, and an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick in the middle. Towards the edges it is beveled off, so that the surface is convex, or consists of two inclined planes. At one end it has a thong attached to it by which it is whirled rapidly round. * * * There is a kind of superstition connected with the nodiwu, that playing with it invites a gale of wind. Men will, on this account, often prevent boys from using it when they desire calm weather for any purpose. This superstition is identical with that which prevents many sailors from whistling at sea.[122]

Of the Peruvians we are informed that "their belief was that there was a man in the sky with a sling and a stick, and that in his power were the rain, the hail, the thunder, and all else that appertains to the regions of the air, where clouds are formed."[123]

The sacred twirler of the snake dance is found in Greece, America, Africa and New Zealand. It survives as a toy in England and the United States.[124] The same peculiar instrument has been noticed in the religious ceremonials of the Australians, especially in the initiatory rites of the "bora." It is called the "tirricoty."[125] The twirling of the tzi-ditindi in medicine or prayer corresponds to the revolution of the prayer wheel of the Lamas.

THE CROSS.

The sign of the cross appears in many places in Apache symbolism. The general subject of the connection of the cross with the religion of the aborigines of the American continent has been so fully traversed by previous authors that I do not care to add much more to the subject beyond saying that my own observation has assured me that it is related to the cardinal points and the four winds, and is painted by warriors upon their moccasins upon going into a strange district in the hope of keeping them from getting on a wrong trail.

In October, 1884, I saw a procession of Apache men and women, led by the medicine-men bearing two crosses, made as follows: The vertical arm was 4 feet 10 inches long, and the transverse between 10 and 12 inches, and each was made of slats about 1½ inches wide, which looked as if they had been long in use. They were decorated with blue polka dots upon the unpainted surface. A blue snake meandered down the longer arm. There was a circle of small willow twigs at top; next below that, a small zinc-cased mirror, a bell, and eagle feathers. Nosey, the Apache whom I induced to bring it to me after the ceremony, said that they carried it in honor of Guzanutli to induce her to send rain, at that time much needed for their crops. It is quite likely that this particular case represents a composite idea; that the original beliefs of the Apache have been modified to some extent by the crude ideas of the Mexican captives among them, who still remember much that was taught them in the churches of the hamlets in northern Mexico, from which they were kidnapped years ago; but, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that the cross has always formed a part of the Apache symbolism; that the snake does not belong to the Christian faith, and that it has never been allowed to appear upon the cross since the time of the Gnostics in the second and third centuries. Therefore, we must regard that as a Pagan symbol, and so must we regard the circle of willow twigs, which is exactly the same as the circle we have seen attached to the sacred cords for the cure of headache.[126]

The cross was found in full vogue as a religious emblem among the aborigines all over America. Father Le Clercq[127] speaks of its very general employment by the Gaspesians: "Ils ont parmi eux, tout infideles qu'ils soient, la Croix en singuliere veneration, qu'ils la portent figurée sur leurs habits & sur leur chair; qu'ils la tiennent à la main dans tous leurs voïages, soit par mer, soit par terre; & qu'enfin ils la posent au dehors & au dedans de leurs Cabannes, comme la marque d'honneur qui les distingue des autres Nations du Canada." He narrates[128] that the Gaspé tradition or myth was, that the whole tribe being ravaged by a plague, the medicine-men had recourse to the Sun, who ordered them to make use of the cross in every extremity.

Herrera relates that the followers of Hernandez de Cordoba found at Cape Catoche "unos Adoratorios ... i Cruces pintadas que les causò gran admiracion."[129] He also says that Juan de Grijalva on the island of Cozumel found a number of oratories and temples, but one in particular was made in the form of a square tower, with four openings. Inside this tower was a cross made of lime, which the natives reverenced as the god of the rain; "una Cruz de Cal, de tres varas en alto, à la qual tenian por el Dios de la lluvia."[130]

NECKLACES OF HUMAN FINGERS.

