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
When a pain has become localized and deep seated, the medicine-men
resort to suction of the part affected, and raise blisters in that
way. I was once asked by the Walapai chief, Sequanya, to look at his
back and sides. He was covered with cicatrices due to such treatment,
the medicine-men thinking thus to alleviate the progressive paralysis
from which he had been long a sufferer, and from which he shortly
afterwards died. After a long march, I have seen Indians of different
bands expose the small of the back uncovered to the fierce heat of a
pile of embers to produce a rubefacient effect and stimulate what is
known as a weak back. They drink freely of hot teas or infusions of
herbs and grasses for the cure of chills. They are all dextrous in the
manufacture of splints out of willow twigs, and seem to meet with much
success in their treatment of gunshot wounds, which they do not dress
as often as white practitioners, alleging that the latter, by so
frequently removing the bandages, unduly irritate the wounds. I have
known them to apply moxa, and I remember to have seen two deep scars
upon the left hand of the great Apache chief Cochise, due to this
cause.
It should not be forgotten that the world owes a large debt to the
medicine-men of America, who first discovered the virtues of coca,
sarsaparilla, jalap, cinchona, and guiacum. They understand the
administration of enemata, and have an apparatus made of the paunch of
a sheep and the hollow leg bone.
Scarification is quite common, and is used for a singular purpose. The
Apache scouts when tired were in the habit of sitting down and lashing
their legs with bunches of nettles until the blood flowed. This,
according to their belief, relieved the exhaustion.
The medicine-men of the Floridians, according to Vaca, sucked and blew
on the patient, and put hot stones on his abdomen to take away pain;
they also scarified, and they seemed to have used moxas. "Ils
cautérisent aussi avec le feu."[88]
The medicine-men of Hispaniola cured by suction, and when they had
extracted a stone or other alleged cause of sickness it was preserved
as a sacred relic, especially by the women, who looked upon it as of
great aid in parturition.[89] Venegas speaks of a tube called the
"chacuaco," formed out of a very hard black stone, used by the
medicine-men of California in sucking such parts of the patient's body
as were grievously afflicted with pains. In these tubes they sometimes
placed lighted tobacco and blew down upon the part affected after the
manner of a moxa, I suppose.[90]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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