114 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99 



his cure to him, Jo.'s reaction is primarily, if not wholly, one of 

 fiendish glee at the fact that he has humiliated a competing medicine 

 man; the humane satisfaction of having rid a sulTerer of his pain, 

 which is never absent with any of the other medicine men, has no 

 part in Jo.'s feelings. 



Is it necessary to say which one, of all Cherokee practitioners, is 

 most cordially hated by Jo.? And who most fiercely returns the 

 compliment? W., of course. Both of them councillors and ardent 

 with political ambition and passion, neither of them honest as a 

 practitioner nor as a man; both of them too well educated to be good 

 Cherokee, and neither of them educated enough to know what to 

 take and what to leave of white culture, they often meet on the road 

 to the same objective, and always as competitors. I personally 

 know that drama has come near to bringing a tragic solution to their 

 jealousy. 



But all in that motley body of Cherokee medicine men is not 

 dramatic; besides its sinister and gloomy personages, it has its 

 Rabelais: Meet Jud. (married, no children, 63 years old, pi. 10, a), 

 a most captivating and anuising personality. 



To begin with, and to be quite honest, Jud. is no medicine man 

 at all; he merely longs, languishes, dies to be one; I am sure that if 

 only he could obtain that ardently craved honor by paying for it 

 with 10 years of his life — if he has so nuich to his credit, poor old 

 friend — he would gladly do so. If Jud. only knew, even if his corn- 

 peel's make sport and fun of his efforts to capture the first principles 

 of practical therapeutics at the age of 60, that I, his adopted son, 

 discuss him this day along with the past masters of the science, 

 how proud he would be, and what a tremendous joke he would con- 

 sider it to be. 



Although I am satisfied I can show why Jud. can never be a good 

 medicine man, I must admit my utter inability to explain why he 

 wants to be one. He himself does not know, and considered it a very 

 stupid question when I asked him. *'\Miy, aren't there many 

 people who are medicine men? And look at the old people; aren't 

 they nearly all medicine men? Why shouldn't I become one?'* 

 And then, bethmldng himself, "he was suft'ering so much from 

 Di^ngle^'ski (rheumatism); he needed treatment practically every 

 day; could he aff'ord the time and the money®- to have a medicine 

 man come to his house every morning to scratch him with a briar 

 and to mumble a formula which he could learn to recite just as well?" 

 And, finally, with a roguish twinkle in his eye that suddenly and com- 

 pletely seemed to metamorphize him into a lad of 18: "Moreover, if 

 I want love medicine, do you expect me to go and ask one of those 

 guys for it?" 



^ Jud. is very well off, as local standards go. 