The necklace of human fingers, an illustration of which accompanies this text (Pl. IV), belonged to the foremost of the medicine-men of a brave tribe—the Cheyenne of Montana and Wyoming. They were the backbone of the hostility to the whites, and during the long and arduous campaign conducted against them by the late Maj. Gen. George Crook, which terminated so successfully in the surrender of 4,500 of the allied Sioux and Cheyenne, at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies, in the early spring of 1877, it was a noted fact that wherever a band of the Cheyenne was to be found there the fighting was most desperate. It is a matter now well established that the Cheyenne are an offshoot of the Algonquian family, speaking a dialect closely resembling that of the Cree, of British America.

Plate IV.
NECKLACE OF HUMAN FINGERS.

It may interest some readers to listen to a few words descriptive of the manner in which such a ghastly relic of savagery came into my possession. On the morning of the 25th of November, 1876, the cavalry and Indian scouts (Sioux, Shoshoni, Arapaho, Pawnee, and a few of the Cheyenne themselves), of Gen. Crook's command, under the leadership of the late Brig. Gen. Ranald S. Mackenzie, then colonel of the Fourth Cavalry, surprised and destroyed the main village of the Cheyenne, on the headwaters of the Powder River, in the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming. The onslaught was irresistible, the destruction complete, and the discomfited savages were forced to flee from their beds, half naked and with nothing save their arms and ammunition. More than half of the great herd of ponies belonging to the savages were killed, captured, or so badly wounded as to be of no use to the owners. The cold became so intense that on the night after the fight eleven papooses froze to death in their mothers' arms, and the succeeding night, three others. This blow, the most grievous ever inflicted upon the plains tribes, resulted in the surrender, first of the Cheyenne, and later on of the principal chief of the Sioux, the renowned Crazy Horse; after which the Sioux troubles were minimized into the hunt for scattered bands. Undoubtedly, among the bitterest losses of valuable property suffered by the Cheyenne on this occasion were the two necklaces of human fingers which came into my possession, together with the small buckskin bag filled with the right hands of papooses belonging to the tribe of their deadly enemies, the Shoshoni. These were found in the village by one of our scouts—Baptiste Pourrier, who, with Mr. Frank Gruard, was holding an important and responsible position in connection with the care of the great body of Indian scouts already spoken of. From these two gentlemen I afterwards obtained all the information that is here to be found regarding the Cheyenne necklace.

The second necklace, consisting of four fingers, was buried, as Gen. Crook did not wish to have kept more than one specimen, and that only for scientific purposes. Accordingly, the necklace here depicted was sent first to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and later to the National Museum in Washington, where it was believed it could better fulfill its mission of educating students in a knowledge of the manners and customs of our aborigines.

The buckskin bag, with the papooses' hands, was claimed by the Shoshoni scouts, who danced and wailed all night, and then burned the fearful evidence of the loss sustained by their people.

The necklace is made of a round collar of buckskin, incrusted with the small blue and white beads purchased from the traders, these being arranged in alternate spaces of an inch or more in length. There are also attached numbers of the perforated wampum shell beads of native manufacture. Pendant from this collar are five medicine arrows, the exact nature of which, it was, of course, impossible to determine from the owner himself. Both Frank and Baptiste agreed that an arrow might become "medicine" either from having been shot into the person of the owner himself or into the body of an enemy, or even from having been picked up under peculiar circumstances. The owner, High Wolf or Tall Wolf, admitted as much after he had surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency and had made every effort to obtain the return of his medicine, which was this necklace.

The four medicine bags to be seen in the picture are worthy of attention. They were carefully examined under a powerful glass by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, U. S. Army, in the city of Washington, and pronounced to be human scrota. The first of these contained a vegetable powder, somewhat decomposed, having a resemblance to hoddentin; the second was filled with killikinnick; the third with small garnet-colored seeds like the chia in use among the Apache, and the fourth with a yellow, clayey-white vegetable matter not identified. The fifth, also, remained unidentified.

