i HUNTINGTON FREE LIBRARY Native American Collection CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY "CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 101 549 024 THE ONEOTA MEDICINE IN “TELE; FOREST WILLARD E. YAGER. Whatever withdraws us from the power of the senses; whatever makes the past, the distant or the future predomi- nate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. — WEBSTER. ONEONTA, N. Y. Igtl Contents. PAGE Section L—Of Succor in the Wilderness and the Need: THO casita cwedns bares aK 13 Srecrion II.—Red Anatomy, Physiology and Ra- Renal MUO OGY 6. a ine ede wine ees bee A 22 Section II].—Of Supernatural Diagnosis. ..... 2g Secrion IV.—Of Medicines .............2... 36 Secrion V.—Rational Agencies Other than Medi- CUES A and in Bruyas may be found the long word katsinnonhiat-anneragon, to mistake a vein. In the Southwest gestation is very well understood, and there is good working knowledge of the anatomy in- volved. That which by the Plains tribes was common- 1—Key 113, 58,60. 2—Br.97. 3—Key 112. 4—Vid. Clark, 248. 5—Erd. 249. 6—Erd. 55-57; 66, 163. 23 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST rt ly spoken of as the woman’s ‘mystery or medicine, speculation in the Southwest connects, not unnaturally, with the new moon.? From a passage in Perey’s Discourse of Virginia, printed early in the seventeenth century, I learn that Edward Brookes, gentleman, died in outward voyage to the colony, at the island of Mona in the West Indies, his “fat melted within him" by reason of the “great heate and drought of the country." The modern practi- tioner, if unable from this description to pronounce ac- curately upon the character of Mr, Brookes’ ailment, ean at any rate recall without difficulty a considerable list of diseases,—beginning perhaps with “lockjaw” and euding with “worms,”’—the very nomenclature of which it has been found needful to change, by reason of the absurd etiology embodied in old terms. Let us not then be surprised to learn that the Apache and several other tribes fear in infancy “falling fon- tanel”; that convulsions are attributed among the Hopi to a “twisted heart”; that among the Pima deformity may result from touching objects disturbed by whirl- wind, and many disorders from contact with the blood of the hated Apache.* The Papago sometimes cure headache with a plaster on cither temple, to ‘stop the air from entering;” the Mescaleros think rheumatism may be caused hv contact with a woman in labor.* So in Bruvas you may find gatsinnigwara-wenrion, the liver to twist and cause vomiting. T have known persons who practiced exceeding caution in drinking spring water, lest they might “swallow a lizard.” Dire accounts of the ravages wrought by “lizard in the stomach” are still occasionally published, and children in the country are yet cautioned against touch- ing toads, lest warts result. Similar to the latter con- ception is that of the Pima, who are very well per- 1—Clark 254. 2—e. g. Erd. 157. 157, note. 3—Erd. 75, 249; 226, 240; 244, 243. 4—Ib. 242, 235, 24 {1 RATIONAL ETIOLOGY suaded that the badger can in some way cause swelling of the neck, the animal itself having a short thick neck that appears swollen. “Curious,” no doubt, this primitive diagnosis. Yet I know not how we may smile superior, resting as the error clearly does, on mental vices from which perhaps mankind will never be redeemed—the strange unwilling- ness to admit ignorance, the mania to explain where explanation is yet impossible. The “untutored savage” is by no means always wrong. His observation is con- stant and keen; his logic rigorous as that of the As- sociation for the Advancement of Science. It is in the induction that he commonly fails, as do we; and even there is sometimes a surprising correctness. When Burton was in the Somali country, 1854, the. natives assured him that “deadly fevers” were caused by mosquito bite. The famous traveler thought “the superstition” due to the fact that “mosquitoes and fevers become formidable at about the same time’; but fifty years later etiologists were agreed that the truth lay with the Somali rather than their critic. Going north of Bangkok, in the jungle, the traveler finds the natives building their houses high above ground, and higher and higher as malarial fever is more feared. They do this to avoid the infection. It is the method of the Roman campagna and in a measure is successful. The Siamese do not attribute the fever to mosquitoes, apparently, and indications accumulate that there can be malaria without mosquitoes. I may cite another instance, which if not related to medicine, is wholly pertinent to the argument. Experi- ments recently conducted in England appear to show that the sterility of soils is due in large measure to the multiplication therein of organisms hostile to the bac- teria of putrefaction. Pots, the soil in which had been heated to a considerable degree, were found to yield twice as much wheat as others filled with soil not thus 25 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST treated. The explanation offered is that the fertilizing bacteria which survive the heating process, freed thereby in great measure from their enemies, forthwith increase enormously, to the betterment of the soil. And thereupon it is recalled that cultivators of India have from time immemorial heated the soil to increase fer- tility, and that there is clear allusion to the process in the Georgies of Virgil. So much for primitive knowledge; and had the White barbarian who overran early America, possessed the intelligence to study aboriginal institutions and _pre- serve adequate record, I doubt not we might thereby have multiplied illustration. The Brown man of the West was the mental equal of the East Indian, the superior of the African. Coming to the subject of remedies, we shall find our debt to him by no means in- considerable. In the account of New Netherland by Montanus it is gravely set down that the natives when they “exper- ience a pain in any part, say a devil lurks therein.’