782 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY TBull 137 



differentiated after death in accordance with their lives. There was 

 also belief in a deluge (Swanton, 1911, p. 363). 



The Spanish missionaries, Casaiias, Espinosa, and Hidalgo, report 

 that the Caddo believed there was a supreme deity whom they called 

 Ayo-Caddi-Aymay, and they had an elaborate temple cult and a 

 long cosmic legend, a version of the "Thrown Away" story. The 

 missionary reports regarding this cult have been given in Bureau of 

 American Ethnology Bulletin 132 (Swanton, 1942, pp. 210-234). 



MEDICAL PRACTICES 



Medical practices are very closely bound up with shamanism and 

 priestcraft. The best treatment of the subject by far, as developed in 

 any Southeastern tribe, is by Mooney and Olbrechts in Bulletin 99 of 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology, a specific discussion of the Swim- 

 mer Manuscript on Cherokee Sacred Formulas and Medicinal Pre- 

 scriptions. Here the causes of disease in accordance with native belief 

 are given as natural causes and supernatural causes, the latter 

 embracing diseases caused by spirits of the sun, fire, moon, river, 

 Thunder and his two sons, purple man, blue man, black man, the 

 little people, animal spirits (of which a long list is given), human 

 and animal ghosts, witches, and man killers ; also diseases due to the 

 machinations of a human agent, diseases traceable to a woman's men- 

 strual condition, dreams (and possibly omens, though they may not 

 have causal significance) , and neglected taboos, to which may be added 

 diseases attributable to the white people (Mooney, 1932, pp. 14-39). 

 In both Cherokee and Creek mythology we find emphasis laid upon 

 animals as disease bringers and upon plants as healers. In fact, the 

 greater number of remedies were of vegetable origin, an infusion being 

 made and taken internally, hot or cold, or applied externally. Cer- 

 tain objects were often added on account of their supposed magical 

 properties. The medicine was often blown into by the doctor, and 

 this was usual among the Creeks and widely practiced throughout 

 the Southeast, a tube being ordinarily employed, after which the 

 patient was sprayed or exposed to the vapors — most pronouncedly in 

 the sweat bath — massaged, made to vomit into the river, scratched, 

 the affected part sucked, and the disease buried, or the patient was 

 circumambulated, probably at a former period to the accompaniment 

 of a rattle. Prescriptions as to diet and various taboos governing 

 the behavior were inculcated. Most important of all to the success 

 of the treatment was the repetition of the proper magical formulae. 

 Surgery was resorted to to a very limited extent. 



One sort of treatment which undoubtedly played a powerful part 

 in early Cherokee medicine, as we know it did in the medical practice 

 of other Indian tribes, is the appeal to the imagination, and this 



