548 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
GALENA. 
At times one may find in the ‘‘ medicine” of the more prominent and 
influential of the chiefs and medicine-men of the Apache little sacks 
which, when opened, are found to contain pounded galena; this they 
tell me is a “‘ great medicine,” fully equal to hoddentin, but more diffi- 
cult to obtain. It is used precisely as hoddentin is used; that is, both 
as a face paint and as a powder to be thrown to the sun or other ele- 
ments to be propitiated. The Apache are reluctant to part with it, 
and from living Apache I have never obtained more than one small 
sack of it. 
No one seems to understand the reason for its employment. Mr. 
William M. Beebe has suggested that perhaps the fact that galena 
always crystallizes in cubes, and that it would thus seem to have a 
mysterious connection with the cardinal points to which all nomadic 
peoples pay great attention as being invested with the power of keep- 
ing wanderers from going astray, would not be without influence upon 
the minds of the medicine-men, who are quick to detect and to profit by 
all false analogies. The conjecture appears to me to be a most plausi- 
ble one, but I can submit it only as a conjecture, for no explanation of the 
kind was received from any of the Indians. All that I can say is that 
whenever procurable it was always used by the Apache on occasions 
of unusual importance and solemnity and presented as around disk 
painted in the center of the forehead. 
The significance of all these markings of the face among savage and 
half-civilized nations is a subject deserving of the most careful research ; 
like the sectarial marks of the Hindus, all, or nearly all, the marks 
made upon the faces of American Indians have a meaning beyond the 
ornamental or the grotesque. 
Galena was observed in use among the tribes seen by Cabeza de Vaca. 
“‘T]s nous donnérent beaucoup de bourses, contenant des sachets de mar- 
cassites et @antimoine en poudre.” (‘‘Taleguillas de margaxita y de 
alcohol molido.”)' This word ‘‘margaxita” means iron pyrites. The 
Encyclopedia Britannica says that the Peruvians used it for “amulets ;” 
so also did the Apache. What Vaca took for antimony was pounded 
galena no doubt. He was by this time in or near the Rocky Mountains.” 
On the northwest coast of America we read of the natives: “ One, 
however, as he came near, took out from his bosom some iron or lead- 
colored micaceous earth and drew marks with it across his cheeks in 
the shape of two pears, stuffed his nostrils with grass, and thrust thin 
pieces of bone through the cartilage of his nose.” * 
It is more than probable that some of the face-painting with ‘‘ black 
earth,” “ground charcoal,” etc., to which reference is made by the early 
writers, may have been galena, which substance makes a deep-black 
' Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., vol. 7, p. 220. 
? See also Davis, Conquest of New Mexico, p. 90. 
5 William Coxe, Russian Discoveries between Asiaand America, London, 1803, p. 57, quoting Steller. 
