380 THE YOKUTS. 
pine sugar, hold them before the fire until it is melted, then lay them gently 
on the abdomen of the parturient. The sweat-house everywhere prevails, 
of course, but it is smaller among these southern out-door people than it is 
farther north, being never used for a council-house or a dance-house. 
The rain-maker, or wizard, though very potent, can be put to death 
by vote of a council, in case a patient dies under his treatment. Occasion- 
ally the manner of his taking-off is still more tragic. 'The Mono, being 
unsophisticated mountaineers, originally had no professional wizards, and 
in 1864 a Yokuts, named Sacate, went up from the plains to them, and 
for a time prosecuted an extremely lucrative practice. But he finally lost 
a case, and thereupon the simple and sincere Mono, being unable to com- 
prehend how a man whose function was to save life could lose it and be 
guiltless, crushed in his skull with a stone. ay 
These wizards sometimes chew the seeds of the jimson-weed (Datura 
meteloides) to induce delirium, which their dupes regard as the touch of an 
unseen power, and their crazy ravings as divinely-inspired oracles. It is 
related that an ambitious wizard once chewed too much seed and yielded 
up the ghost. 
An old Indian, named Chu-chu’-ka, relates that many years ago there 
was a terrible plague which raged on both sides of the Fresno, destroying 
thousands of lives. According to his account it was a black-tongue disease. 
Abundant evidences of his truthfulness have been discovered in the shape 
of bones. A man named Holt was digging a ditch on Ray’s ranch, near 
Sand Creek, and found such an immense number of bones about eighteen 
inches under the surface that, after digging three hundred yards, he was 
forced to abandon the undertaking. On Hildreth’s ranch, near Pool-of- 
Water, a large box of human bones was collected in making a garden. 
It is the custom of the wizards to hold every spring the rattlesnake 
dance (ta-tw'-lo-wis), which is a source of great profit to the cunning rogues. 
They plant green boughs in a circle, inclosing a space fifty or sixty yards 
in diameter, wherein the performances are held, as are most of the Yokuts’ 
dances. The great audience is congregated in the middle, while the wiz- 
ards dance around the circle, next to the arboreal wall. Besmeared with 
numerous and fantastic streaks of paint, and gorgeously topped with feath- 
