Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globeBourke, John Gregory
Religion
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe
Bourke, John Gregory
Scatology
In addition to the above, we have the testimony of Mr. Thomas V. Keam,
who has lived for many years among the Moquis, and who confirms from
personal observation all that has been here said.
The extracts from personal correspondence with Professor Bandelier are
of special value, that gentleman having devoted years of painstaking
investigation to the history of the Pueblos, and acquired a most
intimate knowledge of them, based upon constant personal observation and
scholarship of the highest order.
In a personal letter, dated Santa Fé, N. M., June 7, 1888, he tells,
among much other most interesting information, that he saw at the Pueblo
of Cochiti, on Nov. 10, 1880, “the Koshare eating their own excrement.”
The following description of the “Club-house” of the Nehue-cue may be
of interest: “It was twenty-one paces long, nine paces wide, with a
banquette running round on three sides; in front of the altar were sacred
bowls of earthenware, with paintings of tadpoles to typify water of
summer, frogs for perennial water, and the sea-serpent for ocean water.
(They describe the sea-serpent (_vibora del mar_) as very large, with
feathers (spray?) on its head, eating people who went into the water,
and when cut up with big knives yielding a great deal of oil.) In the
first of the sacred dishes was a conch-shell from the sea, wands made of
ears of corn, with hearts of chalchihuitl, and exterior ornamentation of
the plumage of the parrot and turkey. Bowls of sacred meal (_kunque_)
were on the floor; this sacred meal, to be found in niches in the house
of every Zuñi, or for that matter of almost every pueblo throughout New
Mexico and Arizona, is generally made of a mixture of blue corn-meal,
shells, and chalchihuitl; but for more solemn occasions, as the old
Indian Pedro Pino assured me, sea-sand is added. Around the room at
intervals were pictographs of birds,—ducks and others,—nine in number
on one side, and nine of clown-gods on the other. These pictures were
fairly well delineated in black and in red and yellow ochre. The god of
“The Winged Knife” was represented back of the altar. In this room were
also kept several of the painted oblong wooden drums seen in every sacred
dance.”—(Extract from personal notes of Captain Bourke, Nov. 17, 1881.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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