BOURKE.] MEDICINE-WOMEN. 459 
ning. A tiny piece of this arrow or lance was broken off and ground into 
the finest powder, and then administered in water to women during time 
of gestation. I have found the same kind of arrows in use among the 
women of Laguna and other pueblos. This matter will receive more 
extended treatment in my coming monograph on ‘*Stone Worship.” 
Mendieta is authority for the statement that the Mexicans had both 
medicine-men and medicine-women. The former attended to the sick 
men and the latter to the sick women. “A las mujeres siempre las cura- 
ban otras mujeres, y 4 los hombres otros hombres.”' Some of the medi- 
cine-women seem to have made an illicit use of the knowledge they had 
acquired, in which case both the medicine-woman and the woman con- 
cerned were put to death. ‘La mujer prenada que tomaba con que 
abortar y echar la criatura, ella y la fisica que le habia dado con que 
la lanzase, ambas morian.”” 
Gomara asserts that they were to be found among the Indians of 
Chicora (South Carolina).* He calls them “viejas” (old women). 
“Los Medicos eran Mugeres Viejas, ino havia otras.”* In Nicaragua, 
“Las Viejas curaban los Enfermos.”° 
There were medicine-women in Goazacoalco: ‘‘Tienen Medicos para 
curar las enfermedades, i los mas eran Mugeres, grandes Herbolarias, 
que hacian todas las curas con Tervas.”° 
Bernal Diaz, in 1568, speaks of having, on a certain occasion, at the 
summit of a high mountain, found “an Indian woman, very fat, and 
having with her a dog of that species, which they breed in order to eat, 
and which do not bark. This Indian was a witch; she was in the aet 
of sacrificing the dog, which is a signal of hostility.”* 
“The office of medicine-man though generally usurped by males does 
not appertain to them exclusively, and at the time of our visit the one 
most extensively known was a black (or meztizo) woman, who had ac- 
quired the most unbounded influence by shrewdness, joined to a hid- 
eous personal appearance, and a certain mystery with which she was 
invested.”® Creeks have medicine-women as well as medicine-men. 
The Eskimo have medicine-men and medicine-women.2 The medicine- 
men and women of the Dakota “can cause ghosts to appear on ocea- 
sion.” !° 
Speaking of the Chippewa, Spencer says: “ Women may practice 
soothsaying, but the higher religious functions are performed only by 
men.” |! 
' Mendieta, Hist. Eclesidstica Indiana, p. 136. 
2 Thid., p. 136. 
3 Hist. de las Indias, p. 179. 
4 Herrera, dec. 2, lib. 10, p. 260. 
§ Tbhid., dec. 3, lib. 4, p. 121. 
® Thid., dec. 4, lib. 9, cap. 7, p. 188. 
? Keating's translation, p. 352, quoted by Samuel Farmar Jarvis, Religion of the Indien Tribes, in 
Coll. New York Historical Soc., vol. 3, 1819, p. 262. 
* Smith, Araucanians, pp. 238, 239. 
® Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, vol. 1, p. 366. 
10 Schultze, Fetichism, New York, 1885, p. 49. 
11 Spencer, Dese. Sociology. 
