220 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



The views dimly adumbrated suggest that all bath- 

 ing, medicinal or purificatory, is due to the original fear 

 of and belief in the living nature of water, and that the 

 reputation of all old baths or bathing, now held to be 

 curative, was originally due to magic, is strongly sup- 

 ported by certain facts I observed while in British 

 Columbia. Although there are comparatively few Indians 

 nowadays in the dry belt about Kamloops, those 

 of the Thompson Indians who still exist retain many 

 or most of the beliefs of their ancestors. I was 

 acquainted with few of them, but while working some 

 miles from Kamloops I discovered among the brush when 

 I went fishing some edifices looking like teepees or little 

 wigwams by the side of the stream. They were con- 

 structed of sticks running up to a point at the top, teepee 

 shape, and were big enough to contain a man sitting 

 in a crouching position. Just under him a hollow was 

 scraped. On inquiry an Indian woman told me that 

 they were Indian sweat-houses or, as they are other- 

 wise named, keekwillie holes, usually contracted by 

 whites into kegly, which by itself means " low." She 

 told me that as far as she was aware they were used for 

 medicinal purposes, and I have no doubt that in this 

 she was correct but, as I have discovered since, and 

 some of the evidence is to be found in The Golden Bough, 

 they were not originally constructed for any such pur- 

 pose. The way they were used was this. A man or 

 woman got inside them in a crouching position. Water 

 was poured into the hole above which the patient sat, 

 a rug or buffalo robe was draped over the entrance, 

 while the squaws outside heated stones in a fire, and 

 when they were red-hot rolled them into the water. 

 That a like bath in certain cases of arthritis, or so- 



