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

Father Alegre, speaking of the tribes living near the Laguna San Pedro,336 in latitude 28° north – two hundred leagues north of the City of Mexico – says that they make their bread of the root, which is very frequent in their lakes, and which is like the plant called the "anea" or rush in Spain. "Forman el pan de una raiz muy frecuente en sus lagunas, semejante á las que llaman aneas en España."337

The Indians of the Atlantic Slope made bread of the bulb of a plant which Capt. John Smith338 says "grew like a flag in marshes." It was roasted and made into loaves called "tuckahoe."339

Kalm, in his Travels in North America,340 says of the tuckahoe:

It grows in several swamps and marshes and is commonly plentiful. The hogs greedily dig up its roots with their noses in such places, and the Indians of Carolina likewise gather it in their rambles in the woods, dry it in the sun, grind, and make bread of it. Whilst the root is fresh it is harsh and acrid, but, being dried, it loses the greater part of its acrimony. To judge by these qualities, the tuckahoe may very likely be the Arum virginianum.

The Shoshoni and Bannock of Idaho and Montana eat the tule bulb.341

Something analogous to hoddentin is mentioned by the chronicler of Drake's voyage along the California coast about A. D. 1540. Speaking of the decorations of the chiefs of the Indians seen near where San Francisco now stands, he says another mark of distinction was "a certain downe, which groweth up in the countrey upon an herbe much like our lectuce, which exceeds any other downe in the world for finenesse and beeing layed upon their cawles, by no winds can be removed. Of such estimation is this herbe amongst them that the downe thereof is not lawfull to be worne, but of such persons as are about the king, … and the seeds are not used but onely in sacrifice to their gods."342

Mr. Cushing informs me that hoddentin is mentioned as a food in the myths of the Zuñi under the name of oneya, from oellu, "food."

In Kamtchatka the people dig and cook the bulbs of the Kamtchatka lily, which seems to be some sort of a tuber very similar to that of the tule.

"Bread is now made of rye, which the Kamtchadals raise and grind for themselves; but previous to the settlement of the country by the Russians the only native substitute for bread was a sort of baked paste, consisting chiefly of the grated tubers of the purple Kamtchatkan lily."343

HODDENTIN THE YIAUHTLI OF THE AZTECS

There would seem to be the best of reason for an identification of hoddentin with the "yiauhtli" which Sahagun and Torquemada tell us was thrown by the Aztecs in the faces of victims preparatory to sacrificing them to the God of Fire, but the explanation given by those authors is not at all satisfactory. The Aztecs did not care much whether the victim suffered or not; he was sprinkled with this sacred powder because he had assumed a sacred character.

Padre Sahagun344 says that the Aztecs, when about to offer human sacrifice, threw "a powder named 'yiauhtli' on the faces of those whom they were about to sacrifice, that they might become deprived of sensation and not suffer much pain in dying."

In sacrificing slaves to the God of Fire, the Aztec priests "tomaban ciertos polvos de una semilla, llamada Yauhtli, y polvoreaban las caras con ellas, para que perdiesen el sentido, y no sintiesen tanto la muerte cruel, que las daban."345

Guautli, generally spelled "yuautli," one of the foods paid to Montezuma as tribute, may have been tule pollen. Gallatin says: "I can not discover what is meant by the guautli. It is interpreted as being semilla de Bledo; but I am not aware of any other native grain than maize having been, before the introduction of European cereales, an article of food of such general use, as the quantity mentioned seems to indicate."346

Among the articles which the king of Atzapotzalco compelled the Aztecs to raise for tribute is mentioned "ahuauhtli (que es como bledos)."347

"BLEDOS" OF ANCIENT WRITERS – ITS MEANING

Lafitau348 gives a description of the Iroquois mode of preparing for the warpath. He says that the Iroquois and Huron called war "n'ondoutagette" and "gaskenragette." "Le terme Ondouta signifie le duvet qu'on tire de l'épy des Roseaux de Marais & signifie aussi la plante toute entiere, dont ils se servent pour faire les nattes sur quoi ils couchent, de sorte qu'il y a apparence qu'ils avoient affecté ce terme pour la Guerre, parce que chaque Guerrier portoit avec soy sa natte dans ces sortes d'expeditions."

