“After you been dreaming for a long time maybe you try to cure somebody but you don’t ask for nothing. You never tell them dreams or what your spirit is but other doctors, they know. If your dreams are right you can cure people and then you can ask for something [payment]. The real Indian way was to doctor for four nights. Then he’d lay out all his stuff and give it a drink by sprinkling water on it. Then he’d shake his rattle and sing and touch the patient with his hands. He’d talk to the sickness, like he knew it ... like maybe he was friends to it ... he’d say ‘now you behave and don’t bother this person no more. If you don’t behave I’m gonna take you out and show you to everybody and then you’ll be embarrassed!’ Then he’d suck at the patient (some of these young doctors suck on a stick with a feather on it that they pointed at the sick person, but the old ones didn’t do that), and get out the sickness, it would be a feather or a stone. Sometime that sickness come out and go into the doctor so hard they can’t get it out and have to get another doctor to help him. Sometimes it hit them so hard that they defecate. I seen them doctors just fill their pants. If it’s real tough they get all stiff and fall over. Sometimes fall right in the fire and their clothes all burn off but it don’t burn them none. You can’t touch them then or it will kill them. But when they begin to shake a little and that rattle begins to go then you can pick them up. If he can, the doctor will vomit out the sickness. When it’s out he puts it in his hand and rubs it with dirt and throws it away toward the north; that kills it.” This recital of the process of becoming a doctor shows clearly the ideal situation, the receiving of powers, unsought, from supernatural sources, the guardian spirit watching over its protégé’s career, providing him with the wherewithal in the form of songs, spells, and paraphernalia. In fact, however, it would appear that the process of becoming a shaman was far more a conscious and voluntary act on the part of an individual than would be supposed from the foregoing story. Doctoring power clearly seems to have remained within certain families. The informant who gave the foregoing account was himself the son of a woman curer and a famous doctor and the nephew of another doctor. From his childhood he was familiar with the procedures of curing, with stories about dreams, spirit visitations, trips to the afterworld, mysterious and sacred locations. He somewhat proudly admitted that as a boy he “used to shake that rattle” himself. In short, until his shamanistic education was interrupted by white man’s schooling, he was a shaman’s apprentice.