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 a description of the "altars" made by the medicine-men of the
Apache-Yuma at or near Camp Verde, Arizona, it is shown that this
sacred powder is freely used. Figures were drawn upon the ground to
represent the deities of the tribe, and the medicine-men dropped on
all, except three of them, a pinch of yellow powder (hoddentin) which
was taken from a small buckskin bag. This powder was put upon the
head, chest, or other part of the body of the patient.
Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army,[269] says that the ceremony just
described was "a most sacred one and entered into for the purpose of
averting the diseases with which the Apache at Camp Verde had been
afflicted the summer previous."
I am not sure that the Apache-Yuma have not borrowed the use of
hoddentin from the Apache. My reason for expressing this opinion is
that I have never seen an Apache without a little bag of hoddentin
when it was possible for him to get it, whereas I have never seen an
Apache-Yuma with it except when he was about to start out on the
warpath. The "altars" referred to by Corbusier are made also by the
Apache, Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan. Those of the Apache, as might be
inferred from their nomadic state, were the crudest; those of the
Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan display a wonderful degree of artistic
excellence. The altars of the Navajo have been described and
illustrated by Dr. Washington Matthews,[270] and those of the Tusayan
by myself.[271]
Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his
father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that
when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each
other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the
chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would
then tell me all he knew.
The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of
pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo
have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and
the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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