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

"Ils mirent dans leur bouche du maïs et d'autres semences, et les lancèrent vers moi en disant que c'était la manière dont ils faisaient les sacrifices au soleil."281

Kohl speaks of seeing inside the medicine wigwam, during the great medicine ceremonies of the Ojibwa, "a snow-white powder."282 In an address delivered by Dr. W. J. Hoffman before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., May 2, 1888, upon the symbolism of the Midēᐟ, Jesᐟsakkid, and Wâbeno of the Ojibwa of Minnesota, he stated in reply to a question from me that he had not been able to find any of the "snow-white powder" alluded to by Kohl in Kitchi-gami.283

In Yucatan, when children were baptized, one of the ceremonies was that the chac, or priest in charge, should give the youngster a pinch of corn meal, which the boy threw in the fire. These chacs were priests of the god who presided over baptism and over hunting.284

At the coronation of their kings the Aztecs had a sacred unction, and a holy water, drawn from a sacred spring, and "about his neck is tied a small gourd, containing a certain powder, which is esteemed a strong preservative against disease, sorcery, and treason."285

"At the entrance to one of the narrow defiles of the Cordilleras … a large mass of rock with small cavities upon its surface, into which the Indians, when about to enter the pass, generally deposit a few glass beads, a handful of meal, or some other propitiatory offering to the 'genius' supposed to preside over the spot and rule the storm."

Again, "on receiving a plate of broth, an Indian, before eating, spills a little upon the ground; he scatters broadcast a few pinches of the meal that is given him, and pours out a libation before raising the wine cup to his lips, as acts of thanksgiving for the blessings he receives."286

When Capt. John Smith was captured by the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia in 1607 he was taken to "a long house," where, on the morning following "a great grim fellow" came skipping in, "all painted over with coale, mingled with oyle. With most strange gestures and passions he began his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of meale." This priest was followed by six others, who "with their rattles began a song, which ended, the chiefe priest layd downe five wheat cornes." This ceremony was apparently continued during the day and repeated on the following two days.287 Capt. Smith's reception by the medicine-men of the Virginians is described by Picart.288 These medicine-men are called "prêtres," and we are informed that they sang "des chants magiques." The grains of wheat ("grains de blé") were "rangez cinq à cinq."

Gomara tells us that in the religious festivals of Nicaragua there were used certain "taleguillas con polvos," but he does not tell what these "polvos" were; he only says that when the priests sacrifice themselves they cured the wounds, "curan las heridas con polvo de herbas ó carbon."289

While the Baron de Graffenreid was a prisoner in the hands of the Tuscarora, on the Neuse River, in 1711, the conjurer or high priest ("the priests are generally magicians and even conjure up the devil") "made two white rounds, whether of flour or white sand, I do not know, just in front of us."290

Lafitau says of one of the medicine-women of America: "Elle commença d'abord par préparer un espace de terrain qu'elle nétoya bien & qu'elle couvrit de farine, ou de cendre très-bien bluttée (je ne me souviens pas exactement laquelle des deux)."291

In a description of the ceremonial connected with the first appearance of the catamenia in a Navajo squaw, there is no reference to a use of anything like hoddentin, unless it may be the corn which was ground into meal for a grand feast, presided over by a medicine-man.292

When a woman is grinding corn or cooking, and frequently when any of the Navajo, male or female, are eating, a handful of corn meal is put in the fire as an offering (to the sun).293

The Pueblos of New Mexico are described as offering sacrifices of food to their idols. "Los Indios del Norte tienan multitud de Idolos, en pequeños Adoratorios, donde los ponen de comer."294

Maj. Backus, U. S. Army, describes certain ceremonies which he saw performed by the Navajo at a sacred spring near Fort Defiance, Arizona, which seems to have once been a geyser:

