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

"Upon attaining the age of puberty, girls fast one whole day, pray, and throw hoddentin to the sun."251 When an Apache dies, if a medicine-man be near, hoddentin is sprinkled upon the corpse. The Apache buried in the clefts of rocks, but the Apache-Mohave cremated. "Before lighting the fire the medicine-men of the Apache-Mohave put hoddentin on the dead person's breast in the form of a cross, on the forehead, shoulders, and scattered a little about."252

The very first thing an Apache does in the morning is to blow a little pinch of hoddentin to the dawn. The Apache worship both dawn and darkness, as well as the sun, moon, and several of the planets.

"When the sun rises we cast a pinch of hoddentin toward him, and we do the same thing to the moon, but not to the stars, saying 'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,' meaning 'Be good, O Sun, be good.' 'Dawn, long time let me live'; or, 'Don't let me die for a long time,' and at night, 'Gun-ju-le, chil-jilt, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,' meaning 'Be good, O Night; Twilight, be good; do not let me die.'" "In going on a hunt an Apache throws hoddentin and says 'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, cha-ut-si, ping, kladitza,' meaning 'Be good, O Sun, make me succeed deer to kill.'"253

The name of the full moon in the Apache language is "klego-na-ay," but the crescent moon is called "tzontzose" and hoddentin is always offered to it.254

"Hoddentin is thrown to the sun, moon (at times), the morning star, and occasionally to the wagon."255 "The Apache offer much hoddentin to 'Na-u-kuzze,' the Great Bear."256 "Our custom is to throw a very small pinch of hoddentin at dawn to the rising sun."257 "The women of the Chiricahua throw no hoddentin to the moon, but pray to it, saying: 'Gun-ju-le, klego-na-ay,' (be good, O Moon)."258

When the Apache plant corn the medicine-men bury eagle-plume sticks in the fields, scatter hoddentin, and sing. When the corn is partially grown they scatter pinches of hoddentin over it.259

The "eagle-plume sticks" mentioned in the preceding paragraph suggests the "ke-thawn" mentioned by Matthews in "The Mountain Chant."260

"When a person is very sick the Apache make a great fire, place the patient near it, and dance in a circle around him and the fire, at the same time singing and sprinkling him with hoddentin in the form of a cross on head, breast, arms, and legs."261

In November, 1885, while at the San Carlos agency, I had an interview with Nantadotash, an old blind medicine-man of the Akañe or Willow gens, who had with him a very valuable medicine-hat which he refused to sell, and only with great reluctance permitted me to touch. Taking advantage of his infirmity, I soon had a picture drawn in my notebook, and the text added giving the symbolism of all the ornamentation attached. Upon discovering this, the old man became much excited, and insisted upon putting a pinch of hoddentin upon the drawing, and then recited a prayer, which I afterwards succeeded in getting verbatim. After the prayer was finished, the old man arose and marked with hoddentin the breast of his wife, of Moses, of Antonio, of other Apache present, and then of myself, putting a large pinch over my heart and upon each shoulder, and then placed the rest upon his own tongue. He explained that I had taken the "life" out of his medicine hat, and, notwithstanding the powers of his medicine, returned in less than a month with a demand for $30 as damages. His hat never was the same after I drew it. My suggestion that the application of a little soap might wash away the clots of grease, soot, and earth adhering to the hat, and restore its pristine efficacy were received with the scorn due to the sneers of the scoffer.

"In time of much lightning, the Apache throw hoddentin and say: 'Gun-ju-le, ittindi,' be good, Lightning."262

Tzit-jizinde, "the Man who likes Everybody," who said he belonged to the Inoschujochin – Manzanita or Bearberry clan – showed me how to pray with hoddentin in time of lightning or storm or danger of any kind. Taking a small pinch in his fingers, he held it out at arm's length, standing up, and repeated his prayer, and then blew his breath hard. I was once with a party of Apache while a comet was visible. I called their attention to it, but they did not seem to care. On the other hand, Antonio told me that the "biggest dance" the Apache ever had was during the time that "the stars all fell out of the sky" (1833).

"The only act of a religious character which I observed … was shortly after crossing the river they [i.e., the American officers] were met by a small party of the Indians, one of whom chalked a cross on the breast of each, with a yellow earth, which he carried in a satchel at his belt. Previous to doing so he muttered some words very solemnly with his hands uplifted and eyes thrown upwards. Again, on arriving at the camp of the people, the chief and others in greeting them took a similar vow, touching thereafter the yellow chalked cross. Sonora may have furnished them with some of their notions of a Deity."263

"The yellow earth," seen by Dr. Smart was, undoubtedly, hoddentin, carried in a medicine bag at the belt of a medicine-man. Some years ago I went out with Al. Seiber and a small party of Apache to examine three of their "sacred caves" in the Sierra Pinal and Sierra Ancha. No better opportunity could have been presented for noting what they did. The very last thing at night they intoned a "medicine" song, and at early dawn they were up to throw a pinch of hoddentin to the east.

