SECRET SOCIETY—MEDICAL PRACTICE. 141 
A secret society exists among the Tatu something similar to that 
described in the Pomo chapter, the members of which, in conversation with 
their white acquaintances, make no secret of the fact that it is designed 
simply to keep the women in due subjection. To accomplish this highly 
laudable purpose they profess to be able to hold communication with the 
devil. The Pdm Pomo also do this in the secrecy of the lodge, but the 
Tatu go further; they boldly usher him forth into the outer world, and 
reveal his corporeal presence to the terrified squaws. In the private lodge 
occupied by the society, which is the assembly-hall, they prepare one of 
their number to personate that terrific being. First, they strip him naked, 
and paint his body with alternate stripes of red and black, spirally, from 
head to foot. Then they place on his head a chaplet of green leaves, and 
in his hand a sprig of poison-oak. With the leaves of the chaplet drooping 
over his face to prevent the squaws from recognizing him, all naked and 
hideously painted as he is, he rushes forth with pranks, and lively capers, 
and dreadful whoops, while the assembly-hall he has. just left resounds 
with diabolical yells. Dipping his wisp of poison-oak in water he sprinkles 
it upon the faces of the squaws as he gambols and pirouettes around them, 
whereat they scream with uncontrollable terror, fall prostrate upon the 
earth, and hide their faces. 
Probably the water from the poison-oak blisters their faces slightly, 
and as these things are commonly done in the evening when they cannot 
perceive the poison-oak, the victimized squaws are confirmed in their belief 
of his satanic attributes. They are forbidden to discuss the matter among 
themselves, for if one ever sees a spook and mentions it he dies! It is won- 
derful that these thin tricks can be maintained for years and centuries per- 
haps, unchanged until they are worn down threadbare, and still continue 
to work out terror and fainting of heart to the women as before. Yet the 
savages are not Pyrrhonists, and these simple souls least of all. 
Many varieties of medical practice are in vogue. For instance, Tep, 
a great shamin of the Tatu, will sit for hours beside a patient, chanting in 
that interminable, monotonous way of the Indians, and beating his knee 
with a bunch of rabbit-bladders filled with pebbles, ending finally with a 
