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
So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a
religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin
schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular
performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred
pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least,
I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to
record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the
Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood
had been shed, and everything they did--the bathing in the sweat
lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon
their heads by the Apache-Yuma--had a reference to the lustration or
purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women
may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail
rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida,
gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me
by one of the women who gathered it.
Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the
use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder
or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.
THE "KUNQUE" OF THE ZUÑI AND OTHERS.
The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience
only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in
its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who
employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in
their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited--and I visited
them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on
the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in
Texas--I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and
so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and
gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the
Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the
ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to
discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of
other usages and ceremonials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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