Besides the above, there are artificial teeth, resembling those of the fossil animals abundant in the Bad Lands of South Dakota, but cut out of soft stone.

The fingers—eight altogether—are the left-hand middle fingers of Indians of hostile tribes, killed by High Wolf. I obtained the list and could insert it here were it worthwhile to do so. The fingers have not been left in the natural state, but have been subjected to very careful and elaborate antiseptic treatment in order thoroughly to desiccate them. They were split longitudinally on the inner side and after the bone had been extracted the surface of the skin, both inside and out, received a treatment with a wash or paint of ocherous earth, the same as is used for the face. I was told that the bones were not replaced but that sticks were inserted to maintain the fingers in proper shape.

Of the reason for making use of such a trophy or relic, there is not much to be said; even the savages know little and say less. From the best information that I have been able to gather, it would seem to be based partly upon a vainglorious desire to display the proofs of personal prowess, and partly upon the vague and ill defined, but deeply rooted, belief in the talismanic or "medicinal" potency possessed by all parts of the human body, especially after death. It was such a belief which impelled the Mandan, Aztecs, and others of the American tribes to preserve the skulls of their dead as well as (among the Aztecs) those of the victims sacrificed in honor of their gods. As has been shown in another place, the Zuñi and others take care to offer food at stated periods to the scalps of their enemies.

The use of necklaces of human fingers or of human teeth is to be found in many parts of the world, and besides the fingers themselves, we find the whole arm, or in other cases only the nails. The Cheyenne did not always restrict themselves to fingers; they generally made use of the whole hand, or the arm of the slaughtered enemy. In a colored picture drawn and painted by one of themselves I have a representation of a scalp dance, in which the squaws may be seen dressed in their best, carrying the arms of enemies elevated on high poles and lances. There is no doubt in my mind that this custom of the Cheyenne of cutting off the arm or hand gave rise to their name in the sign language of the "Slashers," or "Wrist Cutters," much as the corresponding tribal peculiarity of the Dakota occasioned their name of the "Coupe Gorge" or "Throat Cutters."

The necklace of human fingers is found among other tribes. A necklace of four human fingers was seen by the members of the Lewis and Clarke expedition among the Shoshoni at the headwaters of the Columbia, in the early years of the present century. Early in the spring of 1858 Henry Youle Hind refers to the allies of the Ojibwa on Red River as having "two fingers severed from the hands of the unfortunate Sioux."[131] In Eastman's "Legends of the Sioux," we read of "Harpsthinah, one of the Sioux women, who wore as long as she could endure it, a necklace made of the hands and feet of Chippewah children."[132] We read that in New Zealand, "Several rows of human teeth, drawn on a thread, hung on their breasts."[133] Capt. Cook speaks of seeing fifteen human jaw bones attached to a semicircular board at the end of a long house on the island of Tahiti. "They appeared to be fresh, and there was not one of them that wanted a single tooth;"[134] and also, "the model of a canoe, about three feet long, to which were tied eight human jaw bones; we had already learnt that these were trophies of war."[135] Capt. Byron, R. N., saw in the Society Islands, in 1765, a chief who "had a string of human teeth about his waist, which was probably a trophy of his military prowess."[136]

"The wild Andamanese, who live only on the fruits of their forests and on fish, so far revere their progenitors that they adorn their women and children with necklaces and such like, formed out of the finger and toe-nails of their ancestors."[137]

Bancroft says[138] that the Californians did not generally scalp, but they did cut off and keep the arms and legs of a slain enemy or, rather, the hands and feet and head. They also had the habit of plucking out and preserving the eyes.

