CHAPTER II. 



HODDENTIN, THE POLLEN OF THE TULE, THE SACRIFICIAL 

 POWDER OF THE APACHE; WITH REMARKS UPON SACRED 

 POWDERS AND BREAD OFFERINGS IN GENERAL. 



&quot;Trifles not infrequently lead to important results. In every walk of 

 science a trifle disregarded by incurious thousands has repaid the 

 inquisitiveness of a single observer with unhoped-for knowledge.&quot; 1 



The taciturnity of the Apache in regard to all that concerns their 

 religious ideas is a very marked feature of their character; probably no 

 tribe with which our people have come in contact has succeeded more 

 thoroughly in preserving from profane inquiry a complete knowledge 

 of matters relating to their beliefs and ceremonials. How much of this 

 ignorance is to be attributed to interpreters upon whom reliance has 

 necessarily been placed, and how much to the indisposition of the 

 Apache to reveal anything concerning himself, it would be fruitless to 

 inquire, but, iu my own experience, when I first went among them in 

 New Mexico and Arizona twenty-three years ago, I was foolish enough 

 to depend greatly upon the Mexican captives who had lived among 

 the Apache since boyhood, and who might be supposed to know exactly 

 what explanation to give of every ceremony in which the Apache might 

 engage. Nearly every one of these captives, or escaped captives, had 

 married among the Apache, and had raised families of half-breed 

 children, and several of them had become more Apache than the Apache 

 themselves. Yet I was time and again assured by several of these in 

 terpreters that the Apache had no religion, and even after I had made 

 some progress in my investigations, at every turn I was met by the 

 most contradictory statements, due to the interpreter s desire to inject 

 his own views and not to give a frank exposition of those submitted by 

 the Apache. Thus, an Apache god would be transmuted into either a 

 &quot;santo&quot; or a &quot;diablo, according to the personal bias of the Mexican 

 who happened to be assisting me. &quot; Assanutlije assumed the disguise 

 of &quot; Maria Santissima,&quot; while ceremonies especially sacred and benefi 

 cent in the eyes of the savages were stigmatized as &quot;brujeria&quot; and 

 &quot; hechiceria (witchcraft) in open defiance of the fact that the Apache 

 have as much horror and dread of witches as the more enlightened of 

 their brethren who in past ages suffered from their machinations iu 



Deann, Serpent Worship, London. 1R33. p. 410. 



