492 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
Of the Abyssinians, Bruce says: ‘Their hair is short and curled like 
that of a negro’s in the west part of Africa, but this is done by art not 
by nature, each man having a wooden stick with which he lays hold of 
the lock and twists it round like a screw till it curls in the form he de 
”1 Tn a foot note, he adds: “I apprehend this is the same instru- 
ment used by the ancients, and censured by the prophets, which in our 
translation is rendered crisping-pins.” 
Possibly the constant use of the scratch stick in countries without 
wood suggested that it should be carried in the hair, and hence it 
would originate the fashion of wearing the hair crimped round it, and 
after a while it would itself be used as a crimping-pin. 
Thus far, the suggestion of a religious or ceremonial idea attaching 
to the custom of scratching has not been apparent, unless we bear in 
mind that the warrior setting out on the warpath never neglects to sur- 
round himself with all the safeguards which the most potent incanta- 
tions and “medicine” of every kind can supply. But Herbert Spencer 
tells us in two places that the Creeks attach the idea of a ceremonial 
observance to the custom. He says that “‘the warriors have a ceremony 
of scratching each other as a sign of friendship;”? and again, ‘“scratch- 
ing is practiced among young warriors as a ceremony or token of friend- 
ship. When they have exchanged promises of inviolable attachment, 
they proceed to seratch each other before they part.”® 
Dr. J. Hampden Porter remarks that this ceremonial scratching may 
be a “survival” of the blood covenant, and that in earlier times the 
young warriors, instead of merely scratching each other’s arms, may 
have cut the flesh and exchanged the blood. The idea seems to be a 
very sensible one. 
Father Alegre describes a ceremonial scratching which may have 
been superseded by the scratch stick, to which the medicine-men of 
certain tribes subjected the young men before they set out on the war- 
path. Among the Pima and Opata the medicine-men drew from their 
quivers the claws of eagles, and with these gashed the young man along 
the arms from the shoulders to the wrists.* 
This last paragraph suggests so strongly certain of the practices at 
the sun dance of the tribes farther to the north that it may be well to 
compare it with the other allusions in this paper to that dance. 
It will be noticed that the use of the scratch-stick, at least among 
the tribes of America, seems to be confined to the male sex; but the 
information is supplied by Mr. Henshaw, of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
that the Indians of Santa Barbara, Cal., made their maidens at the 
sires. 
1 Travels to discover the source of the Nile in the years 1768, etc., Dublin, 1791, vol. 3, p. 410. 
2 Desc. Sociology. 
*Ibid., quoting Schoolcraft. 
4Saca de su carcax algunos pies y unas de dagnila secos y endurecidos, con los cuales, comienza 4 
sajarle desde los hombros hasta las mufecas.’—Historia de la Compania de Jesus en Nueva Espafa, 
Mexico, 1842, vol. 2, pp. 218, 219. 
