[LIGHTHALL] SIGNPOSTS OF PREHISTORIC TIME 477 
peculiar agriculture and all their special forms of culture from the 
south, and perhaps another thousand years preceding 500 A.D. would 
have found them in the present territory of Mexico or proceeding 
in general from that direction. Even then we would not have touched 
the question of where their special forms of culture originally came to 
them, and they were certainly derived from the Old World and formed 
there, apparently partly in Africa and partly in western Asia. Some 
indication of the immense period of time, taken in the process will 
appear from the following slight examples:. 
The Caughnawagas are the descendants of Iroquois converts 
established in the latter half of the seventeenth century at the Jesuit 
Mission of Sault St. Louis or Caughnawaga, about ten miles from 
Montreal. Although Roman Catholics for so long and far advanced 
in the ordinary ways of civilization they still retain a number of their 
original ideas, somewhat as a rural community in the Highlands of 
Scotland retains the superstition of the second sight and the clan and 
chief ideas. They have only recently given up the system of a council 
of chiefs and of community of lands, and have a secret society of 
medicine-men who cure by the ancient methods. In the spring some 
of the women go into the woods to seek well-known medicinal roots. 
When they take up a root, they follow an ancient custom of dropping 
in the hole in the earth some small metal button or other bright object 
as a propitiation to the spirit of the plant. This of course is part of 
the beautiful Indian idea (and why is it not true ?) that every plant 
and tree is a living being and has a soul. Originally an invocation was 
uttered to the spirit of the root, when it was extracted from the soil. 
Let us compare this system with one in western Asia. In the Syriac 
Book of Medicine, translated by the Orientalist, Dr. E. A. Wallace 
Budge, is a statement regarding the wonderful virtues of ‘‘the great 
Kahina root” “‘the King of all roots.” The ‘‘Book of Medicine” is the 
encyclopedia of materia medica and medical practice which has been 
handed down in Syria from the most ancient times, probably starting 
with Egyptian science, adding Chaldean magic and astrology, and 
incorporating root lore, observations of disease, forms of incantation, 
zodiacal lore, omens, Greek ideas and other additions from age to age. 
The passage on the Kahina (or sacred) root is one of these added 
passages, but evidently derived from very ancient origin. ‘Know 
thou that this root was the first born of all the roots which came up 
from the earth, and King Solomon was wont to use it....When thou 
wishest to pull up this root cleanse thyself from impurity and eat not 
bread which hath been made by women. And wash thy head and 
array thyself in white apparel and keep fasting until thou seest the stars. 
And come thou to this root on the sixth day of the month Iyyar and 