This does not seem to be the correct explanation. Rather, it was because they undoubtedly made some sacrificial meal of this "duvet," or pollen, and used it as much as the Apache do hoddentin, their sacred meal made of the pollen of the tule, which is surely a species of "roseaux de marais."

The great scarcity of corn among the people passed while en route to Cibola is commented upon in an account of Coronado's expedition to Cibola, in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas de América y Oceanía.349

We are also informed350 that the people of Cibola offered to their idols "polbos amarillos de flores."

Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed through by Coronado's expedition.351

That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.352

TZOALLI

An examination of the Spanish writers who most carefully transmitted their observations upon the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs and other nations in Mexico and South America brings out two most interesting features in this connection. The first is that there were commemorative feasts of prehistoric foods, and the second that one or more of these foods has played an important part in the religion of tribes farther north. The first of these foods is the "tzoalli," which was the same as "bledos," which latter would seem beyond question to have been hoddentin or yiauhtli. Brasseur de Bourbourg's definition simply states that the tzoalli was a compound of leguminous grains peculiar to Mexico and eaten in different ways: "Le Tzohualli était un composé de graines légumineuses particulières au Mexique, qu'on mangeait de diverses manières."353

In the month called Tepeilhuitl the Aztecs made snakes of twigs and covered them with dough of bledos (a kind of grain or hay seed). Upon these they placed figures, representing mountains, but shaped like young children.354 This month was the thirteenth on the Mexican calendar, which began on our February 1. This would put it October 1, or thereabout.

Squier cites Torquemada's description of the sacrifices called Ecatotontin, offered to the mountains by the Mexicans. In these they made figures of serpents and children and covered them with "dough," named by them tzoalli, composed of the seeds of bledos.355

A dramatic representation strongly resembling those described in the two preceding paragraphs was noted among the Tusayan of Arizona by Mr. Taylor, a missionary, in 1881, and has been mentioned at length in The Snake Dance of the Moquis. Clavigero relates that the Mexican priests "all eat a certain kind of gruel which they call Etzalli."356

Torquemada relates that the Mexicans once each year made an idol or statue of Huitzlipotchli of many grains and the seeds of bledos and other vegetables which they kneaded with the blood of boys who were sacrificed for the purpose. "Juntaban muchos granos y semilla de Bledos, y otras legumbres, y molianlas con mucha devocion, y recato, y de ellas amasaban, y formaban la dicha Estatua, del tamaño y estatura de un Hombre. El licor, con que se resolbian y desleian aquellas harinas era sangre de Niños, que para este fin se sacrificaban."357

It is remarkable the word "maiz" does not occur in this paragraph. Huitzlipotchli being the God of War, it was natural that the ritual devoted to his service should conserve some, if not all, of the foods, grains, and seeds used by the Mexicans when on the warpath in the earliest days of their history; and that this food should be made into a dough with the blood of children sacrificed as a preliminary to success is also perfectly in accordance with all that we know of the mode of reasoning of this and other primitive peoples. Torquemada goes on to say that this statue was carried in solemn procession to the temple and idol of Huitzlipotchli and there adorned with precious jewels (chalchihuitl), embedded in the soft mass. Afterward it was carried to the temple of the god Paynalton, preceded by a priest carrying a snake in the manner that the priests in Spain carried the cross in the processions of the church. "Con una Culebra mui grande, y gruesa en las manos, tortuosa, y con muchas bueltas, que iba delante, levantada en alto, á manera de Cruz, en nuestras Procesiones."358 This dough idol, he says, was afterwards broken into "migajas" (crumbs) and distributed among the males only, boys as well as men, and by them eaten after the manner of communion; "este era su manera de comunion."359 Herrera, speaking of this same idol of Vitzliputzli, as he calls him, says it was made by the young women of the temple, of the flour of bledos and of toasted maize, with honey, and that the eyes were of green, white, or blue beads, and the teeth of grains of corn. After the feast was over, the idol was broken up and distributed to the faithful, "á manera de comunion." "Las Doncellas recogidas en el templo, dos Dias antes de la Fiesta, amasaban harina de Bledos, i de Maiz tostado, con miel, y de la masa hacian un Idolo grande, con los ojos de cuentas grandes, verdes, açules, ò blancas; i por dientes granos de maiz."360

