THE INDIANS OP CAPE FLATTERY. 



•77 



are but three persons living in the tribe at present who have undertaken it. They 

 obtain notoriety by occasional good fortune in apparently performing remarkable 



Fig. 44. (No. 4120.) 



. Rattle used by medicine men. 



cures, and each is celebrated for some faculty peculiar to himself in removing disease. 

 Every sickness for which they cannot assign some obvious cause is supposed to be 

 the work of a " skoo-koom," or demon, who enters the mouth when drinking at 

 a brook, or pierces the skin while bathing in salt water. These evil spirits assume 

 the form of a little white worm which the doctor extracts by means of manipula- 

 tions, and the patient recovers. Although I have repeatedly seen them at work 

 on their patients, and pretending to take out these animals, I have never seen the 

 object itself, which, as they generally informed me, is only seen by the doctor. 

 In extracting these pretended evil spirits, he manipulates the part affected, fre- 

 quently washing the hands during the operation, and warming them at the fire. 

 This, he states, is to make the hands sensitive, so that on pressing them upon the 

 patient's body he can the more easily feel where the evil is located. Sometimes 

 he is an hour or two in finding the skoo-koom, particularly if the patient be a 

 chief, as then not only the doctor's fees will be larger, but there will probably 

 be a great company of friends assembled to sing and drum, and afterwards to feast. 

 When the doctor thinks that he has worked enough, he will then try to catch 

 the slwokoom and squeeze it out. If he succeeds, he blows through his hand 

 toward the roof of the lodge, and assures the patient that it has gone. An instance 

 occurred about Christmas time, 1864, of an old man who had been 'sick for two 

 or three years of lingering consumption. He had exerted himself very much at a 

 Dukwally performance, and by some violent strain had burst an abscess on his 

 lungs and was in a very critical condition. I. was sent for, and told he was dying, 

 and went immediately to his lodge, where I found him under the immediate 

 charge of an Indian doctor. By virtue of my position as dispenser of medicines 

 for the reservation, I was permitted to remain as a sort of consulting physician. I 

 was perfectly well aware of the circumstances attending the case, and that the 

 patient was dying, and simply took with me an anodyne to relieve the pain of his 

 last moments ; but as I could do nothing while the Indian doctor was at work, I 

 remained a spectator of the scene. The patient was upon his knees, his head sup- 

 ported by an Indian who was in front of him. The doctor, a muscular, powerful 

 man, having washed his hands and warmed them, grasped the patient by the back 

 of the neck, pressing his thumbs against the spinal column, and moving them with 



