128 EXPEDITION TO THE 



Seldom do the Potawatomis punish it by death, and it is 

 very rare that they vent their resentment against the pa- 

 ramour. The barbarous punishment noticed by INIr. Say 

 in the account of the manners of the Otos, Omawhaws, 

 and other Missouri Indians, which he described under the 

 name of the Round in the Prairie, (tour de la prairie of 

 the Canadians,) is not known among the Potawatomis. 



The Indians are liable to more distempers than might 

 at first be expected from their mode of living. Croup is 

 one of their most common diseases ; in some seasons, most 

 of the cases are fatal, while in others all the patients reco- 

 ver. No medicine is applied in this disease, except the 

 maple sap, or sugar dissolved in hot water. Adults find re- 

 lief from vomiting. Sore throat appears, also, to be one of 

 their most frequent complaints ; especially in the morning, 

 but it soon passes off. They are often bitten by rattlesnakes ; 

 the wound is cured among the Potawatomis by poultices of 

 the Seneca snake-root, draughts of violet tea, and Eupato- 

 riutn perfoliatum ; they have other remedies, which they 

 keep secret; the venom of the snake is considered greater 

 at some periods of the moon than at others ; in the month of 

 August it is most so. These Indians entertain a high degree 

 of veneration for the rattlesnake, not that they consider it in 

 the light of a spirit, as has frequently but incorrectly been 

 asserted, but because they are grateful to it for the timely 

 warning which it has often given them, of tlie approach 

 of an enemy. They therefore seldom kill it, unless 

 when a young man fancies that he requires a rattle, in 

 which case he will have no hesitation in killing a snake ; 

 which act he, however, always accompanies by certain 

 forms. He introduces it by many apologies to the animal, 

 informing it that he wants the rattle as an ornament for his 

 person, and by no means to make fun of it, and in testi- 



