1900-1.] DiSn6 Surgery. 15 



DENE SURGERY. 



By The Rev. Father A. G. Morice, O.M.I. 



(Read jrd February, igoo). 



From the icy wastes of the Arctic circle to. the barren borders of 

 Patagonia, under whatever clime and with any environment, or mode 

 of life, the American Indian is more or less shamanistic in his beliefs 

 and practices. To him disease is not that deviation from the normal 

 state of the living organism which is understood among us to result 

 from natural causes. In his estimation, it is mainly due to the ill-will 

 of certain minor spirits whom he generally believes to be under a 

 greater, rather undefined power, and even subservient to the incanta- 

 tions of the conjurer whose role it is to exorcise them out of the 

 patient, free the latter's body of any noxious matter due to their 

 machinations, or otherwise influence them to the extent of restoring 

 him to his former state. 



This particularity of the native mind is well known, inasmuch as 

 there hardly ever was a tribe without one or more shamans, or medicine 

 men. What would seem to be less generally understood is the fact 

 that, even in the olden times, the aborigines were far from relying 

 exclusively on the mysterious powers of their conjurers in cases of 

 bodily distress. Either on the advice of the latter or independently 

 therefrom, they frequently had recourse to natural means in order to 

 regain lost health, alleviate temporary ailments, or obviate the result 

 of accidents. The vegetable kingdom furnished them with antidotes 

 against almost any ill that humanity is heir to, and, in several instances 

 too, they resorted freely to external treatment and artificial devices, 

 the most important of which were, among the Northern Denes, surgi- 

 cal bleeding and burning. 



Prof. O. T. Masson has given us, at the end of his paper on " The 

 Ray Collection from the Hupa Reservation," a valuable list of the 

 plants, both economical and medicinal, used by the northern California 

 Indians. Mr. James Mooney has rendered a like service to science in 

 his valuable essay on the " Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees."* I 



VII. Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 324-327 ; Washington. 



