CHAPTER II. 



MEDICINE-MEN AND PKIESTS. 



589. A SATISFACTORY distinction between priests ar.d 

 medicine-men is difficult to find. Both are concerned with 

 supernatural agents, which in their original forms are ghosts ; 

 and their ways of dealing with these supernatural agents 

 are so variously mingled, that at the outset no clear classifi 

 cation can be made. 



Among the Patagonians the same men officiate in the 

 &quot; three-fold capacity of priests, magicians, and doctors ; &quot; 

 and among the North American Indians the functions of 

 &quot; sorcerer, prophet, physician, exerciser, priest, and rain- 

 doctor,&quot; are united. The Pe-i-men of Guiana &quot; act as con 

 jurors, soothsayers, physicians, judges, and priests.&quot; So, too, 

 Ellis says that in the Sandwich Islands the doctors are 

 generally priests and sorcerers. In other cases we find 

 separation beginning ; as witness the New Zealanders, who, in 

 addition to priests, had at least one in each tribe who was a 

 reputed sorcerer. And with advancing social organization 

 there habitually comes a permanent separation. 



In point of time the medicine-man takes precedence. 

 Pescribers of the degraded Euegians, speak only of wizards ; 

 and even of the relatively-advanced Mapuches on the adja 

 cent continent, we read that they have no priests, though 

 they have diviners and magicians. In Australian tribes the 

 only men concerned with the supernatural are the loyala- 

 men or doctors ; and the like is alleged by Bonwick of the 



