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

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.

"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."119

According to Padre Geronimo Boscana, the traditions of the Indians of California show that they "fed upon a kind of clay."120 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.

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.

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."

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.121

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."122

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.123 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."124 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.125

The cross was found in full vogue as a religious emblem among the aborigines all over America. Father Le Clercq126 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 narrates127 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.