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

Vetancurt395 mentions that the Franciscan friars, between 1630 and 1680, had erected a magnificent "temple" to "Our Lady of the Angels of Porciúncula," and that the walls were so thick that offices were established in their concavities. On each side of this temple, which was erected in the pueblo of Pecos (situated at or near the head of the Pecos River, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fé, New Mexico, on the eastern rim of the Llano Estacado), were three towers. At the foot of the hill was a plain about one league in circumference, to which the Apache resorted for trade. These were the Apache living on the plains of Texas. They brought with them buffalo robes, deer skins and other things to exchange for corn. They came with their dog-trains loaded, and there were more than five hundred traders arriving each year.

Observe that here we have the first and only reference to the use of dog trains by the Apache who in every other case make their women carry all plunder in baskets on their backs. In this same extract from Vetancurt there is a valuable remark about Quivira: "Este es el paso para los reinos de la Quivira."

ANALOGUES OF HODDENTIN

In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the "kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of every attention.396

In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.

There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate.

In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."397

There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant.

No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews398 has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn."

This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.

The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face with "pleasant yellow stripes … of the yellow foam that covers the water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen that falls from the pine." He quotes399 another legend of the magic red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the waters to an Ojibwa.

Godfrey Higgins400 has this to say of the use of pollen by the ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of fertility:

Αρωμα, the sweet smell, means also a flower, that is Pushpa or Pushto. This was the language of the followers of the Phasah or the Lamb – it was the language of the Flower, of the Natzir, of the Flos-floris of Flora, of the Arouma, and of the flour of Ceres, or the Eucharistia. It was the language of the pollen, the pollen of plants, the principle of generation, of the Pole or Phallus.

Again he says:

Buddha was a flower, because as flour or pollen he was the principle of fructification or generation. He was flour because flour was the fine or valuable part of the plant of Ceres, or wheat, the pollen which, I am told, in this plant, and in this plant alone, renews itself when destroyed. When the flour, pollen, is killed, it grows again several times. This is a very beautiful type or symbol of the resurrection. On this account the flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχαριστία. In this pollen we have the name of pall or pallium and of Pallas, in the first language meaning wisdom… When the devotee ate the bread he ate the pollen, and thus ate the body of the God of generation; hence might come transubstantiation.

Lupton,401 in 1660, describes a "powder of the flowers [pollen?] of elder, gathered on a midsummer day," which was taken to restore lost youth. Brand, it may be as well to say, traces back the custom of throwing flour into the faces of women and others on the streets at Shrovetide, in Minorca and elsewhere, to the time of the Romans.402

In writing the description of the Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, I ventured to advance the surmise that the corn flour with which the sacred snakes were covered, and with which the air was whitened, would be found upon investigation to be closely related to the crithomancy or divination by grains of the cereals, as practiced among the ancient Greeks. Crithomancy, strictly speaking, meant a divination by grains of corn. The expression which I should have employed was alphitomancy, a divination "by meal, flower, or branne."403 But both methods of divination have been noticed among the aborigines of America.

In Peru the medicine-men were divided into classes, as were those of ancient Egypt. These medicine-men "made the various means of divination specialities." Some of them predicted by "the shapes of grains of maize taken at random."404 In Guatemala grains of corn or of chile were used indiscriminately, and in Guazacualco the medicine-women used grains of frijoles or black beans. In Guatemala they had what they called "ahquij." "Este modo de adivinar se llama ahquij, malol-tzitè, malol-ixim, esto es: el que adivina por el sol, ó por granos de maiz ó chile."405

In Guazacualco the medicine-women "hechaban suertes con granos de Frisoles, a manera de Dados, i hacian sus invocaciones, porque eran Hechiceros: i si el Dado decia bien, proseguian en la cura, diciendo que sanaria: i si mal, no bolvian al enfermo."406

Herrera in the preceding paragraph recognizes the close similarity between this sacred ceremony of casting lots or divining, and the more orthodox method of gambling, pure and simple, which has in every case been derived from a sacred origin.