I once visited it with three other persons and an Indian doctor, who carried with him five small bags, each containing some vegetable or mineral substance, all differing in color. At the spring each bag was opened and a small quantity of its contents was put into the right hand of each person present. Each visitor, in succession, was then required to kneel down by the spring side, to place his closed hand in the water up to his elbow, and after a brief interval to open his hand and let fall its contents into the spring. The hand was then slowly withdrawn and each one was then permitted to drink and retire.295

Columbus in his fourth voyage touched the mainland, going down near Brazil. He says:

In Cariay and the neighboring country there are great enchanters of a very fearful character. They would have given the world to prevent my remaining there an hour. When I arrived they sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed; the eldest could not be more than eleven years of age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty that more could not be expected from public women. They carried concealed about them a magic powder.296

The expedition of La Salle noticed, among the Indians on the Mississippi, the Natchez, and others, "todos los dias, que se detuvieren en aquel Pueblo, ponia la Cacica, encima de la Sepultura de Marle [i.e., a Frenchman who had been drowned], una Cestilla llena de Espigas de Maíz, tostado."297

"He showed me, as a special favor, that which give him his power – a bag with some reddish powder in it. He allowed me to handle it and smell this mysterious stuff, and pointed out two little dolls or images, which, he said, gave him authority over the souls of others; it was for their support that flour and water were placed in small birch-rind saucers in front."298

On page 286, narrative of the Jeannette Arctic expedition, Dr. Newcomb says: "One day, soon after New Year's, I was out walking with one of the Indians. Noticing the new moon, he stopped, faced it, and, blowing out his breath, he spoke to it, invoking success in hunting. The moon, he said, was 'Tyunne,' or ruler of deers, bears, seals, and walrus." The ceremony herein described I have no doubt was analogous in every respect to hoddentin-throwing. As the Indians mentioned were undoubtedly Tinneh, my surmise seems all the more reasonable.299

Tanner relates that among the Ojibwa the two best hunters of the band had "each a little leather sack of medicine, consisting of certain roots pounded fine and mixed with red paint, to be applied to the little images or figures of the animals we wish to kill."300

"In the parish of Walsingham, in Surrey, there is or was a custom which seems to refer to the rites performed in honor of Pomona. Early in the spring the boys go round to the several orchards in the parish and whip the apple trees… The good woman gives them some meal."301

Among the rustics of Great Britain down to a very recent period there were in use certain "love powders," the composition of which is not known, a small quantity of which had to be sprinkled upon the food of the one beloved.302

Attached to the necklace of human fingers before described, captured from one of the chief medicine-men of the Cheyenne Indians, is a bag containing a powder very closely resembling hoddentin, if not hoddentin itself.

It is said that the Asinai made sacrifice to the scalps of their enemies, as did the Zuñi as late as 1881. "Ofrecen á las calaveras pinole molido y de otras cosas comestibles."303

Perrot says the Indians of Canada had large medicine bags, which he calls "pindikossan," which, among other things, contained "des racines ou des poudres pour leur servir de médecines."304

In an article on the myth of Manibozho, by Squier, in American Historical Magazine Review, 1848, may be found an account of the adventures of two young heroes, one of whom is transferred to the list of gods. He commissioned his comrade to bring him offerings of a white wolf, a polecat, some pounded maize, and eagles' tails.

Laplanders sprinkle cow and calf with flour.305

Cameron met an old chief on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, of whom he says: "His forehead and hair were daubed with vermilion, yellow, and white powder, the pollen of flowers."306

In the incantations made by the medicine-men of Africa, near the head of the Congo, to preserve his expedition from fire, Cameron saw the sacrifice of a goat and a hen, and among other features a use of powdered bark closely resembling hoddentin: "Scraping the bark off the roots and sticks, they placed it in the wooden bowl and reduced it to powder." The head medicine-man soon after "took up a handful of the powdered bark and blew some toward the sun and the remainder in the opposite direction."307

The magic powder, called "uganga," used as the great weapon of divination of the mganga, or medicine-men of some of the African tribes, as mentioned by Speke,308 must be identical with the powder spoken of by Cameron.

