300 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
The cacique sits in the place which would be occupied by the patient 
if it were an individual curing ceremony. Masewi and Oyoyewi sit 
on either side of him. The people of the pueblo crowd into the room 
for the ceremony. 
The ceremony opens with songs, invoking the spirits of the animal 
supernaturals to come in and invest their respective images. Med- 
icine is mixed in the waicti, water being poured in for the six direc- 
tions: there is much sprinkling of altar, doctors, and paraphernalia 
with medicine water and meal. After these preliminaries, the doctors, 
one or two at a time, come out from behind the altar where they have 
been sitting singing, and go over and “‘cure’’ the cacique: they suck 
various objects out of his body and toss them into a pottery bowl.*” 
Then the doctors go about among the people gathered there and 
“cure” them. After the curing, the doctors look into the waicti ‘‘to 
see if they can see any witches’ about. If they do (and frequently 
do) a number of the doctors arm themselves with their bear paws, 
bear-claw necklaces, reed whistles, and flint knives and go out and 
fight with them. Sometimes they capture a witch and bring him 
back into the chamber where they shoot him with an arrow, as is 
done at San Felipe and Santo Domingo (White, 1932 b, p. 48; 
1935, p. 126). 
37 The cacique “stands for’ the pueblo. Perhaps the idea here Is that by “‘ curing’’ the cacique the pueblo 
is cured. 