"Les Hachus [one class of Peruvian priests] consultaient l'avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux."407

The Mexicans "para saber si los enfermos habian de morir, ó sanar de la enfermedad que tenian, echaban un puñado de maiz lo mas grueso que podian haber, y lanzábanlo siete ó ocho veces, como lanzan los dados los que los juegan, y si algun grano quedaba enhiesto, decian que era señal de muerte."408

Father Brebœuf relates that at the Huron feast of the dead, which occurred every 8 or 10 years and which he saw at Ossossane, "a few grains of Indian corn were thrown by the women upon the sacred relics."409

THE DOWN OF BIRDS IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES

No exhaustive and accurate examination of the subject of hoddentin could be made without bringing the investigator face to face with the curious analogue of "down" throwing and sprinkling which seemingly obtains with tribes which at some period of their history have been compelled to rely upon birds as a main component of their diet. Examples of this are to be met with on both sides of the Pacific as well as in remote Australia, and were the matter more fully examined there is no doubt that some other identifications might be made in very unexpected quarters. The down used by the Tchuktchi on occasions of ceremony had a suggestion of religion about it.410 "On leaving the shore, they sung and danced. One who stood at the head of the boat was employed in plucking out the feathers of a bird's skin and blowing them in the air."

In Langsdorff's Travels411 we learn that some of the dancers of the Koluschan of Sitka have their heads powdered with the small down feathers of the white-headed eagle and ornamented with ermine; also, that the hair and bodies of the Indians at the mission of Saint Joseph, New California, were powdered with down feathers.412

The Indians from the North Pacific coast seen visiting the mission of San Francisco, by Kotzebue in 1816, "had their long disordered hair covered with down."413

Bancroft says of the Nootka of the northwest coast of British America: "the hair is powdered plentifully with white feathers, which are regarded as the crowning ornament for manly dignity in all these regions."414

The bird's down used by the Haida of British North America in their dances seems very closely related to hoddentin. They not only put it upon their own persons, but "delight to communicate it to their partners in bowing," and also "blow it into the air at regular intervals through a painted tube." They also scattered down as a sign of welcome to the first European navigators.415

In all these dances, ceremonial visits, and receptions of strangers the religious element can be discerned more or less plainly. The Indians west of the Mississippi with whom Father Hennepin was a prisoner in 1680, and who appear to have been a branch of the Sioux (Issati or Santee and Nadouessan), had a grand dance to signalize the killing of a bear. On this occasion, which was participated in by the "principaux chefs et guerriers," we learn that there was this to be noted in their dress: "ayant même leurs cheveux frottez d'huile d'ours & parsemez de plumes, rouges & blanches & les têtes chargées de duvet d'oiseaux."416

"Swan's and bustard's down" was used by the Accancess [i.e., the Arkansas of the Siouan stock] in their religious ceremonies.417

Of the war dress of the members of the Five Nations we learn from an early writer: "Their heads [previously denuded of all hair except that of the crown] are painted red down to the eye-brows and sprinkled over with white down."418

The Indians of Virginia at their war dances painted themselves to make them more terrible: "Pour se rendre plus terriblee, ils sément des plumes, du duvet, ou du poil de quelque bête sur la peinture toute fraiche."419 Down was also used by the medicine-men of the Carib.420 The down of birds was used in much the same way by the tribes of Cumaná, a district of South America not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, in the present territory of Venezuela;421 by the Tupinambis, of Brazil, who covered the bodies of their victims with it;422 by the Chiribchi, of South America,423 and by the tribes of the Isthmus of Darien.424 This down has also been used by some of the Australians in their sacred dances.425 "The hair, or rather the wool upon their heads, was very abundantly powdered with white powder… They powder not only their heads, but their beards too."426

In China "there is a widespread superstition that the feathers of birds, after undergoing certain incantations, are thrown up into the air, and being carried away by the wind work blight and destruction wherever they alight."

The down of birds seems not to have been unknown in Europe. To this day it is poured upon the heads of the bride and groom in weddings among the Russian peasantry.427

This leads up to the inquiry whether or not the application of tar and feathers to the person may not at an early period have been an act of religious significance, perverted into a ridiculous and infamous punishment by a conquering and unrelenting hostile sect. The subject certainly seems to have awakened the curiosity of the learned Buckle, whose remarks may as well be given.

Richard, during his stay in Normandy (1189), made some singular laws for regulating the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by sea. "A robber, convicted of theft, shall be shaved in the manner of a champion; and boiling pitch poured upon his head, and the feathers of a pillow shaken over his head to distinguish him; and be landed at the first port where the ships shall stop."428

The circumstances mentioned in the text respecting tarring and feathering is a fine subject for comment by the searchers into popular antiquities.429

HAIR POWDER

Speaking of the "duvet" or down, with which many American savage tribes deck themselves, Picart observes very justly: "Cet ornement est bizare, mais dans le fond l'est il beaucoup plus que cette poudre d'or dont les Anciens, se poudroient la tête, ou que cette poudre composée d'amidon avec laquelle nos petits maitres modernes affectent de blanchir leurs cheveux ou leurs perruques?"430

Picart does not say, and perhaps it would not be wise for us to surmise, that these modes of powdering had a religious origin.

