oiBKECHTs] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 89 



Having a knowledge of myths and stories in a primitive community 

 implies being conversant with tribal history, legendary and fictional 

 as well as actual and real, and some of the medicine men have even 

 incorporated short historical notes in their daybooks containing their 

 formulas. 



As far as aboriginal religion is concerned, again we find the medicine 

 men — often exercising the profession of priest at the same time as 

 that of disease curer — remaining true to beliefs and traditions which 

 the community at large is gradually losing, or exchanging against a 

 slight and superficial veneer of Baptist or Methodist Christianity. 



But not only do the medicine men excel in the higher intellectual, 

 idealistic pursuits, such as those above named, but also as far as 

 material culture is concerned they usually rate a good deal higher than 

 even an intelligent layman. Nobody knows so much about fish 

 traps and the way to build them and the wood to be used by preference ; 

 none knows more about the best periods for hunting different kinds of 

 game, or all the artifices used to decoy them; nor can anybody make 

 rattles, or wooden masks, or feather wands better than they can. 



All this knowledge, however, is far from codified. I have often 

 made a point of it to tiy and find out in how far it was systematized, 

 or as we would call it, rationally ordered in their minds. This has 

 always brought very disappointing though interesting results. 



Such a medicine man who was universally acknowledged as being 

 the one "who knew most," as Og. was, when asked to write down all 

 the different diseases he knew, and when given five days to think it 

 over, managed to find only 38 more or less different ones. 



Another one, when asked to enumerate them offhand, could not 

 get past a dozen, this in spite of the fact that both of them must have 

 known upward of a hundred, since a compilation made by me from 

 oral information obtained from several individuals, and gleaned from 

 three manuscripts, the Ay., Ms. II, and Ms. Ill, revealed that some 

 230 different ^^ diseases were known. 



The same remarks hold for their botanical knowledge, and could 

 even be made to apply to their knowledge of religion and mythology. 

 One prominent medicine m.an, and at the same time the most promi- 

 nent priest, T., was very anxious toward the end of my stay to act as 

 informant, but was withheld by the fear that he would not be able to 

 tell me anything of interest, as "he did not know much." When I 

 had managed to convince him that anything he told me would be 

 interesting, he came and stayed a week, telling me about fifty stories, 

 and giving me very valuable information on sundry subjects. 



Continuing an experiment along the same lines with another medi- 

 cine man, this time with reference to the religion, afterlife, the spirits 

 he invoked in the formulas, I could not get him by this method to tell 



63 "Different" from a Cherokee point of view. 



