HRDLicKA] PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MEDICAL OBSERVATIONS 227 



In addition to having professional medicino-men and society liealers, 

 the Ziiiii have also a few medicine-women.'* As among the Hopi and 

 other Pueblos the whole subject of medicine-men and healing is very 

 complex in this tribe. In searching for the cause of sickness the medi- 

 cine-men employ crystals. The treatment includes prayers, songs, 

 rubbing or kneading, and other physical means, and numerous vege- 

 tal remedies. 



The Pima, althougli not averse to medical treatment from the 

 whites, have still a number of medicine-men of their own. Accord- 

 ing to Chief Antonio Azul, medicine-men become such through the 

 inspiration of peculiar dreams, in which they are transported by spirits 

 or deities to a mountain and there shown remedies and taught how 

 to use them, as well as what and how to sing in treating the ill. By 

 virtue of this s])iritiuil instruction the man proclaims himself a medi- 

 cine-man, but before he is allowed to ''practise" he must demon- 

 strate his ability to the satisfaction of the tribe by successively 

 removing from patients injurious objects supposed to be the cause 

 of their illnesses. Among the Pima a medicine-man is supposed to be 

 endowed with power to cure only a certain class of diseases and "has 

 no songs for others." Eacli variety of ailment must be treated with 

 special and appropriate songs and invocations. 



The Pima medicine-man also occasionally uses the feathers of an 

 eagle or an owl, which he wets with saliva and rubs over the affected 

 part or pretends to introduce into it. He also pretends to draw out 

 the material cause of the sickness by sucking, and occasionally pre- 

 scribes some vegetal decoction either for internal or for external 

 application. Some Pima medicine-men claim to have power to com- 

 municate with the dead. Usually they say that for this purpose 

 they must visit the graveyard where the person is buried, but recently 

 one has introduced an innovation, saying that for calling the dead 

 person it suffices to take a little earth from his grave; the ghost, 

 desiring to know what is to be done with the earth, follows, and can 

 be spoken with wherever the medicine-man wishes.'' 



Notwithstanding the influence of missionaries for a long period, and 

 their ministrations in time of sickness, there are still to be found 

 among the San Xavier Papago native medicine-men who treat disease 



a For details see Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, The Zuni Indians, Tiuenty-third Annual Report of Bureau 

 of American Ethnology. 



b A medicine-man still living at the Casa Blanca group of villages resorted to the following subter- 

 fuge: A man among the Pima became very sick. He had lost his wife some time before, and the 

 medicine-man who was called to treat him said that he would summon the dead wife aiid ask her whether 

 she was not trying to take her husband to her and whether this was not the cause of his sickness. The 

 medicine-man. who was suspected of trickery by some young men and secretly followed, set up in the 

 bushes an object that resembled a crouching woman, which he addressed in his natural voice and 

 answered in a somewhat weaker tone. Before starting he suspected that he might l)e watched and 

 warned one of the young men not to follow him, as the uninitiated could not bear the presence of the 

 dead. The young men who witnessed the fraud were afraid to confront the medicine-man on the spot, 

 but on returning to the village related the affair to others. 