Kohl assures us that he has been informed that the Ojibwa will frequently cut fingers, arms, and limbs from their enemies and preserve these ghastly relics for use in their dances. Sometimes the warriors will become so excited that they will break off and swallow a finger.[139]

Tanner says of the Ojibwa: "Sometimes they use sacks of human skin to contain their medicines, and they fancy that something is thus added to their efficacy."[140]

Of the savages of Virginia we read: "Mais d'autres portent pour plus glorieuse parure une main seiche de quelqu'un de leurs ennemis."[141]

Of the Algonkin we read: "Il y en a qui ont une partie du bras et la main de quelque Hiroquois qu'ils ont tué; cela est si bien vuidée que les ongles restent toutes entieres."[142]

The Mohawk "place their foe against a tree or stake and first tear all the nails from his fingers and run them on a string, which they wear the same as we do gold chains. It is considered to the honor of any chief who has vanquished or overcome his enemies if he bite off or cut off some of their members, as whole fingers."[143]

The Cenis (Asinai) of Texas, were seen by La Salle's expedition in 1687-1690, torturing a captive squaw. "They then tore out her hair, and cut off her fingers."[144]

In volume 2 of Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, in the plates of the Vatican manuscript, is to be seen a representation of an Aztec priest or other dignitary holding out in his hands two human arms. In plate 76 of the same is a priest offering up a human sacrifice, the virile member of the victim cut off.

Teoyamaqui, the wife of Huitzlipochtli, the Aztec god of war, was depicted with a necklace of human hands.[145] Squier also says that Darga or Kali, the Hindu goddess, who corresponds very closely to her, was represented with "a necklace of skulls" and "a girdle of dissevered human hands."

The Hindu goddess Kali was decorated with a necklace of human skulls.[146] In the Propaganda collection, given in Kingsborough,[147] are to be seen human arms and legs.

"On the death of any of the great officers of state, the finger bones and hair are also preserved; or if they have died shaven, as sometimes occurs, a bit of their mbŭgŭ dress will be preserved in place of the hair."[148] "Their families guard their tombs."[149]

The principal war fetiches of Uganda "consist of dead lizards, bits of wood, hide, nails of dead people, claws of animals, and beaks of birds." Stanley saw them displayed before King Mtesa.[150]

"Some of the women in Gippsland wear round the neck human hands, which, Mr. Hull says, were beautifully prepared. He moreover informs me that they sometimes wear the parts of which the 'Lingam' and 'Priapus' were the emblems."[151] "The Gippsland people keep the relics of the departed. They will cut off the hands to keep as a remembrance, and these they will attach to the string that is tied round the neck."[152]

Smyth also relates that the women of some of the Australian tribes preserve "the hands of some defunct member of the tribe—that of some friend of the woman's, or perhaps one belonging to a former husband. This she keeps as the only remembrance of one she once loved; and, though years may have passed, even now, when she has nothing else to do, she will sit and moan over this relic of humanity. Sometimes a mother will carry about with her the remains of a beloved child, whose death she mourns."[153] The Australians also use the skulls of their "nearest and dearest relatives" for drinking vessels; thus, a daughter would use her mother's skull, etc.[154]

"One of the most extraordinary of their laws is that a widow, for every husband she marries after the first, is obliged to cut off a joint of a finger, which she presents to her husband on the wedding day, beginning at one of the little fingers."[155]

In the Army and Navy Journal, New York, June 23, 1888, is mentioned a battle between the Crow of Montana and the Piegan, in which the former obtained some of the hands and feet of dead warriors of the first-named tribe and used them in their dances.

Catlin shows that the young Sioux warriors, after going through the ordeal of the sun dance, placed the little finger of the left hand on the skull of a sacred buffalo and had it chopped off.[156]

"The sacrifices [of American Indians] at the fasts at puberty sometimes consist of finger joints."[157]

In Dodge's Wild Indians is represented (Pl. vi, 13) a Cheyenne necklace of the bones of the first joint of the human fingers, stripped of skin and flesh. I have never seen or heard of anything of the kind, although I have served with the Cheyenne a great deal and have spoken about their customs. My necklace is of human fingers mummified, not of bones.

