At times one may find in the "medicine" of the more prominent and influential of the chiefs and medicine-men of the Apache little sacks which, when opened, are found to contain pounded galena; this they tell me is a "great medicine," fully equal to hoddentin, but more difficult to obtain. It is used precisely as hoddentin is used; that is, both as a face paint and as a powder to be thrown to the sun or other elements to be propitiated. The Apache are reluctant to part with it, and from living Apache I have never obtained more than one small sack of it. No one seems to understand the reason for its employment. Mr. William M. Beebe has suggested that perhaps the fact that galena always crystallizes in cubes, and that it would thus seem to have a mysterious connection with the cardinal points to which all nomadic peoples pay great attention as being invested with the power of keeping wanderers from going astray, would not be without influence upon the minds of the medicine-men, who are quick to detect and to profit by all false analogies. The conjecture appears to me to be a most plausible one, but I can submit it only as a conjecture, for no explanation of the kind was received from any of the Indians. All that I can say is that whenever procurable it was always used by the Apache on occasions of unusual importance and solemnity and presented as a round disk painted in the center of the forehead. The significance of all these markings of the face among savage and half-civilized nations is a subject deserving of the most careful research; like the sectarial marks of the Hindus, all, or nearly all, the marks made upon the faces of American Indians have a meaning beyond the ornamental or the grotesque. Galena was observed in use among the tribes seen by Cabeza de Vaca. "Ils nous donnèrent beaucoup de bourses, contenant des sachets de marcassites et d'antimoine en poudre." ("Taleguillas de margaxita y de alcohol molido.")[520] This word "margaxita" means iron pyrites. The Encyclopædia Britannica says that the Peruvians used it for "amulets;" so also did the Apache. What Vaca took for antimony was pounded galena no doubt. He was by this time in or near the Rocky Mountains.[521] On the northwest coast of America we read of the natives: "One, however, as he came near, took out from his bosom some iron or lead-colored micaceous earth and drew marks with it across his cheeks in the shape of two pears, stuffed his nostrils with grass, and thrust thin pieces of bone through the cartilage of his nose."[522]