The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604))Bourke, John Gregory
Religion
The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604))
Bourke, John Gregory
Apache Indians -- Medicine; Apache Indians -- Religion; Apache Indians -- Rites and ceremonies; Shamans -- New Mexico
Spencer quotes Bernan and Hilhouse to the effect that the poor among
the Arawaks of South America (Guiana) have no names because they can
not pay the medicine-men.[69]
As a general rule, the medicine-men do not attend to their own
families, neither do they assist in cases of childbirth unless
specially needed. To both these rules there are exceptions
innumerable. While I was at San Carlos Agency, Surgeon Davis was sent
for to help in a case of uterine inertia, and I myself have been asked
in the pueblo of Nambé, New Mexico, to give advice in a case of
puerperal fever.
The medicine-men are accused of administering poisons to their
enemies. Among the Navajo I was told that they would put finely
pounded glass in food.
MEDICINE-WOMEN.
[Illustration: FIG. 429.--Medicine arrow used by Apache and Pueblo
women.]
There are medicine-women as well as medicine-men among the Apache,
with two of whom I was personally acquainted. One named "Captain Jack"
was well advanced in years and physically quite feeble, but bright in
intellect and said to be well versed in the lore of her people. She
was fond of instructing her grandchildren, whom she supported, in the
prayers and invocations to the gods worshiped by her fathers, and I
have several times listened carefully and unobserved to these
recitations and determined that the prayers were the same as those
which had already been given to myself as those of the tribe. The
other was named Tze-go-juni, a Chiricahua, and a woman with a most
romantic history. She had passed five years in captivity among the
Mexicans in Sonora and had learned to speak Spanish with facility. A
mountain lion had severely mangled her in the shoulder and knee, and
once she had been struck by lightning; so that whether by reason of
superior attainments or by an appeal to the superstitious reverence of
her comrades, she wielded considerable influence. These medicine-women
devote their attention principally to obstetrics, and have many
peculiar stories to relate concerning pre-natal influences and matters
of that sort. Tze-go-juni wore at her neck the stone amulet, shaped
like a spear, which is figured in the illustrations of this paper. The
material was the silex from the top of a mountain, taken from a ledge
at the foot of a tree which had been struck by lightning. The fact
that siliceous rock will emit sparks when struck by another hard body
appeals to the reasoning powers of the savage as a proof that the fire
must have been originally deposited therein by the bolt of lightning.
A tiny piece of this arrow or lance was broken off and ground into
the finest powder, and then administered in water to women during time
of gestation. I have found the same kind of arrows in use among the
women of Laguna and other pueblos. This matter will receive more
extended treatment in my coming monograph on "Stone Worship."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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