458 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 



the Apache there is no priest caste; the same man maybe priest, war 

 rior, etc. 1 



&quot;The juice of the Datura seed is employed by the Portuguese women 

 of (loa: they mix it, says Linschott, in the liquor drank by their hus 

 bands, who fall, for twenty-four hours at least, into a stupor accom 

 panied by continued laughing; but so deep is the sleep that nothing 

 passing before them affects them; and when they recover their senses, 

 they have no recollection of what has taken place.&quot; 2 



&quot; The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura Hunyuinea to bring 

 on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treas 

 ure. In Peru the priests who talked with the &quot;huaca&quot;or fetishes used 

 to throw themselves into an ecstatic condition by a narcotic drink called 

 &quot; tonca,&quot; made from the same plant.&quot; n 



The medicine-men of the Walapai, according to Ch. HT 1 i e S [ &amp;gt;e.u c.e.r r wb o 

 married one of their women and lived among them for years, were in 

 the habit of casting bullets in molds which contained a small piece of 

 paper. They would allow these bullets to be. fired at them, and of 

 course the missile would split in two parts and do no injury. Again, 

 they would roll a ball of sinew and attach one end to a small twig, 

 which was inserted between the teeth. They would then swallow the 

 ball of sinew, excepting the end thus attached to the teeth, and after 

 the heat and moisture of the stomach had softened and expanded the 

 sinew they would begin to draw it out yard after yard, saying to the 

 frightened squaws that they had no need of intestines and were going 

 to pull them all out. Others among the, Apache have claimed the 

 power to shoot off guns without touching the triggers or going near the 

 weapons; to be able to kill or otherwise harm their enemies at a dis 

 tance of 100 miles. In nearly every boast made there is some sort of a 

 saving clause, to the effect that no witchcraft must be made or the 

 spell will not work, no women should be near in a delicate state from 

 any cause, etc. 



Mickey Free has assured me that he has seen an Apache medicine 

 man light a pipe without doing anything but hold his hands up toward 

 the sun. This story is credible enough if we could aver that the medi 

 cine-man was supplied, as I suspect he was, with a burning glass. 



That the medicine-man has the faculty of transforming himself into a 

 coyote and other animals at pleasure and then resuming the human 

 form is as implicitly believed in by the American Indians as it was by 

 our own forefathers in Europe. This former prevalence of lyeanthropy 

 all over Europe can be indicated in no more forcible manner than by 

 stating that until the reign of Louis XIV, in France, the fact of being 

 a were- wolf was a crime upon which one could be arraigned before a 

 court; but with the discontinuance of the crime the were-wolves them- 



1 Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions, cap. V. 



2 Salvertc, Philosophy of Majjic, vol. 2, pp. 6-7. 



J Tylor Primitive ( Inltinv. I.omTon. 1K71, vol. 2, p. 377. 



