BOURKE. ] MEDICINE CORDS. 555 
There are certain cords with medicine bags attached to be seen in the 
figures of medicine-men in the drawings of the sacred altars given by 
Matthews in his account of the Navajo medicine-men. 
Cushing also has noted the existence of such cords in Zuni, and there 
is no doubt that some at least of the so-called ‘fishing lines” found in 
the Rio Verde cliff dwellings in Arizona were used for the same pur- 
poses. 
Describing the tribes met on the Rio Colorado, in 1540-1541, Alarcon 
says: “Likewise on the brawne of their armes they weare a streit string, 
which they wind so often about that it becommeth as broad as one’s 
hand.”! It must be remembered that the Indians thought that Alarcon 
was a god, that they offered sacrifice to him, and that they wore all 
the ‘‘medicine” they possessed. 
In 1680, the Pueblos, under the leadership of Popé, of the pueblo of San 
Juan, were successful in their attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke. 
He made them believe that he was in league with the spirits, and ‘that 
they directed him to make a rope of the palm leaf and tie in it a number 
of knots to represent the number of days before the rebellion was to 
take place; that he must send this rope to all the Pueblos in the king- 
dom, when each should signify its approval of, and union with, the con- 
spiracy by untying one of the knots.”° 
I suspect that this may have been an izze-kloth. We know nothing 
about this rebellion excepting what has been derived through Spanish 
sources; the conquerors despised the natives, and, with a very few 
notable exceptions among the Franciscans, made no effort to study 
their peculiarities. The discontent of the natives was aggravated by 
this fact; they saw their idols pulled down, their ceremonial chambers 
closed, their dances prohibited, and numbers of their people tried and 
executed for witchcraft. Fray Geronimo de Zarate Salmeron was a 
striking example of the good to be effected by missionaries who are not 
above studying their people; he acquired a complete mastery of the 
language of the pueblo of Jemez, “and preached to the inhabitants in 
their native tongue.” He is represented as exercising great influence 
over the people of Jemez, Sia, Santa Ana, and Acoma. In this rebel- 
lion of 1680 the Pueblos expected to be joined by the Apache.‘ ‘ 
The izze-kloth of the Apache seems to have had its prototype in the 
sacred string of beans with which Tecumseh’s brother, the Shawnee 
prophet, traveled among the Indian tribes, inciting them to war. Every 
young warrior who agreed to go upon the warpath touched this “sacred 
string of beans” in token of his solemn pledge.° 
Tanner says in thenarrativeof hiscaptivity among the Ojibwa: ‘He 
[the medicine-man| then gave me a small hoop of wood to wear on my 
! Relation of the Voyage of Don Fernando Alarcon, in Hakluyt’s Voyages, vol. 3, p. 508. 
? Davis, Conquest of New Mexico, p. 288. 
3 Davis, ibid., pp. 280, 284, 285. 
4Tbid., pp. 277, 292. 
5 Catlin, North American Indians, London, 1845, vol. 2, p. 117. 