Moses and John, two of the Apache mentioned above, requested permission to go off in the mountains after deer and bear, supposed to be plentiful in the higher altitudes. Before leaving camp, Moses blew a pinch of hoddentin toward the sun, repeating his prayer for success, and ending it with a sharp, snappy "ek," as if to call attention. In one of the sacred caves visited on this trip, the Apache medicine-men assembled for the purpose of holding their snake dance. This I have never seen among the Apache, but that they celebrate it and that it is fully the equal of the repulsive rite which I have witnessed and noted among the Tusayan264 I am fully assured. I may make reference to some of its features in the chapter upon animal worship and ophic rites.

From a multiplicity of statements, the following are taken: Concepcion had seen the snake dance over on the Carrizo, near Camp Apache; the medicine-men threw hoddentin upon the snakes. He said: "After getting through with the snake, the medicine-man suffered it to glide off, covered with the hoddentin, thrown by admiring devotees."

Mike Burns had no remembrance of seeing hoddentin thrown to the sun. He had seen it thrown to the snake, "in a kind of worship."

Nott and Antonio stated that "when they find that a snake has wriggled across the trail, especially the trail to be followed by a war party, they throw hoddentin upon the trail." Nott took a pinch of hoddentin, showed how to throw it upon the snake, and repeated the prayer, which I recorded.

Corbusier instances a remedy in use among the Tonto Apache. This consisted in applying a rattlesnake to the head or other part suffering from pain. He continues: "After a time the medicine-man rested the snake on the ground again, and, still retaining his hold of it with his right hand, put a pinch of yellow pollen into its mouth with his left, and rubbed some along its belly."265

"He then held his hand out to a man, who took a pinch of the powder and rubbed it on the crown of a boy's head. Yellow pollen treated in this manner is a common remedy for headache, and may frequently be seen on the crowns of the heads of men and boys."266

Hoddentin is used in the same manner as a remedy for headache among the San Carlos Apache, but the medicine-men apply a snake to the person of a patient only when their "diagnosis" has satisfied them that he has been guilty of some unkindness to a snake, such as stepping upon it, in which case they pretend that they can cure the man by applying to the part affected the portion of the reptile's body upon which he trampled.

The Apache state that when their medicine-men go out to catch snakes for their snake dance, they recite a prayer and lay their left hand, in which is some hoddentin, at the opening of the snake's den, through which the reptile must crawl, and, after a short time the snake will come out and allow himself to be handled.

Hoddentin is also offered to other animals, especially the bear, of which the Apache, like their congeners the Navajo, stand in great awe and reverence. When a bear is killed, the dance which is held becomes frenzied; the skin is donned by all the men, and much hoddentin is thrown, if it can be obtained. One of these dances which I saw in the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, lasted all night, without a moment's cessation in the singing and prancing of the participants.

A great deal of hoddentin is offered to the "ka-chu" (great or jack rabbit).267

The Apache medicine-man, Nakay-do-klunni, called by the whites "Bobbydoklinny," exercised great influence over his people at Camp Apache, in 1881. He boasted of his power to raise the dead, and predicted that the whites should soon be driven from the land. He also drilled the savages in a peculiar dance, the like of which had never been seen among them. The participants, men and women, arranged themselves in files, facing a common center, like the spokes of a wheel, and while thus dancing hoddentin was thrown upon them in profusion. This prophet or "doctor" was killed in the engagement in the Cibicu canyon, August 30, 1881.

In a description of the "altars" made by the medicine-men of the Apache-Yuma at or near Camp Verde, Arizona, it is shown that this sacred powder is freely used. Figures were drawn upon the ground to represent the deities of the tribe, and the medicine-men dropped on all, except three of them, a pinch of yellow powder (hoddentin) which was taken from a small buckskin bag. This powder was put upon the head, chest, or other part of the body of the patient.

Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army,268 says that the ceremony just described was "a most sacred one and entered into for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Apache at Camp Verde had been afflicted the summer previous."

I am not sure that the Apache-Yuma have not borrowed the use of hoddentin from the Apache. My reason for expressing this opinion is that I have never seen an Apache without a little bag of hoddentin when it was possible for him to get it, whereas I have never seen an Apache-Yuma with it except when he was about to start out on the warpath. The "altars" referred to by Corbusier are made also by the Apache, Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan. Those of the Apache, as might be inferred from their nomadic state, were the crudest; those of the Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan display a wonderful degree of artistic excellence. The altars of the Navajo have been described and illustrated by Dr. Washington Matthews,269 and those of the Tusayan by myself.270

Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would then tell me all he knew.

