No^TS]^' ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE GROUPS KUPFERER 267 



Cherokee make among the alternatives they have for coping with 

 illness, I can place the informants into three categories: those who 

 rely on Indian "doctors," usually in combination with some modern 

 medicine; those who rely almost exclusively on the Public Health 

 staff; and those who rely on private medical care to the exclusion of 

 other services. 



CATEGORY 1. PATIENTS OF INDIAN "dOCTORS" 



Indians who continue to rely on Indian doctors are the Conserva- 

 tives, but they seldom do so to the complete exclusion of modern 

 medicine. There are, however, some of the older Conservatives who 

 attempt to confine their choice of therapy to the native "practitioner." 

 These old Indians believe that the hospital is a place where people 

 die. One aged woman said firmly, "I'd never go to the hospital; I'd 

 never go to anybody but an Indian doctor. ... I want to die in 

 my own bed." An old man said he never went to the hospital. "I 

 want to live a long time, and get better." He said his wife did not 

 go to the hospital, either. "She just slip over and die in the night. 

 . . . Next morning she dead. Lot of people die that way; never do 

 get sick." 



When these older Conservatives do go to the hospital, it is at the 

 insistence of another member of the family. An elderly woman — a 

 "doctor" herself — was taken under protest to the hospital after a fall. 

 "She didn't want to go," her daughter said, "but they slipped a 

 blanket under her, and carried her to the hospital . . . the nurse 

 rubbed something on her back . . . she didn't like it." If they 

 have been under the care of an Indian doctor, and are forced to seek 

 modern medical aid, they attempt to explain the native healer's 

 failure to alleviate the condition. "Uncle Jimmie nearly gave up on 

 him but not quite. ... I think maybe we waited too long to do 

 something about it. We knew he was hurting, but he wouldn't teU 

 us how long he'd been like that." Others suspect that some native 

 doctors have "spoiled themselves" by not observing prescribed rituals 

 after the death of a patient. 



Admittedly, those people who actively resist modern medical aid 

 are few. The most common practice is that of employing a combi- 

 nation of the two forms of treatment. Occasionally this combination 

 occurs simultaneously, or nearly so. For example, one family has a 

 daughter who, according to an official diagnosis, is emotionally dis- 

 turbed. She suffers from the delusion that someone is "knocking her 

 down." Through arrangements made by a caseworker, her parents 

 take her to Asheville for psychiatric counseling. At the same time, 

 however, she is being treated locally by an Indian doctor from Bird- 

 town. Others who have been discharged from the hospital by an 