Fanny Kelly says of a Sioux chief: "He showed me a puzzle or game he had made from the finger bones of some of the victims that had fallen beneath his own tomahawk. The bones had been freed from the flesh by boiling, and, being placed upon a string, were used for playing some kind of Indian game."[158]

Strabo recounts in his third book that the Lusitanians sacrificed prisoners and cut off their right hands to consecrate them to their gods.

Dulaure says that the Germans attached the heads and the right hands of their human victims to sacred trees.[159]

Adoni-bezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings of Syria.[160]

The necklace of human fingers is not a particle more horrible than the ornaments of human bones to be seen in the cemetery of the Capuchins in Rome at the present day. I have personally known of two or three cases where American Indians cut their enemies limb from limb. The idea upon which the practice is based seems to be the analogue of the old English custom of sentencing a criminal to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered."

Brand gives a detailed description of the "hand of glory," the possession of which was believed by the peasantry of Great Britain and France to enable a man to enter a house invisible to the occupants. It was made of the hand of an executed (hanged) murderer, carefully desiccated and prepared with a great amount of superstitious mummery. With this holding a candle of "the fat of a hanged man" burglars felt perfectly secure while engaged in their predatory work.[161] The belief was that a candle placed in a dead man's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used. Such a candle introduced into a house kept those who were asleep from awakening.

The superstition in regard to the "hand of glory" was widely diffused throughout France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain. As late as the year 1831 it was used by Irish burglars in the county Meath.

Dr. Frank Baker delivered before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., a lecture upon these superstitions as related to the "hand of glory," to which the student is respectfully referred.[162]

An Aztec warrior always tried to procure the middle finger of the left hand of a woman who had died in childbirth. This he fastened to his shield as a talisman.[163] The great weapon of the Aztec witches was the left arm of a woman who had died in her first childbirth.[164] Pliny mentions "still-born infants cut up limb by limb for the most abominable practices, not only by midwives, but by harlots even as well!"[165]

The opinions entertained in Pliny's time descended to that of the Reformation—

Finger of birth-strangled babe,
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab.[166]

"Scrofula, imposthumes of the parotid glands, and throat diseases, they say, may be cured by the contact of the hand of a person who has been carried off by an early death;" but, he goes on to say, any dead hand will do, "provided it is of the same sex as the patient and that the part affected is touched with the back of the left hand."[167] A footnote adds that this superstition still prevails in England in regard to the hand of a man who has been hanged.

The use of dead men's toes, fingers, spinal vertebræ, etc., in magical ceremonies, especially the fabrication of magical lamps and candles, is referred to by Frommann.[168]

Grimm is authority for the statement that in both France and Germany the belief was prevalent that the fingers of an unborn babe were "available for magic."[169]

In England witches were believed to "open graves for the purpose of taking out the joints of the fingers and toes of dead bodies ... in order to prepare a powder for their magical purposes."[170]

"Saint Athanase dit même, que ces parties du corps humain [i.e., hands, feet, toes, fingers, etc.] étoient adorées comme des dieux particuliers."[171]

According to the sacred lore of the Brahmans "the Tirtha sacred to the Gods lies at the root of the little finger, that sacred to the Rishis in the middle of the fingers, that sacred to Men at the tips of the fingers, that sacred to Agni (fire) in the middle of the hand."[172]

In the Island of Ceylon "debauchees and desperate people often play away the ends of their fingers."[173]

Hone shows that "every joint of each finger was appropriated to some saint."[174]

NECKLACES OF HUMAN TEETH.

