156 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99 



Nowadays the medicine man does not always rely on his memory 

 when reciting the longer forrtiulas; he often reads the text from his 

 ragged notebook or from the crumpled sheets of paper on which he 

 has it jotted down. 



How THE Formulas are Considered by the Laity and by the 



Medicine Men 



The layman holds the formulas of any land in a sort of timorous 

 respect and apprehensive awe. They are most powerfid means indeed 

 in the hands of those who know how to use them, but one who is not 

 an expert had better leave them alone, for you never know what 

 might happen. 



To the medicine men the formulas are the means by which men 

 are indirectly made powerful wizards; indirectly, i. e., through endow- 

 ing them with the faculty to solicit or to command the services of 

 those mighty wizards, the Spirits. 



We must beUeve without flinching or wavering, we must have a 

 staunch confidence in this power of the formulas. For the wizards 

 we call on "know our mind," and if they find our conviction faltering 

 they will not heed us, nor the words we speak. 



A formula is sure to bring about the desired result, if only we are 

 careful not to make any mistake in our choice. We may be so igno- 

 rant as to think that a patient is suffering from a disease caused by 

 the fish, and we will consequently call on the fishing hawk to come 

 and combat the fish. But maybe the ailment is not caused by the 

 fish at all; possibly ghosts are responsible for it, or animal ghosts, or 

 the birds, or the sun. It is obvious, the medicine men argue, that 

 in this case no relief would follow, as we have appealed to a curing 

 agent (the fishing hawk) who is absolutely powerless in this emergency. 



We must also be careful not to omit a word, not a syllable, of the 

 formula recited. It does not matter if there are words we do not 

 understand (words, e. g., belonging to the ritual language (see p. 160) 

 or words which, through erroneous copying, have been contaminated) ; 

 the spirits we talk to understand them, as these expressions have been 

 used in addressing them ''ever since the time of long ago, when the 

 old people lived." 



Merely reciting the formula is not sufficient if we want to obtain 

 success, though: we must also know ''what is to be used with it," 

 i. e., what simples are to be collected, how they have to be prepared, 

 how they should be administered, etc. ; and last but not least, we 

 should also know "how we have to work." It is not difficult to 

 recite a formula, but it is far from easy to know how to perform 

 all the accompanying rites, to be conversant with the voluminous 

 materia medica, and to be an expert at finding the simples and at 

 preparing them. All this only a medicine man knows. 



