NO. 4 UPPER YUKON NATIXJv CUSTo^rS — SCUMlTTliR 1/ 



notch. The bones are secretly passed from right to left and vice 

 versa. Some one on one side would call out which of the opponents' 

 hands contained the bone, and the calling side would get as many- 

 sticks, from a pile of about sixty, as the number of opponents' hands 

 guessed correctly. Each side called the other alternately. Some- 

 times they would hold another unmarked bone in the opposite hand 

 so as to confuse the guesser. The side which lost or got the fewer 

 sticks had to give the other something as a forfeit. 



They wrestle "catch-as-catch-can," but they usually try for a hold 

 in the following manner: Putting the right arm around the oppo- 

 nent's waist and grasping the breeches at the thigh with the left 

 hand. It is only necessary to throw a man, for as soon as he falls 

 he is beaten. As a mark of friendship on separating, after this 

 sport, the Indians exchange coats or other articles of clothing re- 

 gardless of their value. 



the; medicine-man 



The word "medicine" should be understood as synonymous with 

 "magic." The medicine-man does not administer potions, but cures 

 by other methods ; thus, "make medicine" is synonymous with per- 

 form magic ; hence, his aid is sought for more purposes than healing 

 the sick, and he can perform to defeat the enemy, to overcome 

 famine, or to make a prospective hunting trip successful. When a 

 man is sick he calls in this Indian doctor, who sings to drive away 

 the disease. Each medicine-man has his own way of singing, though 

 the general form is a chant like those used in dances, in which words 

 are sometimes used, but generally meaningless syllables. The medi- 

 cine-man goes to sleep and dreams songs, and what he hears in the 

 dream he repeats as an incantation over the sick one. 



When Luke, one of these medicine-men, now perhaps forty years 

 old, was a little boy, about 500 Indians encamped in skin houses 

 about a mile up Mission Creek were taken with smallpox and most 

 of them died. The remnant of the band migrated to Forty Mile, 

 where they were attacked in 1897 by an epidemic of coughing and 

 bleeding from the lungs, and many died in from four to six days. 

 The Indians think that each of these epidemics was due to a bad 

 medicine-man from elsewhere sending an evil spirit amongst them. 

 The evil spirit was supposed to enter the man's body in the form 

 of an animal and, by moving about in him, produced sickness. 



It seems the medicine-man is still able to do this by taking a weasel 

 skin and causing it to disappear in various ways. Sometimes he 



