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152 THE POMO. 
tribes in the West, however much they encourage the younger men in ball- - 
playing, do not lend their countenance to games of hazard. This is not 
true of the California Indians, for here old and young engage with infat- 
uation and recklessness in all games where betting is involved, though, 
of course, the very decrepit cannot personally participate in the rude hustle 
of ball-playing. The aged and middle-aged; squaws, men, and half-grown 
children stake on this, as well as on true games of hazard, all they possess— 
clothing, baskets, beads, fancy bows and arrows, ete. 
There is another fashion of gambling, with little sticks or bones rolled 
in pellets of grass, which is universal throughout Northern California ; but 
as I had an excellent opportunity of observing a great game of it elsewhere 
among the Pomo it will be described there. 
Among the upper tribes, especially on the Klamath, many women are 
honored as shamins and prophetesses; but here none at all are admitted 
to the medical profession. It is only the masculine sex who receive a “call”; 
there are none but braves whom “the spirit moves”, for it is thus that the 
elect are assured of their divine mission to undertake the healing of men. 
The methods of practice vary with the varying hour, every physician 
being governed in his therapeutics by the inspiration of the spirit of the 
moment; and if he fails in effecting a cure, the obloquy of the failure 
recurs upon his familiar spirit. For instance, a shamin will stretch his 
patient out by a fire, and walk patiently all the livelong day around the fire, 
chanting to exorcise the demon that is in him. Thus the modi operandi are 
as numerous as the whimseys of this mysterious medical spirit. Besides 
these, they have in their pharmacopceia divers roots, poultices, and decoc- 
tions, and often scarify their breasts with flint. When the patient delays 
dying, if he is old and burdensome he is generally carried forth and cast into 
the forest to die alone and unattended ; but the mere removal from the loath- 
some smudge and stench of the lodge, and the exposure to the clean, sweet 
air of heaven sometimes bring him round, and he returns smiling to his 
friends who are nowise pleased. 
Formerly all the dead were disposed of by incremation, but in later 
times under the influence of the white men a mixed custom prevails. An 
intelligent Indian told me that, in case of burial, the corpse was always 
