Cigar-store Indians -- Pictorial works; Indians of North America -- Statues
I own that I am a bit superstitious about Indians and fancy I am liked
and protected by them, after several unusual experiences which I take
this opportunity to refer to the Society for Psychical Research. In
California, years ago, just after I had put up my wigwam at home, I was
barking as for the last twenty years with a chronic bronchial irritation
and was urged to visit a remarkable healer who had “suddenly been
controlled by the spirit of a cultivated woman, a medical missionary,
who had been most successful in India but who had died after a few years
of brilliant practice.” Making an engagement two weeks in advance, which
was necessary, owing to the great rush to be cured, I took a massage
treatment and greatly enjoyed the talk of the returned missionary, which
was all at once broken up by her place in the rubber’s mind being
usurped by a powerful American Indian who, through the medium, kept up a
vigorous yet not rough rubbing, slapping and putting hot hands all about
my throat; talking too as he worked, so enthusiastically. I think he was
a pretty knowing individual for this is what he said. “Ugh! Ugh! Wah!
Wah! This Squaw, she talkem heapum, she now quite bad off, but Ugh Wah!
we patch her up! Will make her pokagee! Yes, Pokagee!” Then he left as
quickly as he came and I noticed that poor Mrs. Seldon was breathing
hard and was in a profuse perspiration. When she opened her eyes, she
sighed and inquired in her own quiet, gentle way, “Have you had a good
rub?” That evening, I went to a Reception for some of the Professors of
Stanford University with the promise of being “Pokagee” still in my head
and as one of the gentlemen was a teacher of the Indian languages and
dialects, I ventured in a timid, hesitating manner to inquire “May I ask
if there is such a word as Pokagee in any Indian dialect?”
And the learned man replied at once, “Certainly.”
“Please tell me what it means.”
“It is used to express cured, or in perfect health.”
“O, thank you,” I said, “and just one more question—what tribe has that
word?”
“The Pottawatamie.”
And strange to relate my Astral Masseur had belonged to that particular
tribe. I forgot to say that he spoke of his pleasure over the Tepee I
had built on my grounds and said the Indians long ago loved to walk and
hunt in my woods. And he added, “They like to go to Tepee now; seems
like their own place.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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