Olmechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 107 



The fine shades of meaning expressing doubt and even a tinge of 

 blasphemous irony, which many of these words convey when used in 

 this connection, are almost impossible to render in any but a very 

 free and colloquial translation, which would run somewhat like this: 

 "This has never been proved, but the old people, none of whom, by 

 the way, we have ever seen, are reputed to have believed it. Maybe 

 it isn't a joke, after all; anyway, what's the harm of trying it." 



Also from personal contacts I have received similar uupressions. 

 Once I asked a medicine man whether he was absolutely sure about 

 a particular subject I was discussing with liim, and which he ex- 

 plained according to current orthodox and traditional views; I also 

 asked him if he would accept another medicine man's views if they 

 happened to be diametrically opposed to his own opinions and to 

 tradition; he answered: "Yes, I would, if he could prove that he was 

 right." 



Good old Og. once confidentially told me that he had lost all con- 

 fidence in the divinatory powers of the "brown stone"; as often as 

 he had tried it he had been disappointed. He believed in other 

 modes of divination and practiced them, but for "brown stone" 

 divination he had no use at all. 



Some more facts that are related to those discussed in this para- 

 graph will be found on page 113. 



Attitude Toward White Culture 



Although as a rule the medicine man is strongly opposed to the 

 influence of white culture in his domain, and very hostile to the 

 wliite physician and his medicine box, this feeling is much less pro- 

 nounced in some localities than in others. The Indians living in the 

 neighborhood of the agency, who know by experience that the "white 

 medicine" is so much superior to theirs, are breaking loose from their 

 medicine men and their doctrines, and the medicine man feels that 

 he is fighting a desperate and hopeless battle. 



Some means he employs in this we would call hardly fair, but I 

 am convinced that the medicine men themselves are quite honest 

 about them, e. g., when they allege that white doctors willfully cause 

 disease (see p. 39) so as to always have clients. "You see," one of 

 them told me once, "your white doctors are out after money. We 

 will treat a sick man for weeks and weeks and cure him, even though 

 we know that he has nothing to pay us with. And if he recovers, we 

 are just as glad as if he had been a rich man and could have given us 

 yards and yards of cloth, and beads and money. But your doctors, 

 if they do not get money, they will not cure; and how can they get 

 money if the people do not become ill. So they make healthy people 

 ill on purpose, that they may cure them and get rich." 



What is there to be answered to such sound dialectics? 



