480 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 



had fallen beneath his own tomahawk. The bones had been freed from 

 thertesh by boiling, and, being placed upon a string, were used for play 

 ing some kind of Indian game. 1 



Strabo recounts in his third book that the Lusitanians sacrificed 

 prisoners and cut off their right hands to consecrate them to their gods. 



Dulaure says that the Germans attached the heads and the right 

 hands of their human victims to sacred trees. 2 



Adoni-bezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings of 

 Syria, :l 



The necklace of human fingers is not a particle more horrible than the 

 ornaments of human bones to be seen in the cemetery of the Capuchins 

 in Koine at the present day. I have personally known of two or three 

 cases where American Indians cut their enemies limb from limb. The 

 idea upon which the practice is based seems to be the analogue of the 

 old English custom of sentencing a criminal to be -hanged, drawn, 

 and quartered.&quot; 



Brand gives a detailed description of the &quot;hand of glory,&quot; the pos 

 session of which was believed by the peasantry of Great Britain and 

 France to enable a man to enter a house invisible to the occupants. It 

 was made of the hand of an executed (hanged) murderer, carefully des 

 iccated and prepared with a great amount of superstitious mummery. 

 With this holding a candle of &quot; the fat of a hanged man &quot; burglars felt 

 perfectly secure while engaged in their predatory work. 4 The belief was 

 that a candle placed in a dead man s hand will not be seen by any but 

 those by whom it is used. Such a candle introduced into a house kept 

 those who were asleep from awakening. 



The superstition in regard to the &quot;hand of glory&quot; was widely diffused 

 throughout France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain. As late as 

 the year 1831 it was used by Irish burglars in the county Meath. 



Dr. Frank Baker delivered before the Anthropological Society of 

 Washington, D. U., a lecture upon these superstitions as related to the 

 &quot; hand of glory,&quot; to which the student is respectfully referred. 5 



An Aztec warrior always tried to procure the middle finger of the left 

 hand of a woman who had died in childbirth. This he fastened to 

 his shield as a talisman. 6 The great weapon of the Aztec witches was 

 the left arm of a woman who had died in her first childbirth. 7 Pliny 

 mentions still-born infants cut up limb by limb for the most abomina 

 ble practices, not only by wid wives, but by harlots even as well!&quot;&quot; 



1 Kelly, Narrative of Captivity, Cincinnati, 1871, p. 143. 

 12 Dirl ereiis Cultes, vol. 1, p. 57. 

 Judges, 1, &quot; 