Near the village of Kapéka, Cameron was traveling with a caravan in which the principal man was a half-breed Portuguese named Alvez. "On Alvez making his entry he was mobbed by women, who shrieked and yelled in honor of the event and pelted him with flour." This was Alvez's own home and all this was a sign of welcome.309

Speke describes a young chief wearing on his forehead "antelope horns, stuffed with magic powder to keep off the evil eye."310

After describing an idol, in the form of a man, in a small temple on the Lower Congo, Stanley says: "The people appear to have considerable faith in a whitewash of cassava meal, with which they had sprinkled the fences, posts, and lintels of doors."311

"According to Consul Hutchinson (in his interesting work 'Impressions of Western Africa'), the Botikaimon [a medicine-man], previous to the ceremony of coronation, retires into a deep cavern, and there, through the intermediary of a 'rukaruka' (snake demon), consults the demon Maon. He brings back to the king the message he receives, sprinkles him with a yellow powder called 'tsheoka,' and puts upon his head the hat his father wore."312 In a note, it is stated that: "Tsheoka is a vegetable product, obtained, according to Hutchinson, by collecting a creamy coat that is found on the waters at the mouth of some small rivers, evaporating the water, and forming a chalky mass of the residue."313 Schultze says314 that the Congo negroes "appease the hurricane" by "casting meal into the air."

The voudoo ceremonies of the negroes of New Orleans, which would seem to have been transplanted from Africa, include a sprinkling of the congregation with a meal which has been blessed by the head medicine-man or conjurer.

At the feast of Huli, at the vernal equinox (our April fool's day), the Hindu throw a purple powder (abir) upon each other with much sportive pleasantry. A writer in "Asiatick Researches"315 says they have the idea of representing the return of spring, which the Romans called "purple."

During the month of Phalgoonu, there is a festival in honor of Krishna, when the "Hindus spend the night in singing and dancing and wandering about the streets besmeared with the dolu (a red) powder, in the daytime carrying a quantity of the same powder about with them, which, with much noise and rejoicing, they throw over the different passengers they may meet in their rambles. Music, dancing, fireworks, singing, and many obscenities take place on this occasion."316

On pages 434-435 of my work, "Scatalogic Rites of all Nations," are to be found extracts from various authorities in regard to the Hindu feast of Holi or Hulica, in which this statement occurs: "Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of bright-red vegetable powder. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color."

"Red powder (gulál) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous character. During the Holi holidays, the Maháráj throws gulál on the breasts of female and male devotees."317

"In India, the devotees throw red powder on one another at the festival of the Huli, or vernal equinox. This red powder, the Hindoos say, is the imitation of the pollen of plants, the principle of fructification, the flower of the plant."318

The women of the East Indies (Brahmins), on the 18th of January, celebrate a feast in honor of the goddess Parvati: "Leur but est d'obtenir une longue vie pour leurs maris, & qu'elles ne deviennent jamais veuves. Elles font une Image de Parvati avec de la farine de riz & du grain rouge qu'elles y mêlent; elles l'ornent d'habits & de fleurs & après l'avoir ainsi servie pendant neuf jours, elles la portent le dixiéme dans un Palenquin hors de la Ville. Une foule de femmes mariées la suivent, on la jette ensuite dans un des étangs sacrez, où on la laisse, & chacune s'en retourne chez elle."319

Speaking of the methods in use among the Lamas for curing disease, Rev. James Gilmour says: "Throwing about small pinches of millet seed is a usual part of such a service."320

Dr. W. W. Rockhill described to me a Tibetan festival, which includes a procession of the God of Mercy, in which procession there are masked priests, holding blacksnake whips in their hands, and carrying bags of flour which they throw upon the people.