A number of examples are to be found of the employment of necklaces of human teeth. In my own experience I have never come across any specimens, and my belief is that among the Indians south of the Isthmus such things are to be found almost exclusively. I have found no reference to such ornamentation or "medicine" among the tribes of North America, but there are many to show the very general dissemination of the custom in Africa and in the islands of the South Sea. Gomara says that the Indians of Santa Marta wore at their necks, like dentists, the teeth of the enemies they had killed in battle.[175] Many of the Carib, we are told by a Spanish writer, ostentatiously wear necklaces made of strings of the teeth of the enemies whom they have slain.[176] Padre Fray Alonzo Fernandez says of the Carib: "Traen los dientes con los cabellos de los que mataron por collares, como hazian antiguamente los Scitas."[177] The people of New Granada "traen al cuello dientes de los que matavan."[178] Picart says that the natives of New Granada and Cumana "portent au col les dents des ennemis qu'ils ont massacrez."[179] The Spaniards found in the temple of the Itzaes, on the island of Peten, an idol made of "yesso," which is plaster, and in the head, which was shaped like the sun, were imbedded the teeth of the Castilians whom they had captured and killed.[180]

"They strung together the teeth of such of their enemies as they had slain in battle and wore them on their legs and arms as trophies of successful cruelty."[181]

Stanley says, referring to the natives of the Lower Congo country: "Their necklaces consisted of human, gorilla, and crocodile teeth, in such quantity, in many cases, that little or nothing could be seen of the neck."[182]

"The necklaces of human teeth which they [Urangi and Rubunga, of the Lower Congo] wore."[183] Again, "human teeth were popular ornaments for the neck."[184] When a king dies they [the Wahŭma, of the head of the Nile] cut out his lower jaw and preserve it covered with beads.[185]

Schweinfurth[186] speaks of having seen piles of "lower jawbones from which the teeth had been extracted to serve as ornaments for the neck" by the Monbuttoo of Africa. "A slaughtered foe was devoured from actual bloodthirstiness and hatred by the Niam-Niams of Central Africa.... They make no secret of their savage craving, but ostentatiously string the teeth of their victims round their necks, adorning the stakes erected beside their dwellings for the habitation of the trophies with the skulls of the men they have devoured. Human fat is universally sold."[187]

The four front teeth were extracted by the men and women of the Latooka and other tribes of the White Nile, but no explanation is given of the custom.[188]

In Dahomey, strings of human teeth are worn.[189]

Freycinet saw in Timor, Straits of Malacca, "a score of human jawbones, which we wished to purchase; but all our offers were met by the word 'pamali,' meaning sacred."[190]

In one of the "morais" or temples entered by Kotzebue in 1818, on the Sandwich Islands, there were two great and ugly idols, one representing a man, the other a woman. "The priests made me notice that both statues, which had their mouths wide open, were furnished with a row of human teeth."[191]

The Sandwich Islanders kept the jaw bones of their enemies as trophies.[192] King Tamaahmaah had a "spitbox which was set round with human teeth, and had belonged to several of his predecessors."[193]

Among some of the Australian tribes the women wear about their necks the teeth which have been knocked out of the mouths of the boys at a certain age.[194] This custom of the Australians does not obtain among the North American tribes, by whom the teeth, as they fall out, are carefully hidden or buried under some tree or rock. At least, I have been so informed by several persons, among others by Chato, one of the principal men of the Chiricahua Apache.

Molina speaks of the customs of the Araucanians, who, after torturing their captives to death, made war flutes out of their bones and used the skulls for drinking vessels.[195] The Abipones of Paraguay make the bones of their enemies into musical instruments.[196]

The preceding practice is strictly in line with the "medicinal" and "magical" values attached in Europe to human teeth, human skin, etc. The curious reader may find much on this subject in the works of Frommann, Beckherius, Etmüller, Samuel Augustus Flemming, and others of the seventeenth century, where it will be shown that the ideas of the people of Europe of that period were only in name superior to those of the savages of America, the islands of the South Seas, and of Central Africa. In my work upon "The Scatalogic Rites of all Nations" I have treated this matter more in extenso, but what is here adduced will be sufficient for the present article.

