Vol. XXV. No. 12. j 
POPULAR SCIEIirCE NEWS. 
accorded as much credibility as iii the past days 
of Indian supremacy in the land. It is not sur- 
prising when we look at their past, which to 
many of them is very little changed from their 
present, that the roots of their prejudices and 
premonitions should be sunk down deep into their 
inner consciousness and remain there. The 
Indian now to a great extent, as in the past, is 
surrounded by the omnipotent forces of nature, is 
prey to adverse circumstances which he con- 
stantly meets in his struggle for existence, and 
his belief in the arts of sorcery, witchcraft, and 
divination may seem childish to a race superior in 
scientific attainments ; but it is to him the power 
of groping into the relationship of the phenomena 
which surround him and adjusting them to him- 
self and his needs. Awe and mystery encompass 
him on every side ; there is an illimitable antago- 
nism surrounding his life and destiny, held by 
laws which he has no means of controlling. 
Danger lies concealed on every side, and only by 
brutal, stolid stoicism can he preserve any com- 
posure in the face of the malevolent forces to be 
met with in poisonous serpents, noxious insects, 
wild beasts, treacherous neighbors, starvation, 
fevers, agues, storms and many strange distresses, 
the terribleness of whose action he is powerless to 
avert. He must, therefore, be ever observant to 
try to avoid those evils which threaten his exist- 
ence. His folk-lore is the embodiment of that 
wisdom which he, by observation, has been able 
to gather and transmit from generation to genera- 
tion, and many sayings are doubtless to be traced 
to the law of coincidences to account for their 
origin, for instance : 
"If a dog from Seguoyah or Going-snake sleep 
with a child sick of a fever or with small-pox, the 
dog will die and the child will live." [A similar 
superstition is common among the "uneducated 
white people in this section. — Ed.] 
"If a horse neigh in front of a cabin, it is a 
sign of disaster."' 
" If a person when eating drop a portion of his 
food to the ground, his father and mother are 
hungry." Should the parents be not among the 
living, there is scarcity in the land of the happy 
hunting grounds, and a harmless dove is caught, 
slain and burned to feed the unhappy spirits. 
" A crowing hen brings bad luck, i. e. no game, 
starvation and death." 
"A sow carrying husks indicates foul weather." 
" Pigs standing still and pointing are sniffing 
the wind ; therefore go to the lodge and prepare 
for a blizzard." 
"If the spider spin her webs at night, there is 
to be a drouth ; therefore migrate to some great 
river." 
"It the angle worms bore deep down into the 
ground, there is to be a severe winter." 
"If the wild bees (whose hives in the hollow of 
some dead tree or in the hollows of the cliff's are 
well known) kill oiTsome of their numbers, there 
will be scarcity in food and starvation to the 
game and cattle." 
" If a dog howl to the moon, the Great Spirit is 
displeased; sacrifice and fasting follow." 
" It is cold weather that breeds a fighting brave." 
"The Great Spirit turns his back when a 
squaw child is born ; so the cold is more intense 
in winter and the springs dry up in summer." 
•'The Great Spirit rolls pumpkins into his 
cabin, when there is reverberating thunder." 
Red ochre put on in dabs on the high cheek 
bones is supposed to drive away the evil spirit. 
" To find a serpent asleep hung across a branch 
of a tree is a sign that the enemy will be de- 
stroyed." 
If heat blisters come on baby's skin, it is be- 
witched. This evil is brought on by a scorpion ; 
either from running over the body, or from the 
poison of its spittle. 
"If a squaw drop her blanket from her shoul- 
ders on her wedding day, her husband will for- 
sake her." 
There is a region given over to gross supersti- 
tion, where there is no data to be discovered to 
link the imaginary phenomena with any observ- 
ance of natural law ; where absurd impossibilities 
are believed; where witchcraft reigns and gro- 
tesque animals are bred; where invisible vermin 
bewitch children ; where roaring dragons go tear- 
ing up and down the land, and fiery scorpions run 
along inside the spinal column to gnaw at and 
consume the patient. The origin of this thought 
may have its foundation in pathological condi- 
tions. The Indians are peculiarly liable to neural- 
gic, pleuritic and rheumatic diseases. An Indian 
medicine man cauterized a squaw from the nape 
of the neck to the lower end of the spinal column 
with a hot iron to destroy the scorpion which was 
giving her such excruciating pain. The cure was 
instantaneous and complete. Whether she ever 
suffered from other attacks of the disease or not, 
she did not complain more. 
An old superstition is that if a maiden hangs 
her lariat or her pony's bridle on a peg and it 
falls to the ground, her future husband is waiting 
and lurking for her in the forest. In the twilight 
she takes a browned roasting ear or bit of jerked 
venison and goes forth to seek him. 
