Olbrechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 33 



the tribe. This also explains the exertions of witches against women 

 in labor and newly bom infants. (See p. 123.) 



Although witches are most strenuously active when death is 

 imminent, they are constantly on the lookout to cast a spell, a disease, 

 on an unsuspecting individual, and particularly to aggravate the 

 complaints of the stricken. This reputation they share with those 

 other human disease causers, the "man-killers." 



"Man-Killers" 



This knack which witches and "man-killers," Dt-'Da*ne^*saGt'*ski, 

 have to aggravate disease, explains the generic name given to com- 

 plaints for the origin of which these disease causers are held respon- 

 sible. These names can all be shown to be related with the stems 

 y-yakt*- "change," and ■yj-je'l- "Ukeness." (If a thing, a disease, 

 etc., is made to look like another, its original condition is changed.) 



Whereas the process by which a witch manages to "change the 

 condition" of a victim for the worse is rather obscure, and can not be 

 definitely elucidated, the means by which a "man-killer" attains 

 this object is well known and vividly described. He may, by his 

 occult power, "change the food" in the victim's stomach, or "cause 

 the food to sprout." He may "change our mind to a different con- 

 dition," or make a given disease we are afflicted with "as if it were 

 like" a more serious ailment. But above all, he may use the most 

 orthodox manner of disposing of an enemy, viz, by shooting an 

 invisible arrowhead into his body. In a forthcoming paper, in which 

 Cherokee incantations and man-killing ceremonies will be described, 

 this subject will be dealt with in detail. 



aye"ltGO''Gi DISEASES 



Under this name is known a group of diseases that are held to be 

 caused by the machinations of a human agent. They are the most 

 dreaded of the many complaints the Cherokee knows. 



The term, which is strictly ceremonial, can not be analyzed but 

 has -y-ye-1- "likeness" as its root. Mooney has usually translated 

 it as "simulators," and this translation is correct in so far as the term 

 refers to the action of deluding the vigilance of the patient and medi- 

 cine man by sending a disease which looks like another one which it 

 really is not. For example, the victim falls ill with indigestion; the 

 medicine man ascribed it, according to the current views, to the insects, 

 or to animal ghosts, or to some similar cause. But he is wrong. He 

 is led astray by the sorcerer who sent the disease, and who "made it 

 resemble some such ailment as found by the medicine man in his 

 diagnosis"; but the disease is of a totally different nature. 



Even now there are often cases where two parties are waging a 

 battle, often lasting weeks and months, pestering each other with 

 various aye'-ltGO'^ai-diseases. 