? The passage seems to be based on a statement of Duminie Megapolensis, of Greenbush, who thirty years earlier had written: ‘If they are sick or have a pain or sore- ness anywhere in their limbs, and I ask them what ails them, they say the devil sits in their body, or in the sore places, and bites them there.”* Simple old Dutch- man! One can well imagine the mischievous Mohawk thus teasing him; for Heckewelder tells how the Lenape loved nothing better than to play upon the credulity of the White man, who thonght himself “so superior in wisdom and knowledge.’”* The statements, both original and secondary, may be safely assigned to the same category with the Dominiec’s wonderful tale of tortoises about Albany which were “four feet long,” had sometimes “two heads” and were dangerously “addicted to biting.”* In all ordinary 1—Doe. Hist. IV., 130. 2—Narr. 177. 3—Heck. 322. 4— Narr. 178. 26 RATIONAL ETIOLOGY troubles, the Mohawk knew quite as well what ailed him as, in like case, did the Dutchman. The reader consulting Bruyas will find phrases in plenty such as: Ragatontes, he feels out of sorts; wakatsi, I am hoarse; ongwatos, I have a swelling; atiatagwegon, to be con- stipated; enniseraronni, to have intermittent fever; twarasita-garhathon, to turn one’s foot; gannerio te hagakarent, he has a film on the eye. And for all these ailments, even to cataract, there were adequate original remedies. Unable to trace the course of a disease, the Brown man often was not without some rational idea as to propagation and character. Thus in Bruyas we find: jongw-anneratarinnes, we have the pest—the root onnera, be it noted, meaning literally a rod or switch and the trope being exactly that which we employ in expressions such as “scourged with smallpox.” And further may be read: Aseronnige etiotention onnera- tarinnes, the pest came from the European. In like manner, and truthfully, Canonicus accused the English of bringing the plague—Drake supposes because he was “superstitious” (O, excellent word!); but quite as probably because he realized the nature of the disorder. So the Pai-Ute, still in primitive condition, attributed a destructive malady on a certain occasion, by no means to a spell or to the devil, but to the poisoning by Whites of the water they drank.* In the earliest account of the Mohawk, 1634, it ap- pears that a certain chief, ‘“Adriochten,” lived a quarter of a mile distant from the first castle, because many therein had “died of smallpox.”® Before the same disease, Roger Williams, writing likewise in 1634, tells us that among the Narraganset “whole towns” fled— the course which in Europe, particularly in Italy, was often pursued in face of a great contagion. Indeed, in countries subject to violent epidemic of cholera, one 1—Hopk. 41. 2—Narr. 141. 27 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST of the first indications of the coming of the plague is the tlight of the birds. The Tarahumare, still a fairly primitive tribe of northern Mexico, have observed that smallpox does not commonly recur in the individual, and a young man who has had the disease is therefore preferred in mar- riage. The Mescalero Apache “understand clearly” that consumption is contagious, and the Pima “know that it runs in families.” Thoughout the Southwest it is common, after a death, to burn everything with which the deceased came in contact during illness, and this avowedly to prevent contagion. There seems no valid reason to regard the practice as other than original.’ Even though for long the Brown man was very help- less against the hideous plagues poured out upon him from another world, I know not that the fact can be held to impeach either observation or reflective powers. Real knowledge of the entire group of important diseases now recognized as of bacterial origin was sealed to our fathers; and what is perhaps the deadliest and most loathsome scourge of all in civilization still utterly defies its famous science. It is wonderfully to the credit of the primitive American that he has been able pretty well to protect himself against European sexual disease —curing the milder forms; recognizing the hereditabil- ity of the worst, treating it with considerable success and using fairly effective prophylaxis.” 1—Erd. 229, 235, 243, 230. 2—Antiq. 33; Erd. 2386, 245; 186, 189, 231. 28 ITI Of Supernatural Diagnosis BRIENNEMAN, brother of Charlemagne, re- S| garded the blindness that befell him as punishment for his many sins against the oa pious Hildegarde. This conception of dis- ease in retribution long obtained. In Bradford’s ac- count of the voyage of the Pilgrims, we read that “it pleased God, before they came halfe seas over, to smite” a certain “proud and very profane yonge man” with a “greeveous disease, of which he dyed in a desperate manner.” . The citation is near three centuries old. That civil- ized man now regards disease as emanating in some cases from God, I will not undertake to maintain. Yet I have often heard the idea advanced, and by nersons of general intelligence., At any rate, it can hardly be said to determine modern treatment. Our forefathers, in sickness and misfortune, recog- nized even other supernatural influences. The “Body of Liberties” adopted by the general-court of Massachu- setts, in 1641, declares that “if any man or woman... hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.” There were spirits, then. A century earlier the little Maximilian had been expressly per- mitted to study black magic, on condition that he did not vractice it. Roger Williams, 1643, speaks of Satan’s “policie” and ascribes certain notable cures wrought by Narraganset shamans to the “helpe of the divell.’’* John Wesley, 1703-91, attribtited to Satan sickness, nightmare, storms and earthquake.” The idea yet lingers in civilization of supernatural agencies less definite. Why are you told to “knock 1—Key 146, 158. 