"If a woman allows her dinner to scorch or 
burn, it is a sign that she is jealous of her hus- 
band, and he is preparing to desert her for 
another." l"he rationale of this saying is not far 
to seek. In the savage state the tepe or lodge 
belongs to the squaw, and she does all the work 
about the habitation and beautifies it to induce her 
brave to bring the trophies of the chase to her, 
and to share her home with her ; so if she be care- 
less he will desert her for another more careful 
housewife and enticing companion. The sayings 
which relate to children are intended to correct 
selfishness. " If an older brother or sister is jeal- 
ous of the newly born babe, it dies and a big, 
black bird carries it off to eat, and when it be- 
comes again ravenous, comes back for other 
souls." 
There are many superstitions connected with 
death. Many of the possessions of the deceased 
are buried with him. If it rain on the day of the 
funeral it is thought to bring good luck to the 
deceased; for the body is still the individual, 
not the machine in which the soul was lodged. 
Ceremonies practiced during sickness are similar 
to those once performed by the medicine man. 
Rattling bullets in powder horns, blowing pollen 
procured from certain plants upon the body of 
the patient, beating solemn, monotonous dirges 
on the tom-tom to low crooning "ha ha" in 
syllabic chanting. 
*In the year 1865 a half-breed, Ellas Boudinot, 
presented the cause of the rebellious Indians who 
had been engaged in the civil war, before the 
United States commissioners, pleading for clem- 
ency for those fighting on the Confederate side. 
.John Ross and a large number of his fellow 
Indians had deserted to the Union army after the 
battle of Pea Ridge, while General Stan Watie, 
the uncle of Boudinot, (Boudinofs name was 
Watie ; he had taken the name of his patron, Ellas 
Boudinot of Xew Jersey) and Boudinot had 
fought on the Southern side until the close of the 
*Southern Bivouac Journal, June, 1884. 
war. Boudinot denounced the party of which 
John Ross was the leader, and in his speech as- 
serted that the Indian was as barbarous as when 
he fought his enemies in by-gone ages, before the 
advent of the whites. No one was more horrified, 
he said, at the scalping which took place on the 
battle-field of Pea Ridge than he and General 
Stan Watie. He painted in vivid colors the 
cow ard, who after that battle ground was wrapped 
in the shadows of night, prowled over the bloody 
field to tear the reeking scalps from the wounded 
and the dead. He said the government seemed 
disposed to overlook this, inasmuch as the dis- 
gustingly savage act was committed by Cherokees. 
This speech of Boudinofs was made before the 
council held at Fort Smith, .where the United 
States commissioner, D. N. Cooley, General Har- 
ney, General Parker, and others were present ; and, 
although Chief John Ross and his party were also 
present, no one denied the accusation, which was 
personal in the extreme, for Boudinot continued : 
"There is a man in my presence who is here as 
one of the trusted followers of the chief deserter 
and traitor, John Ross, who came back to 
Tophagnah after the battle, and boasted he had 
taken more scalps of the Yankees than anybody 
else, and he showed the bloody trophies dangling 
at his girdle." 
The religious instinct is by no means deficient 
in the Indian. He acknowledges the supreme 
power of a Great Spirit. The common salutation 
of the Cherokee upon meeting an acquaintance is 
0-see-you ! meaning Blessed ; then he inquires, 
Toy-heet-you? — How are you? 
Some of their superstitions for charming lovers 
and managing their families are too gross for 
publication, but investigation shows that their ad- 
vance in the arts of, and thoughts pertaining to 
civilization are as yet but a veneering of the 
ancient savagery. 
[Special Correspondence of Populab Science News.] 
PARIS LETTER. 
Mimicry is certainly one of the numerous sub- 
jects which most secure the attention of the gen- 
eral public of some culture in natural history, and 
one which working naturalists are more apt than 
some years ago to notice. No person in any de- 
gree accustomed to take notice of animals and 
plants has failed to observe cases of mimicry, 
whether on the seashore, in the forest, or on the 
prairie; and with the advance of observation we 
see, in fact, that protective coloration and mim- 
icry are most abundant in Nature. One recent 
case has been quoted by a French botanist, Pro- 
fessor Heckel, of Marseilles. It concerns a spe- 
cies of spider, Thomisus onusttis, which is fre- 
quently met with in France, whore it commonly 
— at least in the south of France — lives in the 
common Convolvulus arvensis, being very partial 
to two diptera, Nomiodes minutissimtcs and Meli- 
threptus origani, which are frequent visitors to this 
flower. Professor Heckel has noticed that Con- 
volvuhis is met under three slightly differently 
colored varieties : one is quite white ; the second 
is pink, of a light tint, with some parts of deeper 
color ; the third is also of a light pink, with some 
green on the external side. These three vaiieties 
are quite connnon, and live side by side. Now 
the curious fact is that each of these three forms 
affords lodgings to three corresponding varieties 
of Thomisus onnstus. In the white flowers is 
found a variety which Is white with a little blue 
cross on the back. In the flowers which are 
greenish externally we find a Thomisus which is 
also greenish, with some pink, and this form lives 
