f)82 MEDICINE-MEN OP THE APACHE. 



The, Mexicans were wont to cry out &quot;Here come our gods!&quot; upon 

 seeing their priests masked and disguised, and especially when they 

 had donned the skins of the women offered up in sacrifice. 1 



The headdresses worn by the gods of the American Indians and the 

 priests or medicine-men who served them were persistently called &quot;mi 

 ters&quot; by the early Spanish writers. Thus Quetzalcoatl wore &quot;en la 

 cabeea una Mitra de papel puntiaguda.&quot; 2 When Father Felician Lopez 

 went to preach to the Indians of Florida, in 1697, among other matters 

 of record is one to the effect that &quot;the chief medicine man called him 

 self bishop.&quot; 3 Possibly this title was assumed because the medicine 

 men wore &quot;miters.&quot; 



Duran goes farther than his fellows. In the headdress used at the 

 spirit dances he recognizes the tiara, lie says that the Mexican priests 

 at the feast of Tezcatlipoca wore &quot;en las cabezas tiaras hechas de ba 

 rillas. 7 1 The ghost dance headdress illustrated in this paper (Fig. 441) is 

 known to the ( hiricahua Apache as the &quot;ich-te,&quot; a contraction from 

 &quot; chas-a-i-wit-te,&quot; according to Ramon, the old medicine-man from whom 



FIG. 441. Ghost -(lance headdress. 



I obtained it. He explained all the symbolism connected with it. The 

 round piece of tin in the center is the sun; the irregular arch under 

 neath it is the rainbow. Stars and lightning are depicted on the side 

 slats and under them ; the parallelograms with serrated edges are 

 clouds; the pendant green sticks are rain drops; there are snakes and 

 snake heads on both horizontal and vertical slats, the heads in the 

 former case being representative of hail. 



There are feathers of the eagle to conciliate that powerful bird, tur 

 key feathers to appeal to the mountain spirits, and white gull feathers 

 for the spirits of the water. There are also small pieces of nacreous 

 shells and one or two fragments of the &quot; duklij,&quot; or chalchihuitl, with 

 out which no medicine-man would feel competent to discharge his func 

 tions. 



The spirit dance itself is called &quot;cha-ja-la.&quot; I have seen this dance a 

 number of times, but will confine my description to one seen at Fort 



1 This fact is stated by Torquemada, Mouarchia Indiana, lib. 10, cap. 33, and by Gomara, Hist, of the 

 Conq. of Mexico, p. 446; see also Diego Duran, lib. 1, cap. 20, p. 226. 



2 Herrera, dec. 3, lib. 2, p. 07. 



! John (iilmary Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 472. 

 Diego Duran, vol. 3, cap. 4, p. 217. 