2—Taine, Eng. Lit. II., 68. 29 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST wood,” when speaking of freedom from disease or acci- dent? The admonition is often more than half serious. What is feared and propitiated? “You know the Italians, Madam,” wrote the author of Tolla, “and you know that in their eyes the world is peopled with in- fluences, good and bad.” “Unable to believe in God,” says Zola of his heroine Madelcine Ferat, “she yet be- lieved in Powers.” Hall Caine’s Manx grandmother. had entire faith in “every kind of supernatural influ- ence,’—to her “the world and air were full of spiritual beings.”! And similar ideas are common among Celtic peoples everywhere. If in civilization generally is abundant trace of the primitive conception that morbid conditions may be due to supernatural causes; if still, among the enlightened, the mind is by no means free from the dread thought that misfortune, including illness, is sometimes in the nature .of supernatural punishment,—it would be. strangely anomalous did the Red world, in the stone age, afford no parallel. The savage Australian regards all death not produced by visible violence as of super- natural origin.” But the Brown man, as we have seen, by no means invoked the extraordinary in ordinary ail- ments. It was strange and obstinate disease, obscure causes, widespread fatality which induced such reason- ing and called for the intervention of the “Shaman,” the intermediary between man and the Powers. Erdlicka tells us that the materia medica of the Tepe- cano, a Mexican tribe, “consists of many herbs, and when these fail, are employed prayer, song and cere- mony.”® The first traveler among the Mohawk is in- vited to see the devil driven from a man, who, “very sick,” had been “treated without success during a con- siderable time.” The supernatural diagnosis and treat- ment appear to have been the final resort. T am aware that for many irksome conditions, civili- 1—My Story 10. 2—Ratz. I., 374. 3—Erd. 251. 30 SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS zation finds a sort of sorry consolation in the assumption of vastly superior knowledge; but really Mooney is by no means justified in the broad statement that “among the Indians the professions of medicine and religion are inseparable.” The ancient thanksgiving address of the Iroquois, as recorded by Parker, while ascribing disease like other evil to malign spirits, returns thanks to the “herbs and plants of the earth,’ which through Tawenneyu, the Master, can cure.t The treatment, then, was commonly rational. Bruyas defines the word hateisiens as medecin, physi- cian; while atstnnaken he defines as jongleur, juggler.” The latter translation is to be supplemented by the ob- servation of Henry,* that “juggler” was the term ap- plied by the French to the native conjuror or shaman. The different words used by the Mohawk clearly indi- cate different functions. Of the Chocta, Cushman tells us that “they believed diseases originated in part from natural causes,” seek- ing in nature for remedies. “Graver maladies were in- explicable and for such they used incantation.’’* Final- lv we have the very explicit statement of Heckewelder, who, speaking of “physicians and surgeons,” says: “By these names I mean to distinguish the good and honest practitioners who are in the habit of curing and healing by the simple application of natural remedies, without any mixture of superstition in the manner of preparing or administering them.’’® Theory and practice varied from tribe to tribe. The Tinne of the cold and benumbing North were by no means so rational as the Lenape. Even in the kindly South land there were places, where, as Wassenaer writes, was for various reasons little or no “succor”; that is, where, as with the hard-pressed Australian, be- lief in the supernatural greatly overshadowed reason and 1—Morg. I., 211, 194. 2—Br. 48, 105. 3—Captiv. 308. 4— Cush. 228. 5—Heck. 228. 81 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST natural means of relief. But, in general, as primarily the same chronicle states, there was “abundant means” to eure ‘with herbs and leaves or roots’; and every- where was at least the beginning of observation and rational medicine, just as with our own ancestors: an incipient science, destined little by little to circumscribe the domain of the supernatural in the healing art, though never perhaps altogether to subdue it,—as wit- ness the rise in these latter days of Christian Science; not to mention the “spirit healing” yet so common. Taking the references together, it appears to have been the opinion of the Red world that the supernatural might act to the detriment of man of its own volition— whether, if a beneficent power, justly, in punishment of offences against divine law; or, being an evil power, in mere caprice and malevolence. Evil spirits might also be brought to exert their malign influence in hu- man affairs—causing disease, misfortune and death— though the agency of some human being, the familiar witch or wizard. Belief in witchcraft was widespread in primitive America—a fact to surprise no one who remembers that at Edinburgh, early in the seventeenth century, were excented for sorcery no Jess than thirty persons in a single day; and that the reality of the crime was main- tained hy James I., by Lord Justice Holt and by “some of the first characters in the English nation.” The Iroquois punished witcheraft with death, as did contemporary Massachusetts; and for this offence died Father Jogues, among the Mohawk, 1646,1—eleven vears before the extradition, at East Hampton, L. [., of a poor woman named Garlock, charged with sorcery in Comecticut.2 At this time France and Switzerland were zealously burning witches, and more than a century later a woman was shot as a witeh in Schoharie county, 1—Doc. Hist. IV., 20. 