BOURKE. ] THE MAKING OF THE MEDICINE-MAN. 457 
by lightning. The whole tribe participated in the singing, drumming, 
and dancing incident to so important an event, but no white men were 
allowed to be present. My information was derived from the dead 
man’s young nephew, while I was among that tribe. 
Among the Arawak of South America there are hereditary conjurers 
who profess to find out the enemy who by the agency of an evil spirit 
has killed the deceased.! 
Picart says of the medicine-men of the tribes along Rio de la Plata: 
“ Pour étre Prétre ou Médecin parmi eux, il faut avoir jeiné longtems 
& souvent. Il faut avoir combatu plusieurs fois contre les bétes Sau- 
vages, principalement contre les Tigres, & tout au moins en avoir été 
mordu ou égratigné. Apres cela on peut obtenir Ordre, de Prétrise; 
ear le Tigre est chez eux un animal presque divin.” ? 
The medicine-men of the Apache are not confined to one gens or clan, 
as among the Shawnee and Cherokee, according to Brinton,* neither 
do they believe, as the Cherokee do, according to the same authority, 
that the seventh son is a natural-born prophet with the gift of healing 
by touch, but upon this latter point I must be disereet, as I have never 
known an Apache seventh son. 
The Cherokee still preserve the custom of consecrating a family of 
their tribe to the priesthood, as the family of Levi was consecrated 
among the Jews.* 
The neophytes of the isthmus of Darien were boys from ten to twelve 
years “selected for the natural inclination or the peculiar aptitude 
and intelligence which they displayed for the service.” ° 
Peter Martyr says of the Chiribchis of South America: “ Out of the 
multitude of children they chuse some of 10 or 12 yeeres old, whom they 
know by conjecture to be naturally inclined to that service.” ® 
The peculiarity of the Moxos was that they thought none designated 
for the office of medicine-man but such as had escaped from the claws 
of the South American tiger which, indeed, it issaid they worshiped as 
agod.? 
Contrary to what Spencer says, the chiefs of the tribes of the South- 
west, at least, are not ipso facto medicine-men; but among the Tonto 
Apache the brother of the head chief, Cha-ut-lip-un, was the great medi- 
cine-man, and generally the medicine-men are related closely to the 
prominent chiefs, which would seem to imply either a formal deputation 
of priestly functions from the chiefs to relatives, or what may be prac- 
tically the same thing, the exercise of family influence to bring about 
a recognition of the necromantic powers of some aspirant; but among 
1 Spencer, Desc. Sociology. 
2 Picart, Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses, Amsterdam, 1735, vol. 6, p. 122. 
3 Myths of the New World, p. 281. 
4Domenech, Deserts, vol. 2, p. 392. 
5 Bancroft, Nat. Races, vol, 1, p. 777. 
°Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. 5, p. 462. 
7 Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 281. 