The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.

Hoddentin seems to be used to strengthen all solemn compacts and to bind faith. I had great trouble with a very bright medicine-man named Na-a-cha, who obstinately refused to let me look at the contents of a phylactery which he constantly wore until I let him know that I, too, was a medicine-man of eminence. The room in which we had our conversation was the quarters of the post surgeon, at that time absent on scout. The chimney piece was loaded with bottles containing all kinds of drugs and medicines. I remarked carelessly to Na-a-cha that if he doubted my powers I would gladly burn a hole through his tongue with a drop of fluid from the vial marked "Acid, nitric," but he concluded that my word was sufficient, and after the door was locked to secure us from intrusion he consented to let me open and examine the phylactery and make a sketch of its contents. To guard against all possible trouble, he put a pinch of hoddentin on each of my shoulders, on the crown of my head, and on my chest and back. The same performance was gone through with in his own case. He explained that hoddentin was good for men to eat, that it was good medicine for the bear, and that the bear liked to eat it. I thought that herein might be one clew to the reason why the Apache used it as a medicine. The bear loves the tule swamp, from which, in days primeval, he sallied out to attack the squaws and children gathering the tule powder or tule bulb. Poorly armed, as they then were, the Apache must have had great trouble in resisting him; hence they hope to appease him by offering a sacrifice acceptable to his palate. If acceptable to the chief animal god, as the bear seems to have been, as he certainly was the most dangerous, then it would have been also acceptable to the minor deities like the puma, snake, eagle, etc., and, by an easy transition, to the sun, moon, and other celestial powers. This opinion did not last long, as will be shown. From its constant association with all sacrifices and all acts of worship, hoddentin would naturally become itself sanctified and an object of worship, just as rattles, drums, standards, holy grails, etc., in different parts of the world have become fetichistic. I was not in the least surprised when I heard Moses Henderson reciting a prayer, part of which ran thus: "Hoddentin eshkin, bi hoddentin ashi" ("Hoddentin child, you hoddentin I offer"), and to learn that it was a personification of hoddentin.

The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.

So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least, I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood had been shed, and everything they did – the bathing in the sweat lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon their heads by the Apache-Yuma – had a reference to the lustration or purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida, gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me by one of the women who gathered it.

Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.

THE "KUNQUE" OF THE ZUÑI AND OTHERS

The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited – and I visited them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in Texas – I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of other usages and ceremonials.

Behind the main door in the houses at Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Picuris, Laguna, Acoma, San Felipe, Jemez, and other towns, there is a niche containing a bowl or saucer filled with this sacred meal, of which the good housewife is careful to throw a pinch to the sun at early dawn and to the twilight at eventide. In every ceremony among the Pueblos naturally enough, more particularly among those who have been living farthest from the Mexicans, the lavish scattering of sacred meal is the marked feature of the occasion. At the snake dance of the Tusayan, in 1881, the altars were surrounded with baskets of pottery and with flat plaques of reeds, which were heaped high with kunque. When the procession moved out from under the arcade and began to make the round of the sacred stone the air was white with meal, and in my imagination I could see that it was a procession of Druids circling about a "sacred stone" in Ireland previous to the coming of St. Patrick. When the priests threw the snakes down upon the ground it was within a circle traced with kunque, and soon the snakes were covered with the same meal flung upon them by the squaws. There was only one scalp left among the Tusayan in 1881, but there were several among the Zuñi, and one or two each at Acoma and Laguna. In every one of these towns kunque was offered to the scalps.

At the feast of the Little God of Fire among the Zuñi, in 1881, my personal notes relate that "the moment the head of the procession touched the knoll upon which the pueblo is built the mass of people began throwing kunque upon the Little God and those with him as well as on the ground in front of, beside, and behind them. This kunque was contained in sacred basket-shaped bowls of earthenware. The spectators kept the air fairly misty with clouds of the sacred kunque. This procession passed around the boundaries of the pueblo of Zuñi, stopping at eight holes in the ground for the purpose of enacting a ceremonial of consecration suggestive of the 'terminalia' of the Romans. They visited each of the holes, which were 18 inches deep and 12 inches square, with a sandstone slab to serve as a cover. Each hole was filled with kunque and sacrificial plumes. * * * 'Every morning of the year, when the sky is clear, at the rising of Lucero [the morning star], at the crowing of the cock, we throw corn flour [kunque] to the sun. I am never without my bag of kunque; here it is [drawing it from his belt]. Every Zuñi has one. We offer it to the sun for good rain and good crops.'"271

Subsequently Pedro went on to describe in detail a phallic dance and ceremony, in which there was a sort of divination. The young maiden who made the lucky guess was richly rewarded, while her less fortunate companions were presented with a handful of kunque, which they kept during the ensuing year. This dance is called "ky'áklu," and is independent of the great phallic dance occurring in the month of December. Pedro also stated that until very recently the Zuñi were in the habit of celebrating a fire dance at Noche Buena (Christmas). There were four piles of wood gathered for the occasion, and upon each the medicine-men threw kunque in profusion. This dance, as Pedro described it, closely resembled one mentioned by Landa in his Cosas de Yucatan. High up on the vertical face of the precipice of Tâaiyalana there is a phallic shrine of the Zuñi to which I climbed with Mr. Frank Cushing. We found that the place had been visited by young brides who were desirous of becoming mothers. The offerings in every case included kunque.