2—Doc. Hist. I., 683. 32 SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS New York, where among the Germans the belief long lingered. It still exists in parts of Pennsylvania. Jogues was executed because supposed to have caused by magic a failure of the corn crop. Among the Zuni, epidemics and persistent general misfortune are often ascribed to sorcery. Erdlicka mentions a case of tuberculous meningitis, which a Mescalero shaman— failing to cure it, as for that had the agency physician before him—attributed in final diagnosis to wizardry.? Occasionally the native Southwestern practitioner points out the ‘sorcerer. Death does not always follow, exile being sometimes deemed sufficient.” The Lenape believed that a wizard made use of a “deadening substance,” projected upon the victim “through the air” or by other indefinable means.® This, though hardly the same, reminds one of “the evil-eye” —described by Robert Hearne, 1793, as a “blasting power” in the look, whereby certain persons “injure whatever offends.” Belief in the evil-eye is still widely prevalent in parts of Europe, and only a year since formed the basis of a case brought in a New Jersey court. The unwillingness of Western Indians. to be painted or photographed was first remarked by Catlin,* and has since been frequently observed. A passage in Henry’s narrative throws light upon the matter, wherein, speak- ing of the Ojibwa, he mentions the belief current among them that “by drawing the figure of a person in sand or ashes,” and “then pricking it with a sharp stick,” sorcerer could cause “the individual represented” to “suffer accordingly.’’> It is obvious that a person possess- ing a picture or photograph might be supposed to have opportunity for mischief great as exercised by means of a sand-drawing. The general conception is that of the “puppet,” which in New England the witch was supposed to employ, in similar fashion, to the same end. 1—Erd. 235. 2—Ib. 169, 229. 3—Heck. 240. 4—Catlin 158. 5—Captiv. 308. 33 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST Perhaps the reader will have anticipated the testi- mony of Heekewelder that an Indian believing himself “struck” by witeheraft was speedily the prey of actual disease, “Ilis spirits sink, his appetite fails, he is disturbed in his sleep, he pines and wastes away; or a fit of sickness seizes him and he dies at last,” vietim of imagination.? With supernatural diagnosis generally belongs the helief—for example, of the Pima and Papago—that ill- ness, and often fatal illness, may result from the “call of the dead.” Symptoms are frequent dreams of those dead, coupled with loss of flesh and general lassitude.? The conception is thoroughly in accord with primitive thinking. Indeed, some such thought, under eirenm- stances such as death following death where persons were closely related or much attached, may well have crossed the inind of the most rational. In Philadelphia, some few months since, a girl of ten shot herself, assign- ing as the reason that for four years she had heard con- stantly the call of her dead mother. In the Southwest we find the idea that if a dog is killed, though by accident, its ghost, if unappeased, may bring fever on the slaver’s child. So a rat killed may thus cause chills.* By this helicf may be explained passages such as [enry’s account of a feast made among the Ojibwa, and tobacco burned, to satisfy the spirit of a slain bear. Such seems a possible explanation also of Williams" statement that the Narraganset believed the deer to have “a divine power.’"! Mythie animals, or their spirits, might also cause (isease?; and finally we have the idea that a living animal, or its soul, and the spirit of a thing inanimate— a stone, a mountain, a star—may affect and afflict man.” This is the most primitive conception of all, perhaps; vet T have heard a civilized man curse a stone over 1—Heck. 240. 2—Erd. 244. %—Erd. 243. 4—Key 142. 5—Handb. 836. 6—Powell li., lii.; Erd. 221. 34 SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS which he stumbled, and have seen another, of ruder sort, shake his fist at a mountain to which lie seemed in some way to attribute a great physical misfortune. Here, at any rate, is the root of astrology,’ which is vet practiced, and the close explanation of the word “lunaev” and of the association of sickness with the conjunction of Sirius and the sun, “dog-days”—it being the spirit of the moon, as of the star, which was baleful. It is to be observed of the Red world, in coneluding this brief discussion of supernatural etiology, that the influence of spirits was not uncommonly exercised through material means,—as a hair, a thorn, a worm, an insect,—which, introduced in the sufferer’s body in some indefinite way—during sleep, perhaps,—sct up and maintained the morbid conditions.2 Such an ob- ject was often one suggesting by its appearance or nature the symptoms observed.? In Bruyas’ phrase gannerenhata-takwan, take the worm from the body, and in others related or of like import, we have the trace perhaps of this last primitive notion, among the old Iroquois. Where such material cause of disease existed, it was the business of the healer to discover and remove it, some of the means pursued to which end will in due place appear.* 1—Vid. Erd. 53. 2—Erd. 221, 223. 3—Ib. 223. 