O^BRECHTs] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 79 



To give a dog water to drink with, which cartridges have been 

 rinsed, in order to make it a sure tracker, is another practice which 

 only too evidently" shows its pedigree. 



There are, moreover, some beliefs and practices of which it is not 

 possible to say whether they have been borrowed from Eiu-opean 

 folklore or whether they have originated independently. Such are 

 to my mind: 



The vomiting into the river. (See p. 63.) 



The use of spider web as a stj^ptic. 



The remarkable properties ascribed to such materia medica as 

 stump water (see p. 57) and lightning-struck wood (see p. 54). 



The saying with regard to a shooting star. (See p. 37.) It is to 

 be noted, however, that in European folldore it is beUeved that when 

 you see a star shooting you should formulate a wish, which will 

 surely be fulfdled. So the two beliefs are not really identical; but 

 one may easily have been transformed into the other after having 

 passed through the oral tradition of several generations. 



Not only is there this borrowing from the sources of European 

 folklore, there is also an unmistakable influence of white scientific 

 medical views, which, it is needless to say, are very ill digested and 

 pretty badly mutilated. 



A medicine man who had been dead some years, "Standing 

 Deer," had told Del. that i;~'4iayo*'DO° i;'msiVask9' (lit., "when they 

 cough in a dry way," the Cherokee equivalent of our tuberculosis) is 

 caused by swallowing dust, which becomes a big ball in our lungs. 

 This view is no doubt a residue of the lessons in hj^giene taught at 

 the Government school. At one time T. gave me a similar account. 

 When I asked him in a fitting way his views on the origin of disease 

 he told me he could hardly answer that question — it was too difficult 

 for him. He had heard that "some pretend that all disease is caused 

 by very fine dust, so fine you can hardly see it, flying around in the 

 room. It gets into our body and makes disease there, they say. 

 Maybe it's true; maybe it isn't." 



Some cases have come to my notice where these scientific medical 

 principles are not bluntly taken over, but are happily blended with 

 already existing aboriginal opinions. So, e. g., diseases that used to 

 be ascribed to neglect of ritual in Idlling game (asldng pardon, build- 

 ing a fire, etc.) are now often said to be caused by the hunter inhaling 

 "bad odors" of the animal while skinning and dressing it. Another 

 instance of this trend of ideas is the following, where it is easy to 

 see that such explanations of the disease as by "the food having been 

 changed" (see p. 33) has been active: 



"Maybe disease results from what we eat. Whenever I went up 

 north, to the white people's settlements, I did not like the food; I 

 754S°— 32 7 



