BOURKE. ] MEDICINE CORDS. 553 
from him or from his friends, can help the crops, and cure the sick. If 
the circle attached to one of these cords (see Fig. 436) is placed 
upon the head it will at once relieve any ache, while the cross attached 
to another (see Fig. 439) prevents the wearer from going astray, no 
matter where he may be; in other words, it has some connection with 
cross-trails and the four cardinal points to which the Apache pay the 
strictest attention. The Apache assured me that these cords were not 
mnemonic and that the beads, feathers, knots, etc., attached to them 
were not for the purpose of recalling to mind some duty to be performed 
or prayer to be recited. 
Fig. 438.—Two-strand medicine cord (Apache). 
I was at first inclined to associate these cords with the quipus of the 
Peruvians, and also with the wampum of the aborigines of the Atlantic 
coast, and investigation only confirms this first suspicion. It is true 
that both the wampum and the quipu seem to have advanced from 
their primitive position as ‘‘medicine” and attained, ethnologically 
speaking, the higher plane of a medium for facilitating exchange or dis- 
seminating information, and for that reason their incorporation in this 
chapter might be objected to by the hypereritical; buta careful perusal 