4-—Sec- tion VI. os or Ly Of Medicines ITERE can be no question that the folk medicine 6) oof the Frontier was derived mainly from the Indian. Such is the tradition; and it is cer- tain that the immigrant had in the outset sinall knowledge of plants, the most of which were seen for the first in the new land. “It is not to be doubted,” says the Representation of New Netherland, “that experts would be able to find many simples of great and different virtues,”’—of which the writer was confident, because, he tells us, of the knowledge in such matters upon the part of the natives. From the Brown man came the use, along the Border, of arbutus in rheumatism; of boneset and staghorn sumac for colds and sore throat; of goldthread and moose-maple leaf for sores and inflammation ; of winter- berry, ink-berry and golden-seal in fevers; of wild cherry and the blackhaw as tonics; of the elder (cana- densis), which was ‘talmost a pharmacy in itself,”—and of many other plants and shrubs common in the old folk medicine. One of the best practitioners of my acquaintance as- sured me, not se many years since, that such “old- eranny remedics’? were by no means to be despised. Whatever their value, they are now obsolescent; nor did they ever go beyond the more obvious in the native practice. Yet of the Red materia medica we are not without some particulars. While little is to be learned among modern Indians in proximity to civilization,— who for the most part have in this matter, as in others, fallen into ignorance or the White way,’—divers of 1—Beau. Na. 113; Erd. 249. 36 OF MEDICINES the old remedies are still in use among remote tribes. And there is occasional early record. Cartier speaks with enthusiasm of a medicine pre- scribed for his crew, sick with scurvy, by the Iroquois at Quebec, 1535-36. It was an infusion of the bark and leaves of the haneda [aneta], oneta being still the Onondaga name for the hemlock spruce, well known as possessing powerful anti-scorbutic properties. In a severe attack of pleurisy, the old woodsman Jonathan Wright had recourse, with excellent result, to bleeding and a strong “tea,” made also of the oneta—a treatment which probably he had learned during prolonged inter- course with the descendants, perhaps, of these same Troquois.? Among the Eastern peoples generally, for colic and the like, a decoction of prickly-ash (xanthoxylum) was pre- pared, the root being used. This or the root of the angelica-tree (aralia) was employed as a blood puri- fier ;? and from native practice the early White physi- cian appears to have derived the use of the berry of santhoxylum in “typhoid conditions.” The tincture of prickly-ash berries Dr. King considered for this purpose “superior to any other kind of medicine.’’? The sassafras was in high repute among the Iroquois. The French at Onondaga, 1657, wrote of it as “mar- velous,” saying that the leaves bruised would in a short time close “all kinds of wounds.”* The roots, twigs and berries were also employed, in various disorders, dysentery being specified. Brant, with Richard Smith, near the mouth of the Otego in the summer of 1769, feeling somewhat indisposed, takes “some tea of the sassafrass root.”> Among the Southern tribes sassafras was used “for the purification of the blood.’”® Wild ginger was a forest specific for indigestion.‘ Roger Williams mentions an infusion of “chips of the walnut tree,” the hickory probably, for a mild aperient ; 1—Sms. Trap. 269. 2—Loskiel vid. Beau. Wd. 195. 3— Newh. 48. 4—Relation 1657, vid. Beau. Wd. 196. 5—Smith Jour. 62. 6—Antiq. 34. 7—e. g. Kn. and Sl. 30. 37 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST and fruit of sasemineash, the cranberry, he thought to be “excellent against fevers.”! Among the North- west tribes of forty vears since, the thimbleberry was consemed in quantity as a particularly eftieacious anti- seorbutic.® Heekewelder, who for ‘two days and nights” had “suffered the most excruciating pain” through felon, was relieved “entirely,” in a half-hour, by a “poultice made of the root of the common blue violet." Loskiel, also among the Lenape, tells of the fruit and root of the tulip tree as a eure for fever and ague—a disorder in which the wood or buds of the common elder fur- nished likewise “an excellent remedy.” Many of the carly settlers considered the bark of the flowering dog- wood, also employed hy the natives, in fever, to be little inferior to cinechona; and valuable in much the same way were bark and seed of the swamp laurel.4 The Lower Creeks, for disorders of the stomach and intestines, valued so highly the whiteroot or ginseng: (pan. norida), that, not having the plant in their own country, they readily gave two or three deerskins for a single root. Cushman, among the Chocta, mentions the use of dried persimmon for bowel diffieulty and poultices of ground-ivy (nepeta) for sores and wounds. Tle adds that the Chocta “possessed many valuable scerets,” believing that the Great Spirit “had provided a remedy in plants for all diseases." Among the Pani, Clarke notes the remedial use of wormwood (arfemesia), sweet-flag (aeorus), the horse- mint (monarda) and the wild mint (men, canadensis) -—thongh this without specifving the applieation.7 The Southwestern tribes at this day have many vegetal cough medicines, more or less effeetive,—like omr own, Among other remedies, used with good re- sults, Erdlicka mentions the root of euphorbia and of 1—Key 90. 2—Dodge 415. 8—Heck. 229. 4—vid. Loskiel qu. Beau. Wd. 195, 196. Newh. 36. 5—Antiq. 34-5. G—Cush. 228-29. 7—Clark 253. Ais OF MEDICINES clematis, in indigestion and for laxation; chrysotham- nus, an infusion of the tops applied to the body, for measles and chicken pox; mesquite sap, as a tea, for deep-seated soreness of the throat; pennyroyal, inhaled, for persistent headache ; decoctions of cedar and juniper, in parturition; izie-huie (not identified), for pain in the bowels; tarragon (artem. dracunculoides), a poul- tice of the root, for contusions; boiled mesquite sap, a lotion for pemphigous or other sores—and the ‘‘wavish” (yerba-mansa), “reputed very effectual in syphilis.’”