The use of these sacred powders during so many different religious festivals and ceremonies would seem to resemble closely that made by the Apache of hoddentin and the employment of kunque by the Zuñi and others; and from Asia it would seem that practices very similar in character found their way into Europe. Of the Spanish witches it is related:

When they entered people's houses they threw a powder on the faces of the inmates, who were thrown thereby into so deep a slumber that nothing could wake them, until the witches were gone… Sometimes they threw these powders on the fruits of the field and produced hail which destroyed them. On these occasions the demon accompanied them in the form of a husbandman, and when they threw the powders they said:

"Polvos, polvos,Pierda se tado,Queden los nuestros,Y abrasense otros."321

Higgins says: "The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχᾰριστία."322

What relation these powders have had to the "carnestolendas" of the Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of "confetti" by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard to say. Some relation would appear to be suggested.

USE OF POLLEN BY THE ISRAELITES AND EGYPTIANS

There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the Israelites and Egyptians.

Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to the Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples. Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general consumption. He says:

Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known produce of the desert oak or ash – Fraxinus… An omer of this was precious, and in this quantity, at the spring season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute to be "laid up" before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen of the tree of Jove and of Life, and in this sense the tribe lived spiritually on such "spiritual manna" as this god supplied or was supplied with.323

The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people of Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food to a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation of the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor made use of swine's flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently exerting themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common among their people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other cereal. They held a man accursed who in passing through a field planted with beans had his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke must have encountered a survival of this idea when he observed in equatorial Africa, near the sources of the Nile, and among people whose features proclaimed their Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. He was unable to buy food, simply because he and some of his followers had eaten "the bean called maharagŭé." Such a man, the natives believed, "if he tasted the products of their cows, would destroy their cattle."324

One other point should be dwelt upon in describing the kunque of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos. It is placed upon one of the sacred flat baskets and packed down in such a manner that it takes the form of one of the old-fashioned elongated cylindro-conical cheeses. It should be noted also that by something more than a coincidence this form was adhered to by the peoples farther to the south when they arranged their sacred meal upon baskets.

At the festival of the god Teutleco the Aztecs made "de harina de maiz un montecillo muy tupido de la forma de un queso."325 This closely resembles the corn meal heaps seen at the snake dance of the Tusayan.

The Zuñi, in preparing kunque or sacred meal for their religious festivals, invariably made it in the form of a pyramid resting upon one of their flat baskets. It then bore a striking resemblance to the pyramids or phalli which the Egyptians offered to their deities, and which Forlong thinks must have been "just such Lingham-like sweet-bread as we still see in Indian Sivaic temples."326 Again, "the orthodox Hislop, in his Two Babylons, tells us that 'bouns,' buns, or bread offered to the gods from the most ancient times were similar to our 'hotcross' buns of Good Friday, that … the buns known by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarti) as early as the days of Kekrops, the founder of Athens, 1500 years B. C."327

Forlong328 quotes Capt. Wilford in Asiatick Researches, vol. 8, p. 365, as follows:

When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses, they offered cakes called mulloi, shaped like the female organ; and Dulare tells us that the male organ was similarly symbolised in pyramidal cakes at Easter by the pious Christians of Saintogne, near Rochelle, and handed about from house to house; that even in his day the festival of Palm Sunday was called La Fête des Pinnes, showing that this fête was held to be on account of both organs, although, of course, principally because the day was sacred to the palm, the ancient tree Phallus… We may believe that the Jewish cakes and show bread were also emblematic.

Mr. Frank H. Cushing informs me that there is an annual feast among the Zuñi in which are to be seen cakes answering essentially to the preceding description.

HODDENTIN A PREHISTORIC FOOD

The peculiar manner in which the medicine-men of the Apache use the hoddentin (that is, by putting a pinch upon their own tongues); the fact that men and women make use of it in the same way, as a restorative when exhausted; its appearance in myth in connection with Assanutlije, the goddess who supplied the Apache and Navajo with so many material benefits, all combine to awaken the suspicion that in hoddentin we have stumbled upon a prehistoric food now reserved for sacrificial purposes only. That the underlying idea of sacrifice is a food offered to some god is a proposition in which Herbert Spencer and W. Robertson Smith concur. In my opinion, this definition is incomplete; a perfect sacrifice is that in which a prehistoric food is offered to a god, and, although in the family oblations of everyday life we meet with the food of the present generation, it would not be difficult to show that where the whole community unites in a function of exceptional importance the propitiation of the deities will be effected by foods whose use has long since faded away from the memory of the laity.