H. H. Bancroft speaks of the festival in honor of Huitzilopochtli, "the festival of the wafer or cake." He says: "They made a cake of the meal of bledos, which is called tzoalli," which was afterward divided in a sort of communion.361 Diego Duran remarks that at this feast the chief priest carried an idol of dough called "tzoally," which is made of the seeds of bledos and corn made into a mass with honey.362 "Un ydolo de masa, de una masa que llaman tzoally, la cual se hace de semilla de bledos y maiz amasado con miel." This shows that "bledos" and "maiz" were different things.363 A few lines farther on Duran tells us that this cake, or bread, was made by the nuns of the temple, "las mozas del recogimiento de este templo," and that they ground up a great quantity of the seed of bledos, which they call huauhtly, together with toasted maize. "Molian mucha cantidad de semilla de bledos que ellos llaman huauhtly juntamente con maiz tostado."364 He then shows that the "honey" (miel) spoken of by the other writers was the thick juice of the maguey. "Despues de molido, amasabanlo con miel negra de los magueis."

Acosta describes a Mexican feast, held in our month of May, in which appeared an idol called Huitzlipotchli, made of "mays rosty," "semence de blettes," and "amassoient avec du miel."365

In the above citations it will be seen that huauhtly or yuauhtli and tzoally were one and the same. We also find some of the earliest if not the very earliest references to the American popped corn.

That the Mexicans should have had such festivals or feasts in honor of their god of battles is no more extraordinary than that in our own country all military reunions make it a point to revert to the "hard tack" issued during the campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Many other references to the constant use as a food, or at least as a sacrificial food, of the bledos might be supplied if needed. Thus Diego Duran devotes the twelfth chapter of his third book to an obscure account of a festival among the Tepanecs, in which appeared animal gods made of "masa de semilla de bledos," which were afterwards broken and eaten.

Torquemada speaks of such idols employed in the worship of snakes and mountains.366 In still another place this authority tells us that similar figures were made and eaten by bride and groom at the Aztec marriage ceremony.367

The ceremonial manner in which these seeds were ground recalls the fact that the Zuñi regard the stones used for grinding kunque as sacred and will not employ them for any other purpose.

Idols made of dough much after the fashion of the Aztecs are to be found among the Mongols. Meignan speaks of seeing "an idol, quite open to the sky and to the desert, representing the deity of travelers. It was made of compressed bread, covered over with some bituminous substance, and perched on a horse of the same material, and held in its hand a lance in Don Quixote attitude. Its horrible features were surmounted with a shaggy tuft of natural hair. A great number of offerings of all kinds were scattered on the ground all around. Five or six images, formed also of bread, were bending in an attitude of prayer before the deity."368

Dr. Edwin James, the editor of Tanner's Narrative,369 cites the "Calica Puran" to show that medicinal images are employed by the people of the East Indies when revenge is sought upon an enemy; "water must be sprinkled on the meal or earthen victim which represents the sacrificer's enemy."

In those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished, a substitutive ceremony was practiced "by forming a human figure of flour-paste, or clay, which they carry into the temples, and there cut off its head or mutilate it, in various ways, in presence of the idols."370

Gomara describes the festival in honor of the Mexican God of Fire, called "Xocothuecl," when an idol was used made of every kind of seed and was then enwrapped in sacred blankets to keep it from breaking. "Hacian aquella noche un ídolo de toda suerte de semillas, envolvíanlo en mantas benditas, y liábanlo, porque no se deshiciese."371

These blessed blankets are also to be seen at the Zuñi feast of the Little God of Fire, which occurs in the month of December. It is a curious thing that the blessed blankets of the Zuñi are decorated with the butterfly, which appeared upon the royal robes of Montezuma.

What other seeds were used in the fabrication of these idols is not very essential to our purpose, but it may be pointed out that one of them was the seed of the "agenjo," which was the "chenopodium" or "artemisia," known to us as the "sagebrush."

