GATSCHET — KAS. LEG. COMMENTARY. [75] 43 



trembled as it moved. A southern direction had been prescribed bj him 

 orally and on a birch-bark map made by himself for their future migrations, 

 and the miracle on the wooden simulacra, witnessed by all, determined the 

 Hurons to set out in their canoes in the appointed direction toward Lake 

 Erie, where they settled and stayed for more than a century. 



"They took a motherless child and strlck it against the 

 POLE," etc. This conveys the idea of a human sacrifice to propi- 

 tiate the unknown power which moved the pole. Motherless 

 children are left among Indians to the uncertain care of relatives, 

 and, when the mother of a new-born babe died, several tribes (as 

 e.g. the Kalapiiya of Oregon) were in the habit of burying the 

 forsaken child alive with the corpse of the mother — an instance 

 of aboriginal feeling of humanity! A motherless child is also 

 exposed as a bait to theisti-papa whom the tribe intended to cap- 

 ture and kill. The Creeks in the Indian Territory still remem- 

 ber this incident of their migration ; they state that the child was 

 an orphan of the female sex, and that it was fastened to a rope in 

 such a way that it could be suddenly jerked oft' from the attack 

 of the isti-papa. Thus the monster was compelled to take another 

 bound at it, the pit-fall lying just underneath the human bait; so 

 the Indians were sure to see the beast fall into the trap dug for its 

 destruction. — The original German text conveys the idea, that the 

 ■pole killed the child by its swaying motion ; Brinton's translation 

 and our Indian texts have "thus (they) killed the child." 



PAsSA, or button-snake root^ is Eryngium yuccasfolium, a plant 

 with a white flower, long jagged leaf, serving as an emetic to the 

 Creeks. The infusion was drunk by warriors starting for war, 

 by youths when undergoing initiation and after having received 

 inspirations from the Great Spirit through prophetic dreams. It 

 was probably the greatest of their " medicines" after the black 

 drink, and is mentioned among the plants tendered by the mythic 

 hayayalgi to the early Kasi'hta, Kawita, and Chicasa, as a gift for 

 some particular gentes (Hawkins, pp. 76. 79. 82). It was pre- 

 pared on the first day of the Kasi'hta busk during the turkey- 

 dance, and drunk in the afternoon; cf. i. 173. 177. 179. 186. A 

 weed popularly called "snake-root" or "fern snake-root" was the 

 sinika of the Cheroki. (Adair, Hist., p. 235.) 



The disclosure of the medicinal properties of this and the three 



