The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604)). Bourke John Gregory

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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. Picart11 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 Duran14 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, Dorman15 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

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