? Fever in the Southwest was often treated with decoc-; tions of the wild sage (artem. tridentata), used as a tea.” Occasionally we read of some animal or mineral sub- stance employed in native medicine. In general these are clearly signatory—as such to be hereinafter ex- plained. But the Iroquois showed the way to the springs of Saratoga, to which from old time they had resorted ; and the use of sulphur waters, internally and as a medi- cine, noted by Erdlicka among the Huichol, must have been quite general. Thus the “Indian” sulphur spring near Oquaga, in the Susquehanna valley, had been care- fully stoned up, as the story runs, before discovery by the immigrants; and the springs of Richfield and Sharon were thought, when first observed, to have been much frequented. According to Dodge, the Navaho, after eating thes wild potato, of which they were very fond, were wont, in ae to avoid possible colic, to take a little earthy matter “containing magnesia.”® Coreal mentions that the ancient Seminole sometimes employed violent emetics of calcined shell.4 Raccoon skin burned and powdered was also used as an emetic>—though its use, as that of powdered shell, may have been signatory. Vegetable poisons and their antidotes were well understood,® though Erdlicka observes that few poison- 1—Rept. 232, 239, 245, 235, 56 and 61, 235, 238, 245. 2— Clark 324. 3—Dodge 409. 4—Antigq. 29. 5—Heck. 225. 6— Antiq. 249; Handb. 836. 39 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST ous plants of the Southwest are comprised in the native materia medica.! It is recorded that the Pequot rene- gade “Wequash” came to his death by poison, at the hands of his own people, not many years after the Pequot war,—perhaps for his services to the English in that shameful slaughter. .\mong the neighboring Lenape the root of the mandrake was sometimes em- ploved for such a purpose; and early in the history of the Susquehanna valley a young Indian committed suicide by eating the root of the lethal hemlock (cicuta). (‘oncerning the value of many native remedies, there can be no question.? Of plants used by the Cherokee, with which he was more or Jess acquainted, Mooney reckoned that something above one-third “actually possessed medical virtues” and were rationally applied.* While this is no large proportion, it will compare favorably with that which would be approved bv the modern practitioner in the pharmacopeia of a century since. Of worthless native medicines a majority were of the signatory or talismanie class; but in all the list is not one more absurd than the famous “‘beaver-stone,”’ spoken of by Montanns, 1671,—‘an effectual remedy for mania, amenorrhea, dizziness, gout, lameness, belly and tooth ache, dullness of vision, poisoning and rhen- matism.’’* In knowledge of real specifics the Brown man was by no means behind his Dutch or New Ene- land contemporary, and the recognized value of such of his remedies as cinchona, jalapa, hydrastis, sanguinaria, xanthoxylum, podophvllin, hamamelis—seems more than to hint at superior attainment. I have already alluded to the doctrine of signatures. By this prase is conveniently expressed the world-wide conception that a disease may he cured through the agency of something in uature which suggests by its ap- pearance the symptoms or the part affected. Thus among 1—Erd. 231. 2—Handb. 837. 3—See Dell. 373. 4—Doc. Hist. IV. 120. 410 OF MEDICINES the Chinese, the root of the ginseng (aralia, panazx) is a panacea, because very often it assumes in a rude way the figure of aman. So, too, apparently, in ancient times, of the European mandrake (mandragora), the man-drake—though here the evidence is not so clear. Ginseng was well known to the Red world, and among the Alaskans was supposed to impart occult power.’ Of more repute as a general remedy wherever found, ap- pears, however, to have been the bloodroot (sanguinaria) —known to the Mohawks as onnonkwat, medicine, the medicine, by reason evidently of its peculiar bloodlike juice. A signatory remedy among the Hopi is a decoction of thistle, in dry pharyngitis, because of the prickly feeling in the patient’s throat. Among the Papago, acute indi- gestion, with its burning sensation, is treated with an infusion of red earth from the fireplace. Hough notes the employment of clematis as a hair restorative,-this_ because of its hair-like blessent;-a4 reason so far more specious than assignable for like nostrums of civilization that clematis might well take their place. Analogous to the doctrine of signatures is the belief of the Pima that certain ailments thought to be an effect of lightning, may be cured by drinking water wherein has been soaked a splinter from a lightning-riven tree. The badger disease, a swelling of the neck, is cured by tying over it a badger’s tail. The feathers of the owl, by reason of the association of this bird with the super- natural, are used against the malady due to the call of the dead. A weasel’s skin assists parturition, because the animal so readily evades obstructions.” Signatory remedies and those akin pass readily, it will be evident, into true fetishes: that is, such as em- ployed solely for their magic quality,—of which here- after. In the East they do not appear to have been so much in evidence as in the West, though the difference 1—Dodge 407. 2—vid. Erd. 240, 244. 3—Section VI. 41 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST may be due merely to lack of data. Heckewelder, how- ever, notes the “superstitions notion” of the Lenape that for an emetic the water used “must be drawn up a stream; if for a cathartic, downward.” “With this only exception,” he dcclares, “the Indian physicians are per- haps more free from fanciful theories than those of any other nation upon earth."' Which, considering that this was written a century since, we may very well be- lieve. After all, there is something in all this primitive thought which reminds one of “similia sonilibus curen- tur.” The Brown man could not give tincture of fire in fever, but he was close to the idea with his earth from the fireplace. And the fire-earth was by no means so reprehensible as the cornucopia of mineral poisons, armed with which the old-time ‘‘allopath,” in all good faith, went cheerfully to his struggle with the unknown, Signatory conceptions were invoked for moral as well as physical infirmity. The Algonqnians of the St. John river held that eating dogmeat, the dog being regarded as a brave animal, would impart courage.? Drake gives, from the Indian Chronicle, a case where a Massachu- setts native drank the heartblood of another, because the latter possessed great strength.’ Much of the so- ealled “cannibalism” noted here and there among primi- tive Americans, turns evidently upon this idea. It is perhaps not more irrational than that underlying the confection, by a famous New York practitioner, of a certain “elixir of life,” for whieh much was antici- pated some years since. The drinking of bullock’s blood, still in vogue, T believe, will be referred to more sophisticated reasoning——something like that which in- duces the native of the Congo to bathe in human blood for skin disease. But Phillpotts, in one of his stories, mentions a belief yet surviving in Devonshire that of great virtue in disease is “oil of mau” (olewm fue 1—Heck, 224, 228. 2—Captiv. 97. 3—Drake IIT. 82. I? OF MEDICINES manum.) It is of special efficacy when prepared from the skulls of “strong men.” Heckewelder thought the Lenape “too apt to give ex- cessive doses,” in their medication. But it is to be re- membered that their patients were very hardy. Dosing was not commonly repeated. The infrequency of pana- ceas in this early medicine is certainly remarkable, as the further fact that in general each remedy was ad- ministered by itself—there was little or no ‘“shot-gun” practice.’ Decoctions were the ordinary means to the application of remedies; and root, bark or leaf was more commonly utilized than seed or blossom.? 1—Erd. 235. 2—Handb. 837. J ag Dag OA! il & omy a EDP ooo 43 Vv Of Rational Agencies Other Than Medicines very seedy made use of massage, hot ap- plications and perspiration artificially in- duced. For the last, among the Pima, the person ailing is merely bundled in blankets. The Mesealeros have a more elaborate method, seating the patient, well covered, over a hole packed in the ground, wherein water has been heated with hot stones. Sudorifies are also used.) Among the Pima and the Maricopa, for pains in the stomach and the like, warm earth or ashes, in a cloth, is frequently applied; and such was perhaps the simple character of the “hot appli- cations” for “affections of the spleen and the stomach,” of which Col. Jones speaks, among the Southern tribes.? Massage in the Southwest is sometimes employed for days together.? For vesication the Otomi, of Mexico, use a caustic plant; and the Pani had similar means.4 The Chocta blistered with “burning punk,’’® and both Pima and Maricopa counter-irritate by burning upon the painful spot little “cottony balls” found on the lycium vine.® Vesication is practiced even by the rude Tinne of the North, and in Guiana the natives use for this purpose a stinging ant,—recalling the Spanish-fly of civilized practice. Scarification, for “sharp and persistent localized pain,” was everywhere applied, with or without eup- ping,—the latter either hy direct suction with the lips 1—Erd. 246, 236, 253. 2—Antigq. 33. 8—Erd. 248. 4— Clark, 252. 5—Cush. 367. 6—Erd. 246. 44 OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES or with an instrument in the nature of a tube.! In nose bleed,—of infrequent occurrence,—the Apache apply cold water freely and sometimes tamp the nostrils. The same people, using “decoctions,” contrive by means of a hollow reed, an enema, for pain in the bowels.” Lafitaun and other early French observers were astonished to find that the Hurons and their northern neighbors had recourse to bleeding, not as a panacea, after the practice prevalent then and later in Europe, but only for “local congestion.”’* So the Maricopa, fol- lowing Erdlicka, ‘employ blood-letting in persistent pain” or paralysis of a limb; and Heckewelder mentions it merely as a concomitant of the sweatbath, in certain “rheumatic affections.’’* The sweatbath held a very important place in primi- tive American life, being used—from North to South, from East to West— for rest and pleasure, for cleanli- ness, for religious purification, for divination, for health and the treatment of disease. Variously con- structed, the bathhouses were an adjunct of every vil- lage, and by their vestige may yet be traced the site of camps as the course of trails.®> In. the Susquehanna region I have noted, even at this late day, clear mark of some hundreds. Among the Narraganset and their neighbors, the pesuponck or “hot-house” was commonly built in a hill- side, by a stream, and was large enough to accommodate ten to twenty persons at once. A “cell,” Williams calls it.6 In this “the men enter after they have exceedingly heated it with a store of wood laid upon an heape of stone in the middle.” Sitting “round the hot stones an houre or more,” on coming “forth they runne, sum- mer and winter, into the brooke to cool them’”—and this “without the least hurt,” a matter of “admiration.” Heckewelder’s description of the bathhouse in use among the Lenape some two centuries later,’ agrees 1—Handb. 836; Clark, 252; Section VII. 2—Erd. 233, 234, 237. 3—Lloyd, League II., 285. 4—Heck. 225. 5—Wilke- son, N. Y. Times; Clark 365, 382. 6—Key 158. 7—Heck. 225. 45 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST pretty closely with that of Williams. Tt was built ‘on a bank or slope, one-half within and the other above ground.” There was a door--‘in front.” The “oven” was not so large, holding but “two to six persons ata time.’ The stones were heated outside, Men were ap- pointed for this purpose, and everything in readiness the fact was announced in the village by a crier. "As soon as a sufficient number had come to the oven,” sev- eral of the stones were rolled “into the middle of it” and the bathers entered. From time to time water was “poured on the hot stones” in the oven, producing steam, When perspiration ceased, the bathers came out, and the stones renewed, a second party entered. Thus until all had been served. Our authority states that in general the overs were at some distance from the village, where was plenty of “wood and water.” Proximity to water seems to iinply the cold plunge—which, for the rest, in most accounts is mentioned. The women had separate batlis, situated modestly in a quarter other than that appropriated to the men. Once or twice a weck, commonly, the men bathed; the women, not so much exposed nor fatigued, hardly so often. The bathhouse described by DeVries, for the natives about New .\msterdam (New York), appears to have been built, not in a hillside, but anywhere by a “running brook.” It was made tight by covering with clay the frainework of branches. The hut was for ‘three or four” at once, and the stones, when the heat was suft- cient, were removed. DeVries mentions the plunge.! Montanus, writing for New Netherland generally, and who probably had never seen the account of Williams, savs the baths were “made of earth” and that there was “a small door.” ‘*Whenever the patient has sweated a certain time, he immerses himself suddenly in cold water; from which he derives great security against all sorts of sickness,’’? 1—Narr. 117. 2—Doc. H‘~* ‘V., 128. 46 OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES For the Mohawk, we have the words: enne jonshwa, sweathouse; ennejontenni, to bathe together—the sen- tence: Sneiontha ag-ennejon, heat the stones that I may bathe.t| All these are readily comprehensible in the light of the paragraphs foregoing, and sufficiently at- test corresponding customs. The radical in the words cited is ennejon, quite other than twatewasothon which Bruyas defines as “to enter into the sweathouse to know the past, present and future,” i. e., for divinatory purposes. The conjuror’s hut seen among the lroquois by John Bartram, 1743, he describes as a little “‘cage’—made by setting poles in a ring perhaps five feet across, bending the tops together and covering with blankets. “They differ from their sweating coops in that they are often far from water, and have a stake by the cage. Yet both have a heap of red-hot stones put in.’”? If the ennejonskwa differed from the diviner’s hut only by proximity to water and absence of the stake, it seems clear that in general the Iroquois used—in the later time, at least—a bathhouse resembling that. still to be seen on the Crow reservation, Wyoming, and such as described by Clark for the Plains and yet common throughout the Southwest: a wicky-up or framework of branches covered with blankets.* Far more substantial was the anuka, of the Chocta, —“an important adjunct in all villages,’—built in Cushman’s day of logs chinked with clay, and heated by a fire, which was raked out when the desired tempera- ture had been attained.* The Western sweathouses are heated with stones, as were those of the East. These are fired in the open and placed inside as needed. Clark, speaking more particu- larly of the Cheyenne, says the hot stones were “care- fully piled” in a hole made in the center of the wicky- up. The hut removed, there remained a heap of stones “about a foot above the surface of the ground.” 1—Br. 108. 2—Obs. qu. Beau. Wd. 194. 3—Clark, 364-68; Erd. 16, 32. 4—Cush. 259. 47 MEDICINE IN THE FOREST Several authorities—Dunbar, Erdlicka, McLaugh- lin—note that, in the West, the bathers having entered the hut, a dish of water was passed in to be used in making steam. Others, as Cushman and Clark, imen- tion the plunge. Erdlicka remarks that the sweathouse is often ‘an adjunet to the dwelling”’—though commonly built when uecded. Dunbar says, that, in a Pani village, “several might at any time be seen in different directions.”? Clark speaks of them, in camps but of a day. For the stones used, though sometimes they are spoken of as “boulders,” ILeekewelder compares them in size to “a Jarge turnip;” Clark savs, “about six inches in (liameter.”’ T have been ininute in the description of this primi- tive Turkish bath, because the particulars given seem satisfactorily to account for one of the most notable marks of Red wecupation vet to be found in the Susque- hanna valley—the so-called “firebeds,” consisting of ordinary coblestones six inches through or thereabont, packed in beds commonly three feet or so in diameter. They are nearly always by a stream, and several are sometimes grouped irregularly within a small area or strung along a shore. Such stones or beds of stone are often spoken of as marking lodge sites. But there ix nothine in the data of Indian house construction to show that the fireplace was ever paved. No more can they he regarded as out- side ‘cooking places” nor “places for firing pottery’ — since they scldem furnish miscellaneous relics and con- tain but little charcoal. If, however, we conceive them as stones piled in, or on, what was onee a sweathouse floor, all is fairly explicable—as the further fact that ona “firebed” at East Branch was found a broken pot. Figure 1, photographed from a bed washed out two or three years since on the .\dequentaga site, Oneonta, 1—See Clark 365. 48 OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES at the mouth of the Charlotte,-—illustrates very well their appearance when wndisturt ed. Commonly they have been plowed out, where noted, and the stones arc considerably scattered. The bed figured was on the edge of a spring brook, forming pools nearby. Fig. J. Wrote Heckewelder: “The sweathouse is the place to which the wearied traveler, hunter or warrior looks for relief from the fatigues he has endured, the cold he has caught, or the restoration of lost appetite.” When- ever and however indisposed, the Lenape had recourse to it and commonly with good results. Lewis and Clark thought it efficacious in rheumatism. Cushman testi- fies that in “common intermittent fever” the anuka seldom failed to effect a cure.