264 BELIEFS AND USAGES OF CHICKASAW [ETH. ANN. 44 
that sort to the North American gourds; and in that bent posture of body they 
run two or three times round the sick person, contrary to the course of the sun, 
invoking God as already exprest. Then they invoke the raven, and mimic his 
ecroaking voice. ... They also place a basin of cold water with some pebbles in 
it on the ground near the patient ; then they invoke the fish, because of its cool 
element, to cool the heat of the fever. Again, they invoke the eagle (Oodle) ; 
they solicit him, as he soars in the heavens, to bring down refreshing things for 
their sick and not to delay them, as he can dart down upon the wing quick as 
a flash of lightning. They are so tedious on this subject that it would be a task 
to repeat it; however, it may be needful to observe that they chuse the eagle 
because of its supposed communicative virtues; and that it is according to its 
Indian name, a cherubimical emblem, and the king of birds, of prodigious 
strength, swiftness of wing, majestic stature, and loving its young ones so 
tenderly as to carry them on its back and teach them to fly.” 
Adair furnishes us with some further information on medical treat- 
ment showing a mixture of the practical and the superstitious in 
methods of approach. It was natural that the former should pre- 
dominate in disturbances of such obvious origination as wounds. 
Adair thus describes the procedure : 
The Indians .. . build a small hut at a considerable distance from the houses 
of the village for every one of their warriors wounded in war and confine them 
there ... for the space of four moons, including that moon in which they 
were wounded, as in the case of their women after travail; and they keep 
them strictly separate, lest the impurity of the one should prevent the cure 
of the other. The reputed prophet, or divine physician, daily pays them a due 
attendance, always invoking Yo He Wah to bless the means they apply on the 
sad occasion, which is chiefly mountain allum and medicinal herbs, always 
injoyning a very abstemious life, prohibiting them women and salt in particu- 
lar during the time of the cure, or sanctifying the reputed sinners. Like the 
Israelites, they firmly believe that safety or wounds, ete., immediately proceed 
from the pleased or angry deity for their virtuous or vicious conduct in obsery- 
ing or violating the divine law. 
In this long space of purification each patient is allowed only a superannuated 
woman to attend him, who is past the temptations of sinning with men, lest 
the introduction of a young one should either seduce him to folly ; or she, having 
committed it with others—or by not observing her appointed time of living 
apart from the rest, might thereby defile the place and totally prevent the cure. 
But what is yet more surprising in their physical, or rather theological regi- 
men, is that the physician is so religiously cautious of not admitting polluted 
persons to visit any of his patients, lest the defilement should retard the cure 
or spoil the warriors, that before he introduces any man, even any of their 
priests, who are married according to the law, he obliges him to assert either by 
a double affirmative or by two negatives that he has not known even his own 
wife in the space of the last natural day.” 
The native method of treating bites of venomous serpents also 
attracted his attention. 
I do not remember to have seen or heard of an Indian dying by the bite of a 
snake when out at war or a hunting, although they are often bitten by the most 
dangerous shakes; everyone carr’es in his shot pouch a piece of the best snake- 
26 Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 173-174. * Tbid., pp. 124-125. 
