CEA REDE Re do: 
HODDENTIN, THE POLLEN OF THE TULE, THE SACRIFICIAL 
POWDER OF THE APACHE; WITH REMARKS UPON SACRED 
POWDERS AND BREAD OFFERINGS IN GENERAL. 
“Trifles not infrequently lead to important results. In every walk of 
science a trifle disregarded by incurious thousands has repaid the 
inquisitiveness of a single observer with unhoped-for knowledge.” ! 
The taciturnity of the Apache in regard to all that concerns their 
religious ideas is a very marked feature of their character; probably no 
tribe with which our people have come in contact has succeeded more 
thoroughly in preserving from profane inquiry a complete knowledge 
of matters relating to their beliefs and ceremonials. How much of this 
ignorance is to be attributed to interpreters upon whom reliance has 
necessarily been placed, and how much to the indisposition of the 
Apache to reveal anything concerning himself, it would be fruitless to 
inquire, but, in my own experience, when I first went among them in 
New Mexico and Arizona twenty-three years ago, I was foolish enough 
to depend greatly upon the Mexican captives who had lived among 
the Apache since boyhood, and who might be supposed to know exactly 
what explanation to give of every ceremony in which the Apache might 
engage. Nearly every one of these captives, or escaped captives, had 
married among the Apache, and had raised families of half-breed 
children, and several of them had become more Apache than the Apache 
themselves. Yet I was time and again assured by several of these in- 
terpreters that the Apache had no religion, and even after I had made 
some progress in my investigations, at every turn Lwas met by the 
most contradictory statements, due to the interpreter’s desire to inject. 
his own views and not to give a frank exposition of those submitted by 
the Apache. Thus, an Apache god would be transmuted into either a 
“santo” or a * diablo,” according to the personal bias of the Mexican 
who happened to be assisting me. ‘“ Assanutlije” assumed the disguise 
of “‘ Maria Santissima,” while ceremonies especially sacred and benefi- 
cent in the eyes of the savages were stigmatized as “ brujeria” and 
‘“hechiceria ” (witchcraft) in open defiance of the fact that the Apache 
have as much horror and dread of witches as the more enlightened of 
their brethren who in past ages suffered from their machinations in 
1Deane, Serpent Worship, London, 1833, p. 410. 
