The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604)). John Gregory Bourke
Читать онлайн книгу.
who prohibited these "tempestiarii" from plying their trade.
One of the first requests made of Vaca and his comrades by the people living in fixed habitations near the Rio Grande was "to tell the sky to rain," and also to pray for it.[9]
The prophet Samuel has been alluded to as a rain-maker.[10]
There does not seem to have been any inheritance of priestly functions among the Apache or any setting apart of a particular clan or family for the priestly duties.
Francis Parkman is quoted as describing a certain family among the Miami who were reserved for the sacred ritualistic cannibalism perpetrated by that tribe upon captives taken in war. Such families devoted more or less completely to sacred uses are to be noted among the Hebrews (in the line of Levi) and others; but they do not occur in the tribes of the Southwest.
One of the ceremonies connected with the initiation, as with every exercise of spiritual functions by the medicine-man, is the "ta-a-chi," or sweat-bath, in which, if he be physically able, the patient must participate.
The Apache do not, to my knowledge, indulge in any poisonous intoxicants during their medicine ceremonies; but in this they differ to a perceptible degree from other tribes of America. The "black drink" of the Creeks and the "wisoccan" of the Virginians may be cited as cases in point; and the Walapai of Arizona, the near neighbors of the Apache, make use of the juice, or a decoction of the leaves, roots, and flowers of the Datura stramonium to induce frenzy and exhilaration. The laurel grows wild on all the mountain tops of Sonora and Arizona, and the Apache credit it with the power of setting men crazy, but they deny that they have ever made use of it in their medicine or religion. Picart[11] speaks of the drink (wisoccan) which took away the brains of the young men undergoing initiation as medicine-men among the tribes of Virginia, but he does not say what this "wisoccan" was.
In Guiana,[12] the candidate for the office of medicine-man must, among other ordeals, "drink fearfully large drafts of tobacco juice, mixed with water." The medicine-men of Guiana are called peaiman.
I have never seen tobacco juice drank by medicine-men or others, but I remember seeing Shunca-Luta (Sorrel Horse), a medicine-man of the Dakota, chewing and swallowing a piece of tobacco and then going into what seemed to be a trance, all the while emitting deep grunts or groans. When he revived he insisted that those sounds had been made by a spirit which he kept down in his stomach. He also pretended to extract the quid of tobacco from underneath his ribs, and was full of petty tricks of legerdemain and other means of mystifying women and children.
All medicine-men claim the power of swallowing spear heads or arrows and fire, and there are at times many really wonderful things done by them which have the effect of strengthening their hold upon the people.
The medicine-men of the Ojibwa thrust arrows and similar instruments down their throats. They also allow themselves to be shot at with marked bullets.[13]
While I was among the Tusayan, in 1881, I learned of a young boy, quite a child, who was looked up to by the other Indians, and on special occasions made his appearance decked out in much native finery of beads and gewgaws, but the exact nature of his duties and supposed responsibilities could not be ascertained.
Diego Duran[14] thought that the priesthood among the Mexicans was to a great extent hereditary, much like the right of primogeniture among the people of Spain. Speaking of the five assistants who held down the human victim at the moment of sacrifice, he says:
Los nombres de los cinco eran Chachalmeca, que en nuestra Lengua quiere tanto decir como Levita ó ministro de cosa divina ó sagrada. Era esta dignidad entre ellos muy suprema y en mucha tenida, la cual se heredaba de hijos á padres como cosa de mayorazgo, sucediendo los hijos á los Padres en aquella sangrienta Dignidad endemoniada y cruel.
Concerning the medicine-men of Peru, Dorman[15] says:
The priestly office among the Peruvians appears to have been hereditary; some attained it by election; a man struck by lightning was considered as chosen by heaven; also those who became suddenly insane. Mr. Southey says that among the Moxos of Brazil, who worshiped the tiger, a man who was rescued from but marked by the claws of the animal, was set apart for the priesthood, and none other.
I shall have occasion to introduce a medicine-woman of the Apache, Tze-go-juni, or "Pretty-mouth," whose claims to preeminence among her people would seem to have had no better foundation than her escape from lightning stroke and from the bites of a mountain lion, which had seized her during the night and had not killed her.
I remember the case of an old Navajo medicine-man who was killed by lightning. The whole tribe participated in the singing, drumming, and dancing incident to so important an event, but no white men were allowed to be present. My information was derived from the dead man's young nephew, while I was among that tribe.
Among the Arawak of South America there are hereditary conjurers who profess to find out the enemy who by the agency of an evil spirit has killed the deceased.[16]
Picart says of the medicine-men of the tribes along Rio de la Plata: "Pour être Prêtre ou Médecin parmi eux, il faut avoir jeûné longtems & souvent. Il faut avoir combatu plusieurs fois contre les bêtes Sauvages, principalement contre les Tigres, & tout au moins en avoir été mordu ou égratigné. Après cela on peut obtenir l'Ordre, de Prêtrise; car le Tigre est chez eux un animal presque divin."[17]
The medicine-men of the Apache are not confined to one gens or clan, as among the Shawnee and Cherokee, according to Brinton,[18] neither do they believe, as the Cherokee do, according to the same authority, that the seventh son is a natural-born prophet with the gift of healing by touch, but upon this latter point I must be discreet, as I have never known an Apache seventh son.
The Cherokee still preserve the custom of consecrating a family of their tribe to the priesthood, as the family of Levi was consecrated among the Jews.[19]
The neophytes of the isthmus of Darien were boys from ten to twelve years "selected for the natural inclination or the peculiar aptitude and intelligence which they displayed for the service."[20]
Peter Martyr says of the Chiribchis of South America: "Out of the multitude of children they chuse some of 10 or 12 yeeres old, whom they know by conjecture to be naturally inclined to that service."[21]
The peculiarity of the Moxos was that they thought none designated for the office of medicine-man but such as had escaped from the claws of the South American tiger which, indeed, it is said they worshiped as a god.[22]
Contrary to what Spencer says, the chiefs of the tribes of the Southwest, at least, are not ipso facto medicine-men; but among the Tonto Apache the brother of the head chief, Cha-ut-lip-un, was the great medicine-man, and generally the medicine-men are related closely to the prominent chiefs, which would seem to imply either a formal deputation of priestly functions from the chiefs to relatives, or what may be practically the same thing, the exercise of family influence to bring about a recognition of the necromantic powers of some aspirant; but among the Apache there is no priest caste; the same man may be priest, warrior, etc.[23]
"The juice of the Datura seed is employed by the Portuguese women of Goa: they mix it, says Linschott, in the liquor drank by their husbands, who fall, for twenty-four hours at least, into a stupor accompanied by continued laughing; but so deep is the sleep that nothing passing before them affects them; and when they recover their senses, they have no recollection of what has taken place."[24]
"The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to bring on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure. In Peru the priests who talked with the 'huaca' or fetishes used to throw themselves into an ecstatic condition by a narcotic drink called 'tonca,' made from the same plant."[25]
The medicine-men of the Walapai, according to Charlie Spencer, who married one of their women and lived among them for years, were in the habit of casting bullets in molds which contained a small piece of paper. They would allow these bullets to be fired at them, and of course the missile would split in two parts and do no injury. Again, they would roll a ball of sinew and attach one end to a small twig,