466 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
This confession, granting that it really existed, could well be com- 
pared to the warpath secret, which imposed upon all the warriors 
engaged the duty of making a clean breast of all delinquencies and 
secured them immunity from punishment for the same, even if they had 
been offenses against some of the other warriors present. 
The Sioux and others had a custom of ‘striking the post” in their 
dances, especially the sun dance, and there was then an obligation upon 
the striker to tell the truth. Iwas told that the medicine-men were wont 
to strike with a club the stalagmites in the sacred caves of the Apache, 
but what else they did I was not able to ascertain. 
Under the title of “hoddentin” will be found the statement made by 
one of the Apache as to the means employed to secure the presence 
of a medicine-man at the bedside of the sick. I give it for what it is 
worth, merely stating that Kohl, in his Kitchi-Gami, if 1 remember cor- 
rectly, refers to something of the same kind where the medicine-man is 
represented as being obliged to respond to every summons made unless 
he can catch the messenger within a given distance and kick him. 
There is very little discrepancy of statement as to what would hap- 
pen to a medicine-man in case of failure to cure; but many conflicting 
stories have been in circulation as to the number of patients he would 
be allowed to kill before incurring risk of punishment. My own con- 
clusions are that there is no truth whatever in the numbers alleged, 
either three or seven, but that a medicine-man would be in danger, 
under certain circumstances, if he let only one patient die on his hands. 
These circumstances would be the verdict of the spirit doctors that he 
was culpably negligent or ignorant. He could evade death at the hands 
of the patient’s kinsfolk only by flight or by demonstrating that a witch 
had been at the bottom of the mischief.’ 
Medicine-men, called “wizards” by Falkner, sometimes were killed 
by the Patagonians, when unsuccessful in their treatment, and were 
also obliged to wear women’s clothing. They were selected in youth 
for supposed qualifications, especially if epileptic. 
In Hispaniola we are told that when a man died his friends resorted 
to necromancy to learn whether he had died through the neglect of the 
attending medicine-man to observe the prescribed fasts. If they found 
the medicine-man guilty, they killed him and broke all his bones. In 
spite of this the medicine-man often returned to life and had to be 
killed again, and mutilated by castration and otherwise.* 
Herrera repeats the story about a patient who died and whose rela- 
tives felt dissatisfied with the medicine-man: 
Para saber si la muerte fue por su culpa, tomaban el ¢umo de cierta Ierva, i cor- 
taban las vnas del muerto, i los cabellos de encima de la frente, i los hacian polvos, 
1 For identical notions among the Arawaks of Guiana, Tupis of Brazil, Creeks, Patagonians, Kaflirs, 
Chiquitos, and others, see the works of Schooleraft, Herbert Spencer, Schultze, and others. 
2? Extract from the Jesuit Falkner’s account of Patagonia, in Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, 
London, 1839, vol. 2, p. 163. 
3 Nul de ces médevins ne peut mourirsi'ls ne lui enlevent les testicules."’ Brasseur de Bourbourg, 
Trans. of Fra Roman Pane, Des Antiquités des Indiens, Paris, 1864, p. 451. 