Of the Mexicans we learn from a trustworthy author: "Tambien usaban alguna manera de comunion ó recepcion del sacramento, y es que hacian unos idolitos chiquitos de semilla de bledos ó cenizos, ó de otras yerbas, y ellos mismos se los recibian, como cuerpo ó memoria de sus dioses."372

Mendieta wrote his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana in 1596, "al tiempo que esto escribo (que es por Abril del año de noventa y seis)"373 and again,374 "al tiempo que yo esto escribo."

The Mexicans, in the month of November, had a festival in honor of Tezcatlipuca. "Hacian unos bollos de masa de maíz y semejante de agenjos, aunque son de otra suerte que los de acá, y echábanlos á cocer en ollas con agua sola. Entre tanto que hervian y se cocian los bollos, tañian los muchachos un atabal … y después comíanselos con gran devocion."375

Gomara's statement, that while these cakes of maize and wormwood seed were cooking the young men were beating on drums, would find its parallel in any account that might be written of the behavior of the Zuñi, while preparing for their sacred feasts. The squaws grind the meal to be used on these occasions to the accompaniment of singing by the medicine-men and much drumming by a band of assistants selected from among the young men and boys.

Mr. Francis La Flèche, a nearly full-blood Omaha Indian, read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., in 1888, a paper descriptive of the funeral customs of his people, in which he related that when an Indian was supposed to be threatened with death the medicine-men would go in a lodge sweat-bath with him and sing, and at the same time "pronouncing certain incantations and sprinkling the body of the client with the powder of the artemisia, supposed to be the food of the ghosts."376

To say that a certain powder is the food of the ghosts of a tribe is to say indirectly that the same powder was once the food of the tribe's ancestors.

The Peruvians seem to have made use of the same kind of sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of the human victim. We are told that in the month of January no strangers were allowed to enter the city of Cuzco, and that there was then a distribution of corn cakes made with the blood of the victim, which were to be eaten as a mark of alliance with the Inca. "Les daban unos Bollos de Maíz, con sangre de el sacrificio, que comian, en señal de confederacion con el Inga."377

Balboa says that the Peruvians had a festival intended to signalize the arrival of their young men at manhood, in which occurred a sort of communion consisting of bread kneaded by the young virgins of the sun with the blood of victims. This same kind of communion was also noted at another festival occurring in our month of September of each year. ("Un festin composé de pain pétri par les jeunes vierges du Soleil avec le sang des victimes."378) There were other ceremonial usages among the Aztecs, in which the tule rush itself, "espadaña," was employed, as at childbirth, marriage, the festivals in honor of Tlaloc, and in the rough games played by boys. It is possible that from being a prehistoric food the pollen of the tule, or the plant which furnished it, became associated with the idea of sustenance, fertility, reproduction, and therefore very properly formed part of the ritual necessary in weddings or connected with the earliest hours of a child's life, much as rice has been used so freely in other parts of the world.379

Among the Aztecs the newly born babe was laid upon fresh green tule rushes, with great ceremony, while its name was given to it.[380]

Gomara says that the mats used in the marriage ceremonies of the Aztecs were made of tules. "Esteras verdes de espadañas."380

"They both sat down upon a new and curiously wrought mat, which was spread in the middle of the chamber close to the fire." The marriage bed was made "of mats of rushes, covered with small sheets, with certain feathers, and a gem of chalchihuitl in the middle of them."381

The third festival of Tlaloc was celebrated in the sixth month, which would about correspond to our 6th of June.382 But there was another festival in honor of the Tlaloc, which seems very hard to understand. A full description is given by Bancroft.383 To celebrate this it was incumbent upon the priests to cut and carry to the temples bundles of the tule, which were woven into a sacred mat, after which there was a ceremonial procession to a tule swamp in which all bathed.

The Aztecs, like the Apache, had myths showing that they sprang originally from a reed swamp. There was an Aztec god, Napatecutli, who was the god of the tule and of the mat-makers.384 This rush was also strewn as part of several of their religious ceremonies.

Fosbrooke385 has this to say about certain ceremonies in connection with the churches in Europe: "At certain seasons the Choir was strewed with hay, at others with sand. On Easter sabbath with ivy-leaves; at other times with rushes." He shows that hay was used at Christmas and the vigil of All Saints, at Pentecost, Athelwold's Day, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and Ascension, etc.