The sacred feast of stewed puppy and wild turnips forms a prominent part of the sun dance of the Sioux, and had its parallel in a collation of boiled puppy (catullus), of which the highest civic and ecclesiastical dignitaries of pagan Rome partook at stated intervals.

The reversion of the Apache to the food of his ancestors – the hoddentin – as a religious offering has its analogue in the unleavened bread and other obsolete farinaceous products which the ceremonial of more enlightened races has preserved from oblivion. Careful consideration of the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca sustains this conclusion. In the western portion of his wanderings we learn that for from thirty to forty days he and his comrades passed through tribes which for one-third of the year had to live on "the powder of straw" (on the powder of bledos), and that afterwards the Spaniards came among people who raised corn. At that time, Vaca, whether we believe that he ascended the Rio Concho or kept on up the Rio Grande, was in a region where he would certainly have encountered the ancestors of our Apache tribe and their brothers the Navajo. The following is Herrera's account of that part of Vaca's wanderings: "Padeciendo mucha hambre en treinta i quatro Jornadas, pasando por una Gente que la tercera parte del Año comen polvos de paja, i los huvieron de comer, por haver llegado en tal ocasion."329

This powder (polvo) of paja or grass might at first sight seem to be grass seeds; but why not say "flour," as on other occasions? The phrase is an obscure one, but not more obscure than the description of the whole journey. In the earlier writings of the Spaniards there is ambiguity because the new arrivals endeavored to apply the names of their own plants and animals to all that they saw in the western continent. Neither Castañeda nor Cabeza de Vaca makes mention of hoddentin, but Vaca does say that when he had almost ended his journey: "La côte ne possède pas de maïs; on n'y mange que de la poudre de paille de blette." "Blette" is the same as the Spanish "bledos."330 "Nous parvînmes chez une peuplade qui, pendant le tiers de l'année, ne vit que de poudre de paille." "We met with a people, who the third part of the yeere eate no other thing save the powder of straw."331

Davis, who seems to have followed Herrera, says: "These Indians lived one-third of the year on the powder of a certain straw… After leaving this people they again arrived in a country of permanent habitations, where they found an abundance of maize… The inhabitants gave them maize both in grain and flour."332

The Tusayan Indians were formerly in the habit of adding a trifle of chopped straw to their bread, but more as our own bakers would use bran than as a regular article of diet.

Barcia333 makes no allusion to anything resembling hoddentin or "polvos de bledos" in his brief account of Vaca's journey. But Buckingham Smith, in his excellent translation of Vaca's narrative, renders "polvos de paja" thus: "It was probably the seed of grass which they ate. I am told by a distinguished explorer that the Indians to the west collect it of different kinds and from the powder make bread, some of which is quite palatable." And for "polvos de bledos": "The only explanation I can offer for these words is little satisfactory. It was the practice of the Indians of both New Spain and New Mexico to beat the ear of young maize, while in the milk, to a thin paste, hang it in festoons in the sun, and, being thus dried, was preserved for winter use."

This explanation is very unsatisfactory. Would not Vaca have known it was corn and have said so? On the contrary, he remarks in that very line in Smith's own translation: "There is no maize on the coast."

The appearance of all kinds of grass seeds in the food of nearly all the aborigines of our southwestern territory is a fact well known, but what is to be demonstrated is the extensive use of the "powder" of the tule or cat-tail rush. Down to our day, the Apache have used not only the seeds of various grasses, but the bulb of the wild hyacinth and the bulb of the tule. The former can be eaten either raw or cooked, but the tule bulb is always roasted between hot stones. The taste of the hyacinth bulb is somewhat like that of raw chestnuts. That of the roasted tule bulb is sweet and not at all disagreeable.334

Father Jacob Baegert335 enumerates among the foods of the Indians of southern California "the roots of the common reed" (i.e., of the tule).