226 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 34 



such lived in 1898 in one of the Middle Mesa villages. These men 

 are believed to be endowed with special power of determining and 

 finding the objective cause of a disease by touch or b}" inspection, and 

 their treatment culminates in finding and destroying tliis object." 



Another class of healers among the Hopi are the fire priests, who 

 pretend to be masters of fire and capable of performing many won- 

 derful feats. These are known as yayawimkias. They treat inflam- 

 mation of the skin and afl^ections accompanied by fever or burning. 

 Their theory is that burning sensations of the body and inflamma- 

 tory cutaneous aflfections are due to magic of fire and can be over- 

 come by the use of fire or its products. Their methods, though in 

 appearance somewhat different from those of the pocliwivikias, are 

 really of the same character. 



A representative of a third class of healers among the Hopi is the 

 chief priestess of a society known as marauwimhias.'' She is sup- 

 posed to have the power of curing such affections as convulsions, 

 twitching, jerking, and other contortions. In her treatment she uses 

 a wooden image, the body of which somewhat resembles a tapering 

 screw. This figure she moves in a horizontal plane over the head of 

 the aflflicted. The above-mentioned afl'ections are supposed to be due 

 to a twisted heart, which the figure has the power to restore to its 

 normal condition. Certain healers, according to Fewkes, use a treat- 

 ment by constriction. The body is loose, according to their idea, 

 and must be tied together. Under this treatment a man is tied by a 

 rope wound so tightly about trunk, legs, and arms that he can not 

 move. The head men of the principal Hopi societies are believed 

 to possess curative powers of special kinds in a higher degree than 

 the other members. Thus, the head of the Snake society is a reputed 

 healer of snake bites and the bites of other noxious creatures. At 

 Oraibi, at the time of the writer's visit, there lived a medicine-man 

 who had a reputation as an accoucheur, and was said to be the only 

 one in the tribe having this qualification. His treatment consisted 

 principally of prayers, songs, and devices like those of other medicine- 

 men, partly of the use of herbs and other things, and partly of mechan- 

 ical manipulation, the latter consisting chiefly of manual pressure 

 upon the fundus of the uterus. There are old women among the Hopi 

 villages who serve as mid wives, and any adult woman or man of 

 the family might sometimes aid a woman in labor, yet the services 

 of the above medicine-man were regarded as the most efficacious. 

 No material agent is sought by the medicine-men among the Hopi 

 in ailments attributed to the violation of a tabu, as the unwarranted 

 touch of some sacred ceremonial object. 



"See J. W. Fewkes, A Few Summer Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblo, Journal of American Eth- 

 nology and Archseologi/, Boston and New York, 1892, n, 157. 

 6 Compare Fewkes, Minor Hopi Festivals, American Anthropologist, n. s., i\, July-Sept., 1902. 