The Mexican populace played a game closely resembling our "blind man's buff" in their seventeenth month, which was called Tititl and corresponded to the winter solstice. In this game, called "nechichiquavilo," men and boys ran through the streets hitting every one whom they met with small bags or nets ("taleguillas ó redecillas") filled with tule powder or fine paper ("llenas de flor de las espadañas ó de algunos papeles rotos").386

The same thing is narrated by other early Spanish writers upon Mexico.

In the myths of Guatemala it is related that there were several distinct generations of men. The first were made of wood, without heart or brains, with worm-eaten feet and hands. The second generation was an improvement upon this, and the women are represented as made of tule. "Las mugeres fueron hechas de corazon de espadaña."387

Picart, enumerating the tree gods of the Romans, says that they had deified "les Roseaux pour les Rivieres."388

GENERAL USE OF THE POWDER AMONG INDIANS

This very general dissemination among the Indians of the American continent of the sacred use of the powder of the tule, of images, idols, or sacrificial cakes made of such prehistoric foods, certainly suggests that the Apache and the Aztecs, among whom they seem to have been most freely used on ceremonial occasions, were invaders in the country they respectively occupied, comparatively recent in their arrival among the contiguous tribes like the Zuñi and Tusayan who on corresponding occasions offered to their gods a cultivated food like corn. The Tlascaltec were known in Mexico as the "bread people," possibly because they had been acquainted with the cultivation of the cereals long before the Aztecs. Similarly, there was a differentiation of the Apache from the sedentary Pueblos. The Apache were known to all the villages of the Pueblos as a "corn-buying tribe," as will presently be shown. It is true that in isolated cases and in widely separated sections the Apache have for nearly two centuries been a corn-planting people, because we find accounts in the Spanish chronicles of the discovery and destruction by their military expeditions of "trojes" or magazines of Apache corn near the San Francisco (or Verde) River, in the present Territory of Arizona, as early as the middle of the last century. But the general practice of the tribe was to purchase its bread or meal from the Pueblos at such times as hostilities were not an obstacle to free trade. There was this difference to be noted between the Apache and the Aztecs: The latter had been long enough in the valley of Anahuac to learn and adopt many new foods, as we learn from Duran, who relates that at their festivals in honor of Tezcatlipoca, or those made in pursuance of some vow, the women cooked an astonishing variety of bread, just as, at the festivals of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos in our own time, thirty different kinds of preparations of corn may be found.389 I was personally informed by old Indians in the pueblos along the Rio Grande that they had been in the habit of trading with the Apache and Comanche of the Staked Plains of Texas until within very recent years; in fact, I remember seeing such a party of Pueblos on its return from Texas in 1869, as it reached Fort Craig, New Mexico, where I was then stationed. I bought a buffalo robe from them. The principal article of sale on the side of the Pueblos was cornmeal. The Zuñi also carried on this mixed trade and hunting, as I was informed by the old chief Pedro Pino and others. The Tusayan denied that they had ever traded with the Apache so far to the east as the buffalo country, but asserted that the Comanche had once sent a large body of their people over to Walpi to trade with the Tusayan, among whom they remained for two years. There was one buffalo robe among the Tusayan at their snake dance in 1881, possibly obtained from the Ute to the north of them.

The trade carried on by the "buffalo" Indians with the Pueblos was noticed by Don Juan de Oñate as early as 1599. He describes them as "dressed in skins, which they also carried into the settled provinces to sell, and brought back in return cornmeal."390

Gregg391 speaks of the "Comancheros" or Mexicans and Pueblos who ventured out on the plains to trade with the Comanche, the principal article of traffic being bread. Whipple392 refers to this trade as carried on with all the nomadic tribes of the Llano Estacado, one of which we know to have been the eastern division of the Apache. The principal article bartered with the wild tribes was flour, i.e., cornmeal.

In another place he tells us of "Pueblo Indians from Santo Domingo, with flour and bread to barter with the Kái-ò-wàs and Comanches for buffalo robes and horses."393 Again, Mexicans were seen with flour, bread, and tobacco, "bound for Comanche land to trade. We had no previous idea of the extent of this Indian trade."394 Only one other reference to this intertribal commerce will be introduced.