22 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 336 



threshold of one of the proudest achievements of civilization, that 

 of a phonetic alphabet. 



Instead of living in an unorganized state, where each man was a 

 law unto himself in all things, the Indians lived under organized 

 forms of government, rude enough indeed when compared with the 

 highly organized system of civilized nations, but marking an essen- 

 tial advance on the conditions attained by savage peoples in other 

 parts of the world. The chieftaincy was transmitted by well- 

 understood laws, or, as in some tribes, was more purely elective. 

 Their social system was very ingenious and complex, and, being 

 based largely upon kinship ties, was singularly well fitted for 

 the state to which they had attained, of which indeed it was simply 

 an expression and outgrowth. In many sections a considerable 

 advance had been made in political confederation, and neighboring 

 tribes combined for defence and to wage war against a common 

 enemy. They had invented many and singularly efficient laws to 

 repress and punish lawlessness against the individual and the social 

 body, and as a consequence they enjoyed almost entire immunity 

 from theft and many other crimes. 



The development of religious ideas among our Indians is a curi- 

 ous and instructive study. Though the Great Spirit and the Happy 

 Hunting Ground which missionaries and theologians thought they 

 had discovered among them are now known to have had no exist- 

 ence, the Indians had by no means reached the state of culture in 

 which they were found without developing religions. Their gods 

 or fetiches were innumerable, their priests endowed with immense 

 influence, and their ceremonies of devotion and propitiation were 

 as devout as they were elaborate. The precision of the beliefs of 

 many tribes and the elaborateness of their rituals are simply as- 

 tonishing. Thus their advance in the domain of religious thought 

 equalled, if it did not surpass, their progress in some other direc- 

 tions. 



If by medicine we mean the rational treatment of disease, the 

 Indian can be said to have learned only the rudiments of the heal- 

 ing art. Medicine, in so far as it was a distinct profession, was 

 almost wholly in the hands of the medicine-man or shaman, who 

 filled the twofold office of priest and doctor. Neither the theory 

 nor the practice of the shaman had in it any thing that was rational 

 and very little that was efficacious, except through the influence 

 exercised over the mind of the patient ; in other words, except so 

 far as the shaman was a faith-curer. Whatever that is marvellous in 

 the modern cases of faith-cure can be more than matched out of the 

 practice and experience of the shaman, who learned his trade 

 long before the European came to these shores. He who would 

 see the Indian shaman need not seek the wilds of the Far West. 

 He may find his counterpart on Pennsylvania Avenue. The whole 

 medical practice of the Indian shaman was based upon the idea 

 that all disease was the effect of evil disease-spirits that had ob- 

 tained lodgement in the body, or that it was caused by witchcraft ; 

 and, so long as practice was directed to the dislodgement of these 

 spirits, no rational treatment was possible. I am aware that the 

 above idea of Indian medicine is contrary to popular belief, which, 

 to some extent at least, is in harmony with the claims of alleged 

 Indian doctors of white extraction, who claim to have derived their 

 skill and their herbs directly from the hands of Indian experts. 

 Recent and carefully conducted investigations on this subject, how- 

 ever, fully substantiate the above statements. Though roots and 

 herbs were employed in the treatment of nearly all diseases, they 

 were chiefly used as adjuncts to the charms and sorceries of the 

 medicine-man. Often they were not given to the patient at all, but 

 were taken by the medicine-man to heighten his power over the 

 disease-spirits. Often they were applied by being rubbed on the 

 body of the patient, or by being blown in the shape of smoke on 

 the afflicted part. 



Among the Indians was found flourishing to a remarkable de- 

 gree the so-called doctrine of seals or signatures. A few examples 

 of the doctrine derived from the eastern Cherokee by Mr. James 

 Mooney may prove of interest. Doubtless you are all familiar with 

 the cone-flower. Thhe Cherokee call it deer-eye, and from its 

 fancied resemblance to the strong-sighted eye of the deer, and its 

 connection by name (for the Indian believes that there is a potent 

 connection between the name of a thing and the thing itself), it is 

 used as a wash for ailing eyes. 



The common purslane {Porttilaca oleracea) is used as a vermi- 

 fuge, because the red stalk looks like a worm. 



