The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604)). John Gregory Bourke
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The Apache, until within the last twenty years, plucked out the eyelashes and often the eyebrows, but only a few of them still persist in the practice. Kane says that the Winnebagoes "have the custom of pulling out their eyebrows."[117] Herrera says that among the signs by which the Tlascaltecs recognized their gods when they saw them in visions, were "vianle sin cejas, i sin pestañas."[118]
MUDHEADS.
Reference has been made to a ceremonial plastering of mud upon the heads of Indians. When General Crook was returning from his expedition into the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, in which expedition a few of the enemy had been killed, the scouts upon reaching the San Bernardino River made a free use of the sweat bath, with much singing and other formulas, the whole being part of the lustration which all warriors must undergo as soon as possible after being engaged in battle. The Apache proper did not apply mud to their heads, but the Apache-Yuma did.
Capt. Grossman, U. S. Army,[119] says of the Pima method of purification after killing an Apache, that the isolation of the warrior lasts for sixteen days, during which period no one speaks to him, not even the old woman who brings him his food. The first day he touches neither food nor drink, and he eats sparingly for the whole time, touching neither meat nor salt; he bathes frequently in the Gila River and nearly the whole time keeps his head covered with a plaster of mud and mesquite.
"The boyes [of the Massagueyes] of seven or eight yeeres weare clay fastned on the hayre of the head, and still renewed with new clay, weighing sometimes five or six pounds. Nor may they be free hereof till in warre or lawfull fight hee hath killed a man."[120]
According to Padre Geronimo Boscana, the traditions of the Indians of California show that they "fed upon a kind of clay."[121] But this clay was often plastered upon their heads "as a kind of ornament." These were the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, who strongly resembled the Mohave. After all, the "mudheads" of the Mohave are no worse than those people in India who still bedaub their heads with "the holy mud of the Ganges." Up to this time the mud has been the "blue mud" of the Colorado and other rivers, but when we find Herbert Spencer mentioning that the heads of the Comanche are "besmeared with a dull red clay" we may suspect that we have stumbled upon an analogue of the custom of the Aztec priests, who bedaubed their heads with the coagulating lifeblood of their human victims. We know that there has been such a substitution practiced among the Indians of the Pueblo of Jemez, who apply red ocher to the mouth of the stone mountain lion, in whose honor human blood was once freely shed. The practice of so many of the Plains tribes of painting the median line of the head with vermilion seems to be traceable back to a similar custom.
SCALP SHIRTS.
The shirt depicted on Pl. III, made of buckskin and trimmed with human scalps, would seem to belong to the same category with the mantles made of votive hair, mentioned as being in use among the California tribe a little more than a century ago. It was presented to me by Little Big Man, who led me to believe that it had once belonged to the great chief of the Sioux, Crazy Horse, or had at least been worn by him. Of its symbolism I am unable to find the explanation. The colors yellow and blue would seem to represent the earth and water or sky, the feathers attached would refer to the birds, and the round circle on the breast is undoubtedly the sun. There is a cocoon affixed to one shoulder, the significance of which I do not know.
THE RHOMBUS, OR BULL ROARER.
The rhombus was first seen by me at the snake dance of the Tusayan, in the village of Walpi, Ariz., in the month of August, 1881. Previous to that date I had heard of it vaguely, but had never been able to see it in actual use. The medicine-men twirled it rapidly, and with a uniform motion, about the head and from front to rear, and succeeded in faithfully imitating the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind. As explained to me by one of the medicine-men, by making this sound they compelled the wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops. At a later date I found it in use among the Apache, and for the same purpose. The season near the San Carlos Agency during the year 1884 had been unusually dry, and the crops were parched. The medicine-men arranged a procession, two of the features of which were the rhombus and a long handled cross, upon which various figures were depicted. Of the latter, I will speak at another time.
Again, while examining certain ruins in the Verde Valley, in central Arizona, I found that the "Cliff Dwellers," as it has become customary to call the prehistoric inhabitants, had employed the same weapon of persuasion in their intercourse with their gods. I found the rhombus also among the Rio Grande Pueblo tribes and the Zuñi. Dr. Washington Matthews has described it as existing among the Navajo and Maj. J. W. Powell has observed it in use among the Utes of Nevada and Utah. As will be shown, its use in all parts of the world seems to have been as general as that of any sacred implement known to primitive man, not even excepting the sacred cords or rosaries discussed in this paper. Three forms of the rhombus have come under my own observation, each and all apparently connected in symbolism with the lightning. The first terminates in a triangular point, and the general shape is either that of a long, narrow, parallelogram, capped with an equilateral triangle, or else the whole figure is that of a slender isosceles triangle. Where the former shape was used, as at the Tusayan snake dance, the tracing of a snake or lightning in blue or yellow followed down the length of the rhombus and terminated in the small triangle, which did duty as the snake's head. The second pattern was found by Dr. Matthews among the Navajo, and by myself in the old cliff dwellings. The one which I found was somewhat decayed, and the extremity of the triangle was broken off. There was no vestige of painting left. The second form was serrated on both edges to simulate the form of the snake or lightning. The third form, in use among the Apache, is an oblong of 7 or 8 inches in length, one and a quarter inches in width by a quarter in thickness. One extremity, that through which the cord passes, is rounded to rudely represent a human head, and the whole bears a close resemblance to the drawings of schoolboys which are intended for the human figure. The Apache explained that the lines on the front side of the rhombus were the entrails and those on the rear side the hair of their wind god. The hair is of several colors, and represents the lightning. I did not ascertain positively that such was the case, but was led to believe that the rhombus of the Apache was made by the medicine-men from wood, generally pine or fir, which had been struck by lightning on the mountain tops. Such wood is held in the highest estimation among them, and is used for the manufacture of amulets of especial efficacy. The Apache name for the rhombus is tzi-ditindi, the "sounding wood." The identification of the rhombus or "bull roarer" of the ancient Greeks with that used by the Tusayan in their snake dance was first made by E. B. Tylor in the Saturday Review in a criticism upon "The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona."
The Kaffirs have the rhombus among their playthings:
The nodiwu is a piece of wood about 6 or 8 inches long, and an inch and a half or 2 inches wide, and an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick in the middle. Towards the edges it is beveled off, so that the surface is convex, or consists of two inclined planes. At one end