504 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
met by a small party of the Indians, one of whom chalked a cross on 
the breast of each, with a yellow earth, which he carried in a satchel at 
his belt. Previous to doing so he muttered some words very solemnly 
with his hands nplifted and eyes thrown upwards. Again, on arriving 
at the camp of the people, the chief and others in greeting them took 
a similar vow, touching thereafter the yellow chalked cross. Sonora 
may have furnished them with some of their notions of a Deity.”! 
“The yellow earth,” seen by Dr. Smart was, undoubtedly, hoddentin, 
earried in a medicine bag at the belt of a medicine-man. Some years 
ago I went out with Al. Seiber and a small party of Apache to examine 
three of their ‘‘sacred caves” in the Sierra Pinal and Sierra Ancha. No 
better opportunity could have been presented for noting what they did. 
The very last thing at night they intoned a “medicine” song, and at early 
dawn they were up to throw a pinch of hoddentin to the east. 
Moses and John, two of the Apache mentioned above, requested per- 
mission to go off in the mountains after deer and bear, supposed to be 
plentiful in the higher altitudes. Before leaving camp, Moses blew a 
pinch of hoddentin toward the sun, repeating his prayer for success, 
and ending it with a sharp, snappy ‘‘ek,” as if to call attention. In 
one of the sacred caves visited on this trip, the Apache medicine-men 
assembled for the purpose of holding their snake dance. This I have 
never seen among the Apache, but that they celebrate it and that it is 
fully the equal of the repulsive rite which I have witnessed and noted 
among the Tusayan? I am fully assured. I may make reference to some 
of its features in the chapter upon animal worship and ophie rites. 
From a multiplicity of statements, the following are taken: Concep- 
cion had seen the snake dance over on the Carrizo, near Camp Apache; 
the medicine-men threw hoddentin upon the snakes. He said: “After 
getting through with the snake, the medicine-man suffered it to glide 
off, covered with the hoddentin, thrown by admiring devotees.” 
Mike Burns had no remembrance of seeing hoddentin thrown to the 
sun. He had seen it thrown to the snake, “in a kind of worship.” 
Nott and Antonio stated that “when they find that a snake has 
wriggled across the trail, especially the trail to be followed by a war 
party, they throw hoddentin upon the trail.” Nott took a pinch of 
hoddentin, showed how to throw it upon the snake, and repeated the 
prayer, which I recorded. 
Corbusier instances a remedy in use among the Tonto Apache. This 
consisted in applying a rattlesnake to the head or other part suffering 
from pain. He continues : “After a time the medicine-man rested the 
snake on the ground again, and, still retaining his hold of it with his 
right hand, put a pinch of yellow pollen into its mouth with his left, 
and rubbed some along its belly.’ 
1Smart, in Smithsonian Report for 1867, p. 419. 
2Snake Dance of Moquis of Arizona, New York, 1884. 
3In the third volume of Kingsborough, on plate 17 (Aztec picture belonging to M. Pejernavy, Pesth, 
Hungary), an Aztec, probably a priest, is shown offering food to a snake, which eats it out of his hand. 