An infusion of the roots of the hoary pea ( Tephrosia vz'rgz'm'- 

 ana), called devil's shoe-strings in the South because of their 

 toughness, is used by the Cherokee ball-players as a wash to 

 strengthen their bodies, and by the women as a hair-wash to 

 strengthen it and keep it from falling. 



Who of you has ever walked in our woods without getting on 

 his clothing the common beggar's lice {Desmodiuni) ? How tena- 

 ciously they stick, you all know : so do the Cherokee ; and because 

 the burrs stick fast, they use a tea made of them to strengthen the 

 memory. The Cherokee at least can dispense with the service o£ 

 a Loisette. 



You whose ambition it is to be good singers have only to drink a 

 tea of crickets, according to the Cherokee, for does not the cricket 

 possess a fine voice, and doth he not sing merrily .'' 



The tendency of the human mind to speculate and to draw infer- 

 ences — a tendency common alike to the savage and the civilized 

 man — cannot be held in check forever, however strong the bonds ; 

 and just as knowledge and science escaped from priestly thrall within 

 the history of civilized times, so a certain small amount of knowl- 

 edge of the therapeutical use of drugs was gaining ground among 

 the common folk of the Indians. It was fairly to be called old 

 woman's practice, as it was largely in their hands. It grew out of 

 observation. Infusions of certain herbs produced certain results, 

 acted as emetics or purgatives, and hence these herbs came to be 

 employed with something like an intelligent purpose. Many of the 

 herbs used were absolutely inert ; many were harmful, of course, 

 since where there is practically no true diagnosis and no correct 

 knowledge of the effect of drugs there can be no really intelligent 

 selection of remedies ; but in the case of certain simple diseases, 

 herbs, the actual cautery, and, above all, the sweating process, were 

 beginning to be recognized by the common folk as serviceable, and 

 to be employed to some extent without recourse to the shaman. 



As the child must creep ere it can walk, in such theories and 

 treatment, childish though they may seem, may be discerned the 

 beginnings of the noble science of medicine, which, having largely 

 cast aside the superstitions that hampered its infant steps, now 

 walks erect ; and, although of late she seems to have revived the 

 beliefs of her childhood, her handmaiden, science, bids her call the 

 demon disease-spirits ignorance and vicious habits ;. the diseases 

 themselves, bacilli or germs. The Indian believed that the white 

 man carried the spirit of small-pox in bottles, and let it loose among 

 them. Modern science actually does bottle the small-pox germs, 

 and germinate them at will. So the Indian theory of disease re- 

 appears in a new form. 



Such in briefest outline are some of the achievements of the In- 

 dian as he was found by civilized man. Whatever value may be 

 placed upon them, whatever rank may be assigned them in the 

 scale of human efforts, they were at least his own ; and some of 

 them compare favorably with the record of our Aryan ancestors 

 before they split up into the numerous nations which have done so 

 much to civilize the world. Many, I am aware, hold that the In- 

 dian had progressed as far towards civilizatioir as his capacities 

 admitted. Others have held, and possibly some now hold, that he 

 was already on the decline : they see in his crude ideas and rude 

 inventions only the degradation of a higher estate ; in other words, 

 instead of a savage preparing to enter civilization through the ne- 

 cessary halfway state of barbarism, he is held a half-civilized man 

 lapsing into savagery. Such views, it is needless to say, find no 

 favor in the mind of the evolutionist. To him the achievements of 

 the Indian are only the mile-stones which have marked the progress 

 of every civilized nation, in its march from what it was to what it 

 is ; to him the chief value and significance of his studies of the men- 

 tal state of the Indian, as expressed in his mythology, his medicine, 

 his social and political organization, or in his more concrete arts, is 

 the fact that in them he reads the records of his own past. If 

 there be any truth whatever in the theory of evolution as applied to 

 human progress, only one inference can be drawn from the history- 

 of the Indian race as it appears in historical pages, and in the no 

 less eloquent records interpreted by archsologists. This inference 

 is, that, starting in its career later than some other races, or being, 

 less favored by circumstances or conditions of environment, or pos- 