In the account given in the National Tribune, Washington, District of Columbia, May 20, 1886, of the mode of life of the Zuñi woman Wehwa while in the national capital, and while engaged in the kirmes, we read:

She also strewed sacred corn meal along on her way to the theater to bring good luck to her and the other dancers. * * * She has gone from her comfortable room to pray in the street at daylight every morning, whatever the weather has been. * * * At such times she strews corn meal all around her until the front-door steps and the sidewalk are much daubed with dough. But this is not the corn meal in common use in the United States, but is sacred meal ground in Zuñi with sacred stones.272

So long a time has elapsed since any of the Pueblos have been on the warpath that no man can describe their actual war customs except from the dramatic ceremonial of their dances or from the stories told him by the "old men." The following from an eyewitness will therefore be of interest: "Before the Pueblos reached the heights they were ordered to scale they halted on the way to receive from their chiefs some medicine from the medicine bags which each of them carried about his person. This they rubbed upon their heart, as they said, to make it big and brave, and they also rubbed it upon other parts of their bodies and upon their rifles for the same purpose."273

The constant use of kunque by the different Pueblo tribes has been noticed from the first days of European contact. In the relation of Don Antonio de Espejo (1583) we are told that upon the approach of the Spaniards to the town of Zaguato, lying 28 leagues west of Zuñi, "a great multitude of Indians came forth to meete them, and among the rest their Caçiques, with so great demonstration of joy and gladnes, that they cast much meale of Maiz upon the ground for the horses to tread upon."274

I am under the impression that the ruins of this village are those near the ranch of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, at Keam's Canyon, Arizona, called by the Navajo "Talla-hogandi," meaning "singing house," in reference to the Spanish mission which formerly existed there. This village is, as I have hitherto shown, the ruin of the early pueblo of Awátubi.

In his poem descriptive of the conquest of New Mexico, entitled "Nueva Mejico," Alcala de Henares, 1610, Villagrá uses the following language:275

Passando à Mohoçe, Zibola, y Zuni,Por cuias nobles tierras descubrimos,Una gran tropa de Indios que venia,Con cantidad harina que esparcian,Sobre la gente toda muy apriessa,Y entrando assi en los pueblos las mugeresDieron en arrojarnos tantá della,Que dimos en tomarles los costales,De donde resultò tener con ellas,Unas carnestolendas bien reñidas.

It is gratifying to observe that the Spanish writer in the remote wilds of America struck upon an important fact in ethnology: that the throwing of "harina" or flour by the people of Tusayan (Mohoçe or Moqui), Cibola, and Zuñi (observe the odd separation of "Zibola" from either Moqui or Zuñi) was identical with the "carnestolendas" of Spain, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the women and girls cover all the men they meet with flour. The men are not at all backward in returning the compliment, and the streets are at times filled with the farinaceous dust.

"Harina de maiz azul" is used by Mexicans in their religious ceremonies, especially those connected with the water deities.276 The Peruvians, when they bathed and sacrificed to cure themselves of sickness, "untandose primero con Harina de Maiz, i con otras cosas, con muchas, i diversas ceremonias, i lo mismo hacen en los Baños."277 The kunque of the Peruvians very closely resembled that of the Zuñi. We read that it was a compound of different-colored maize ground up with sea shells.278 The Peruvians had a Priapic idol called Hua-can-qui, of which we read: "On offre à cette idole une corbeille ornée de plumes de diverses couleurs et remplie d'herbes odoriférantes; on y met aussi de la farine de maïs que l'on renouvelle tous les mois, et les femmes se lavent la figure avec celle que l'on ôte, en accompagnant cette ablution de plusieurs cérémonies superstitieuses."279

The tribes seen on the Rio Colorado in 1540 by Alarcon "carry also certaine little long bagges about an hand broade tyed to their left arme, which serve them also instead of brasers for their bowes, full of the powder of a certaine herbe, whereof they make a certaine beverage."280 We are at a loss to know what this powder was, unless hoddentin. The Indians came down to receive the son of the sun, as Alarcon led them to believe him to be, in full gala attire, and no doubt neglected nothing that would add to their safety.