DOBsti'l MYSTERIOUS MKN AND WOMEN. 495 



§ liOl. The wakiiu meu claim that they are invulnerable. To prove 

 this they assemble at stated intervals, having painted themselves in 

 various styles. Each one has a flute suspe.uded over the chest by a 

 necklace. They wear long breechcloths, and march in single tile. Two 

 men armed with bows and arrows rush suddenly towards tlie waken men 

 and shoot at them; but instead of wounding them they merely bend 

 the arrows ! Sometimes the meu tire guns at them, but the bullets fall 

 to the ground, and when they are examined they are flattened ! No 

 visible mark of a wound can be found on the bodies of these wakan 

 men, though when they were hit by the bullet or arrow bl lod pours 

 from their mouths. After they wash off the paint from their bodies 

 their flesh becomes tender and is vulnerable. This is the excuse urged 

 when an ordinary person succeeds in wounding a wakan man. It is 

 supposed that the wakan men rub themselves with some kind of medi- 

 cine known only to themselves, making them invulnerable, and that 

 perliai)S thi^ bullets or arrows are rubbed with the medicine prior to the 

 shooting. It is also supposed that the playing of the flute aids in 

 rendering them invulnerable. (See § 306, etc.) 



§ 292. Bushotter names two kinds of Dakota doctors — the Mato 

 waj)iya, or Grizzly Bear doctor, who is very wakan, and the Pezuta 

 wapiya, or Pezuta wi6asa, the doctor who prescribes roots. The person 

 who practices medicine claims to have had interviews with the spirits, 

 but he never reveals what the spirits have told him, though he says that 

 immediately after the revelation made him by the spirit he begins to 

 act according to its du-ections. And in some cases of sickness this 

 doctor takes the flesh of the patient into his mouth and makes a suck- 

 ing sound while inhaling, and from the i^atient's side he pretends to 

 remove something. When he has made the sucking sound after taking 

 the flesh into his mouth, or when he has taken blood or something else 

 from the side of the j)atient, he spits it from his mouth. Then he sees 

 the patient's mother, whom he tells what is the cause of the disease, 

 and whether the patient will recover or die. Such doctors pretend to 

 have within themselves one of the following : A small red hawk, a com- 

 mon woodpecker, a real buft'alo, a rattlesnake, or a grizzly bear. And 

 when one of these doctors kicks on the ground there is heard some- 

 thing within him, singing in a beautiful voice; and so the people be- 

 lieve what the doctors say about diseases. 



§ 293. When the doctor has sucked the patient's flesh a long time 

 without removing anything, he asks a favor of the mysterious being 

 dwelling within himself, and then that being cries out often, and the 

 doctor succeeds in his efforts. It is by the aid of these mysterious 

 beings that the doctors are enabled to practice medicine. In the olden 

 time one of the doctors was very mysterious. Once, when he was 

 practicing, a bowl of water was set down before him. He vomited into 

 the bowl and a water-snake appeared in it. But when the doctor opened 

 his mouth again the snake glided gently into it and disappeared down 



