BOURKE. ] THE MAKING OF THE MEDICINE-MAN. 455 
The Oregon tribes have spirit doctors and medicine doctors.! 
The Chinese historians relate that the shamans of the Huns possessed 
the power “to bring down snow, hail, rain, and wind.” ? 
In all nations in the infancy of growth, social or mental, the power 
to coax from reluctant clouds the fructifying rain has been regarded 
with highest approval and will always be found confided to the most 
important hierophants or devolving upon some of the most prominent 
deities; almighty Jove was a deified rain-maker or cloud-compeller. 
Rain-makers flourished in Europe down to the time of Charlemagne, 
who prohibited these *‘tempestiarii” from plying their trade. 
One of the first requests made of Vaca and his comrades py the 
people living in fixed habitations near the Rio Grande was ‘to tell the 
sky to rain,” and also to pray for it.® 
The prophet Samuel has been alluded to as a rain-maker.* 
There does not seem to have been any inheritance of priestly fune- 
tions among the Apache or any setting apart of a particular clan or family 
for the priestly duties. 
Francis Parkman is quoted as describing a certain family among the 
Miami who were reserved for the sacred ritualistic cannibalism perpe- 
trated by that tribe upon captives taken in war. Such families devoted 
more or less completely to sacred uses are to be noted among the 
Hebrews (in the line of Levi) and others; but they do not occur in the 
tribes of the Southwest. 
One of the ceremonies connected with the initiation, as with every 
exercise of spiritual functions by the medicine-man, is the “ ta-a-chi,” 
or sweat-bath, in which, if he be physically able, the patient must par- 
ticipate. 
The Apache do not, to my knowledge, indulge in any poisonous in- 
toxicants during their medicine ceremonies; but in this they differ to 
a perceptible degree from other tribes of America. The “ black 
drink” of the Creeks and the “ wisoccan” of the Virginians may be 
cited as cases in point; and the Walapai of Arizona, the near neighbors 
of the Apache, make use of the juice, or a decoction of the leaves, roots, 
and flowers of the Datura stramonium to induce frenzy and exhilara- 
tion. The laurel grows wild on all the mountain tops of Sonora and 
Arizona, and the Apache credit it with the power of setting men crazy, 
but they deny that they have ever made use of it in their medicine or 
religion. Picart® speaks of the drink (wisoecan) which took away the 
brains of the young men undergoing initiation as medicine-men among 
the tribes of Virginia, but he does not say what this ‘“‘ wisoccan” was. 
In Guiana, ® the candidate for the office of medicine-man must, among 
‘Ross, Fur Hunters, quoted by Spencer, Desc. Soc. 
?Max Miiller, Science of Religion, p. 88. 
3 Davis, Spanish Conq. of N. M., p. 98. 
4T Samuel, x, 17, 18. 
5 Cérémonies et Coutumes, vol. 6, p. 75. 
* Everard im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, London, 1883, p. 334. 