The custom of powdering the hair seems to be a savage "survival;" at least, it is still to be found among the Friendly Islanders, among whom it was observed by Forster.431 These islanders used a white lime powder, also one of blue and another of orange made of turmeric.

The Sandwich Islanders plastered their hair over "with a kind of lime made from burnt shells,"432 and Dillon speaks of the Friendly Islanders using lime, as Forster has already informed us.433 The Hottentots made a lavish use of the medicinal powder of the buchu, which they plastered on their heads, threw to their sacred animals, and used liberally at their funerals.434 Kolben dispels all doubt by saying: "These powderings are religious formalities." He also alludes to the use, in much the same manner, of ashes by the same people.435

The use of ashes also occurs among the Zuñi, the Apache (at times), and the Abipone of Paraguay. Ashes are also "thrown in the way of a whirlwind to appease it."436

In the Witches' Sabbath, in Germany, "it was said that the witches burned a he goat, and divided its ashes among themselves."437

In all the above cases, as well as in that of the use of ashes in the Christian churches, it is possible that the origin of the custom might be traced back either to a desire to share in the burnt offering or else in that of preserving some of the incinerated dust of the dead friend or relative for whom the tribe or clan was in mourning. Ashes in the Christian church were not confined to Lent alone; they "were worn four times a year, as in the beginning of Lent."438

Tuphramancy or divination by ashes was one of the methods of forecast in use among the priests of pagan Rome.439

In Northumberland the custom prevailed of making bonfires on the hills on St. Peter's day. "They made encroachments, on these occasions, upon the bonfires of the neighbouring towns, of which they took away some of the ashes by force: This they called 'carrying off the flower (probably the flour) of the wake.'440 Moresin thinks this a vestige of the ancient Cerealia."

The mourning at Iddah, in Guinea, consists in smearing the forehead "with wood ashes and clay water, which is allowed to dry on. They likewise powder their hair with wood ashes."441

DUST FROM CHURCHES – ITS USE

The last ceremonial powder to be described is dust from the ground, as among some of the Australians who smear their heads with pipe-clay as a sign of mourning.442

The French writers mention among the ceremonies of the Natchez one in which the Great Sun "gathered dust, which he threw back over his head, and turned successively to the four quarters of the world in repeating the same act of throwing dust."443

Mention is made of "an old woman who acted as beadle" of a church, who "once brought to the bedside of a dying person some of the sweepings from the floor of the altar, to ease and shorten a very lingering death."444

Altar dust was a very ancient remedy for disease. Frommann says that, of the four tablets found in a temple of Esculapius, one bore this inscription: "Lucio affecto lateris dolore; veniret et ex ara tollerit cinerem et una cum vino comisceret et poneret supra latus; et convaluit," etc.445

It seems then that the mediæval use of altar dust traces back to the Roman use of altar ashes.

So hard is it to eradicate from the minds of savages ideas which have become ingrafted upon their nature that we need not be surprised to read in the Jesuit relations of affairs in Canada (1696-1702) that, at the Mission of Saint Francis, where the Indians venerated the memory of a saintly woman of their own race, Catheraine Tagikoo-ita, "pour guérir les malades que les rémèdes ordinaires ne soulagent point, on avale dans l'eau ou dans un bouillon un peu de la poussière de son tombeau."

A few persons are to be found who endeavor to collect the dust from the feet of one hundred thousand Brahmins. One way of collecting this dust is by spreading a cloth before the door of a house where a great multitude of Brahmins are assembled at a feast, and, as each Brahmin comes out, he shakes the dust from his feet as he treads upon this cloth. Many miraculous cures are declared to have been performed upon persons using this dust.446

A widow among the Armenian devil-worshipers is required "to strew dust on her head and to smear her face with clay."447

CLAY-EATING

The eating of clay would appear to have once prevailed all over the world. In places the custom has degenerated into ceremonial or is to be found only in myths. The Aztec devotee picked up a pinch of clay in the temple of Tezcatlipoca and ate it with the greatest reverence.448

Sahagun is quoted by Squier449 as saying that the Mexicans swore by the sun and "by our sovereign mother, the Earth," and ate a piece of earth.