The skin of Ziska, the Bohemian reformer, was made into a "medicine drum" by his followers.

THE SCRATCH STICK.

When Gen. Crook's expedition against the Chiricahua Apache reached the heart of the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, it was my good fortune to find on the ground in Geronimo's rancheria two insignificant looking articles of personal equipment, to which I learned the Apache attached the greatest importance. One of these was a very small piece of hard wood, cedar, or pine, about two and a half to three inches long and half a finger in thickness, and the other a small section of the cane indigenous to the Southwest and of about the same dimensions. The first was the scratch stick and the second the drinking reed.

The rule enjoined among the Apache is that for the first four times one of their young men goes out on the warpath he must refrain from scratching his head with his fingers or letting water touch his lips. How to keep this vow and at the same time avoid unnecessary personal discomfort and suffering is the story told by these petty fragments from the Apache's ritual. He does not scratch his head with his fingers; he makes use of this scratch stick. He will not let water touch his lips, but sucks it into his throat through this tiny tube. A long leather cord attached both stick and reed to the warrior's belt and to each other. This was all the information I was able to obtain of a definite character. Whether these things had to be prepared by the medicine-men or by the young warrior himself; with what ceremonial, if any, they had to be manufactured, and under what circumstances of time and place, I was unable to ascertain to my own satisfaction, and therefore will not extend my remarks or burden the student's patience with incoherent statements from sources not absolutely reliable. That the use of the scratch stick and the drinking reed was once very general in America and elsewhere, and that it was not altogether dissociated from ritualistic or ceremonial ideas, may be gathered from the citations appended.

In her chapter entitled "Preparatory ceremony of the young warrior" Mrs. Emerson says: "He does not touch his ears or head with his hand," explaining in a footnote, "the head was sometimes made a sacrificial offering to the sun."[197] Tanner relates that the young Ojibwa warrior for the "three first times" that he accompanies a war party "must never scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers, but if he is compelled to scratch he must use a small stick."[198] Kohl states that the Ojibwa, while on the warpath, "will never sit down in the shade of a tree or scratch their heads; at least, not with their fingers. The warriors, however, are permitted to scratch themselves with a piece of wood or a comb."[199] Mackenzie states regarding the Indians whom he met on the Columbia, in 52° 38′, N. lat., "instead of a comb they [the men] have a small stick hanging by a string from one of the locks [of hair], which they employ to alleviate any itching or irritation in the head."[200]

The Tlinkit of British North America use these scratchers made of basalt or other stone.

"The pipe-stem carrier (i.e., the carrier of the sacred or 'medicine' pipe) of the Crees, of British North America, dares not scratch his own head, without compromising his own dignity, without the intervention of a stick, which he always carries for that purpose."[201]

Bancroft[202] quotes Walker as saying that "a Pima never touches his skin with his nails, but always with a small stick for that purpose, which he renews every fourth day and wears in his hair."

As part of the ceremony of "initiating youth into manhood" among the Creeks, the young neophyte "during the twelve moons ... is also forbidden to pick his ears or scratch his head with his fingers, but must use a small splinter to perform these operations."[203] The Apache-Yuma men carry in their hair "a slender stick or bone about 8 inches long, which serves them as a comb."[204]

The idea that these scratch sticks replace combs is an erroneous one; Indians make combs in a peculiar way of separate pieces of wood, and they are also very fond of brushing their long locks with the coarse brushes, which they make of sacaton or other grass.

"One other regulation, mentioned by Schomburgk, is certainly quaint; the interesting father may not scratch himself with his finger nails, but may use for this purpose a splinter, especially provided, from the mid-rib of a cokerite palm."[205]

When a Greenlander is about to enter into conversation with the spirits "no one must stir, not so much as to scratch his head."[206]

In the New Hebrides most of the natives "wear a thin stick or reed, about 9 inches long, in their hair, with which they occasionally disturb the vermin that abound in their heads."[207]