Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1891-01-20

drums, or perhaps they are only grooming,
while dance or feast is in progress. At
other times they appear in the most gro
tesque costumes, painted all over, hung
with feathers and nails and claws, and
carrying some wand or staff, gorgeous
with color and smothered with Indian
fnsry.
HOW THE TERM WAS APPLIED.
The term medicine is white mans
expression which the Indians have adopt
ed. 1t was applied to the priests of the
tribes-for that is what they really are
because the first white men often found
them making their incantations at the side
of the sick, the wounded or the dying
In reality they were exercising the evil
spirits of disease or death, but the white
travellers, seeing them in the presence of
the sick, put two and two together and
called them medicine men. The term is
two centuries old, and the Indians have
SO fully adopted it that when one of these
officials is at his offices they say he Is
making medicine"
The medicine man is a conjurer, q ma
gician, dealer in magic, and an interme-
diary between the men of this world and
the spirits of the other. He may know
something of the rude pharmacopaia of
his fellows, and may prescribe certain
leaves or roots to allay fever, to arrest a
cold or to heal wound. That is not his
business, however, and such prescriptions
are more apt to be offered by the sduaws
or by any member of the patients family.
The medicine mans work comes in
when medicine fails, and it is pursued un-
til death is seen to be certain, when
among most of the tribes-the sick or
wounded man is abandoned to meet his
fate. Far from thinking the only good
Indian is a dead one, the Indians them
selves have little regard for one who is
half dead or seems certain to die.
WEIRD SIGHT.
No more weird sight is to be seen on the
face of this continent than view of such
group of medicine men at work to save
a life. Seen at night the effect is awe
some. They sit in a circle, broken only
by the body of the invalid stretched on
blanket, at the head of the tent opposite
light is from candle stuck ingeniously in
a loop of birch bark, fastened tight in q
slit in the end of stick that has been
thrust in the earth. The medicine men
are painted in their own colors, green and
yellow predominating. They are in full
regalia, but their hair falls over their hid
eous faces as they bend forward to swing
to and fro or to beat their drums.
All are singing. Often they sing only
the tunes of ancient songs, the words be-
ing forgotten or having grown tiresome.
Now and then one leaps to his feet, wav-
ing his befeathered rattle and yelling loud
er than the others. He sings the words
that occur to him as suiting the case He
ha, IL
breech clout, or "gee string" as they call
that garment on the plains.
His thin, bony, bare red legs have the
effect of their nakedness increased by the
jumping, dangling tail of feathers that
hutters down from his head and mixes its
colors with the paint stripes on his flesh.
His dancing is rather more like pounding
something beneath him than like what we
call dancing He lifts his feet by bending
his knees: lifts them and thumps them
down monotonously. though he turns his
body first to one side and then to the other
When the dancer tired and fell back in
his place in the circle the spirit moved an
other to take his place.
QUEER RESEMBLANcEs.
The queer resemblances between the In
dians and those Hebrew bands of whose
history the Old Testament is record have
often been pointed out, but the writer has
never seen attention called to the similari-
ty of certain of the Hebrew incidents to
the common practices of Indian medicine
men. In their early history the Hebrew
leaders were continually holding converse
with the Almighty. They went apart
from their followers up in mountains or
in secret places and talked with Jehovah.
That is precisely what the medicine men
do to-day, or pretend to DO. Every man
who knows the Indians knows that during
all the Messiah craze the medicine men of
the various tribes with great formality
prepared to talk with Gitche- -Manitou or
whatever they happen to call the good
spirit.
In some tribes they built little wick-i-
ups of saplings and leaves, and went into
them and held conversations that were
audible, though not Ineligible to the red
men listening outside. The saVages heard
the medicine mans voice and then heard
the voice of some other person replying to
him in a jargon they could not unravel.
In other tribes the medicine men merely
reported having held such conversations.
1t is not for us to say that the grounds for
such reports of the words of the Almigh-
ty were as slight in one case as the other,
but it is true that the Indians have be-
lieved that their priests have really be-
lieved such conversations took place
Those who followed Sitting Bulls histo-
ry know that his tribe was long divided as
to his power. One contingent held that
his medicine" was ne good, by which
they meant that if he ever had genuine
power to converse with spirits that power
left him. This often happens. Medicine
men have their day and their decline, and
he is very sagacious Indian who can keep
up faith in his ministrations for many at
time or until he died.