But the use of clay by the Mexicans was not merely a matter of ceremony; clay seems to have been an edible in quite common use.

Edible earth was sold openly in the markets of Mexico; "yaun tierra," says Gomara in the list of foods given by him.450

The eating of clay was forbidden to Mexican women during pregnancy.

Diego Duran describes the ceremonial eating of clay in the temples of Mexico; "Llegó el dedo al suelo, y cogiendo tierra en él lo metió en la boca; á la cual ceremonia llamaban comer tierra santa."451 And again he says that in their sacrifices the Mexican nobles ate earth from the feet of the idols. "Comian tierra de la que estaba á los pies del Ydolo."452 But the Mexicans did not limit themselves to a ceremonial clay-eating alone. Thomas Gage relates that "they ate a kind of earth, for at one season in the yeer they had nets of mayle, with the which they raked up a certaine dust that is bred upon the water of the Lake of Mexico, and that is kneaded together like unto oas of the sea."453

Diego Duran454 mentions the ceremonial clay-eating at the feast of Tezcatlipoca agreeing with the note already taken from Kingsborough.

There is reference to clay-eating in one of the myths given in the Popol-Vuh. The Quiche deities Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, desiring to overcome the god Cabrakan, fed him upon roasted birds, but they took care to rub one of the birds with "tizate" and to put white powder around it. The circle of white powder was, no doubt, a circle of hoddentin or something analogous thereto, intended to prevent any baleful influence being exercised by Cabrakan. "Mais ils frottèrent l'un des oiseaux avec du tizate et lui mirent de la poussière blanche à l'entour."455

In a footnote the word "tizate" is explained to be a very friable whitish earth, used in polishing metals, making cement, etc.: "Terre blanchâtre fort friable, et dont ils se servent pour polir les métaux, faire du ciment, etc."

Cabeza de Vaca says that the Indians of Florida ate clay – "de la terre."456 He says also457 that the natives offered him many mesquite beans, which they ate mixed with earth – "mele avec de la terre."458

The Jaguaces of Florida ate earth (tierra).459

At the trial of Vasco Pocallo de Figueroa, in Santiago de Cuba, in 1522, "for cruelty to the natives," he sought to make it appear that the Indians ate clay as a means of suicide: "el abuso de los Indios en comer tierra … seguian matandose de intento comiendo tierra."460

The Muiscas had in their language the word "jipetera," a "disease from eating dirt."461 Whether the word "dirt" as here employed means filth, or earth and clay, is not plain; it probably means clay and earth.

Venegas asserts that the Indians of California ate earth. The traditions of the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, California, and vicinity show that "they had fed upon a kind of clay," which they "often used upon their heads by way of ornament."462

The Tátu Indians of California mix "red earth into their acorn bread … to make the bread sweet and make it go further."463

Long464 relates that when the young warrior of the Oto or Omaha tribes goes out on his first fast he "rubs his person over with a whitish clay," but he does not state that he ate it.

Sir John Franklin465 relates that the banks of the Mackenzie River in British North America contain layers of a kind of unctuous mud, probably similar to that found near the Orinoco, which the Tinneh Indians "use occasionally as food during seasons of famine, and even at other times chew as an amusement… It has a milky taste and the flavour is not disagreeable."

Father de Smet466 says of the Athapascan: "Many wandering families of the Carrier tribe … have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment." This does not seem to have been intentionally eaten.

"Some of the Siberian tribes, when they travel, carry a small bag of their native earth, the taste of which they suppose will preserve them from, all the evils of a foreign sky."467

We are informed that the Tunguses of Siberia eat a clay called "rock marrow," which they mix with marrow. "Near the Ural Mountains, powdered gypsum, commonly called 'rock meal,' is sometimes mixed with bread, but its effects are pernicious."468

"The Jukabiri of northeastern Siberia have an earth of sweetish and rather astringent taste," to which they "ascribe a variety of sanatory properties."469

There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the Mene (a species of Hæmadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Australia.470

The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in the same manner it is known to both the Zuñi and Tusayan.

Wallace says that eating dirt was "a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites."471

"Los apassionados à comer tierra son los Indios Otomacos."472

"The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is fat and unctuous."473

Waitz474 cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Orinoco eat large quantities of a fatty clay.

Clay was eaten by the Brazilians generally.475

The Romans had a dish called "alica" or "frumenta," made of the grain zea mixed with chalk from the hills at Puteoli, near Naples.476