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
In the National Museum at Washington, D. C., there are many pipes made
of the bones of birds, which were used by the Inuit as drinking tubes
when water had to be taken into the mouth from holes cut in the ice.
These drinking tubes seem to be directly related to our subject,
although they may also have been used as Lonsdale describes the pipes
for blowing the dead whale full of air. Another point to be mentioned
is that the eagle pipe kept in the mouth of the young warrior
undergoing the torture of the sun dance among the Sioux and other
tribes on the plains is apparently connected with the "bebedero del
Sol" of the peoples to the south.[235]
The use of this drinking reed, shown to have been once so intimately
associated with human sacrifice, may have disappeared upon the
introduction of labrets, which seem, in certain cases at least, to be
associated with the memory of enemies killed in battle, which would be
only another form of human sacrifice. This suggestion is advanced with
some misgivings, and only as a hypothesis to assist in determining for
what purpose labrets and drinking tubes have been employed. The Apache
have discontinued the use of the labret, which still is to be found
among their congeners along the Lower Yukon, but not among those
living along the lower river.[236] According to Dall the custom was
probably adopted from the Inuit; he also shows that whenever labrets
are worn in a tribe they are worn by both sexes, and that the women
assume them at the first appearance of the catamenia.
"This is to be noted, that how many men these Savages [Brazilians]
doe kill, so many holes they will have in their visage, beginning
first in their nether lippe, then in their cheekes, thirdly, in both
their eye-browes, and lastly in their eares."[237]
Cabeza de Vaca speaks of the Indians near Malhado Island, "They
likewise have the nether lippe bored, and within the same they carrie
a piece of thin Cane about halfe a finger thicke."[238] Herrera
relates very nearly the same of the men of "Florida": "Traìan una
tetilla oradada, metido por el agujero un pedaço de Caña, i el labio
baxero tambien agujereado, con otra caña en èl."[239] But Herrera
probably obtained his data from the narrative of Vaca.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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