SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 783 



is scarcely touched upon by Mooney and Olbrechts. It was probably 

 responsible for more cures than all other methods together. Most 

 of the doctors are, and probably always were, drawn from the male 

 sex, but there were true women doctors and naturally enough all of 

 the midwives were women. Apart from priests and midwives, Chero- 

 kee practitioners are divided by Olbrechts into curers, diviners or 

 conjurers, and wizards and witches. Knowledge of the healing art 

 was transmitted by the instruction of novices, and some member of 

 a doctor's family was most likely to become one, but this seems to 

 have been a natural outgrowth of the conditions and not due to any 

 definite regulation (Mooney, 1932, pp. 14^39). 



We learn from Hariot that the Algonquian doctors of North 

 Carolina used suction in curing disease and that they believed that 

 sickness could be caused by missiles sent by witches (Hariot, 1893, 

 p. 42) . Strachey has these paragraphs on Powhatan doctoring : 



Concerning a greene wound cawsed eyther by the stroake of an axe, or 

 sword, or such sharpe thinge, they have present remedy for, of the juyce of 

 certayne hearbes; howbeyt a compound wound (as the surgeons call it) where, 

 beside the opening and cutting of the flesh, any rupture is, or bone broken, 

 such as our small shotte make upon them, they knowe not easily how to cure, 

 and therefore languish in the misery of the payne thereof. Old ulcers likewise, 

 and putrified hurts are seldome seene cured amongst them : howbeit, to scarrefye 

 a swelling, or make incisyon, they have a kind of instrument of some splinted 

 stone. 



Every spring they make themselves sick with drincking the juyce of a 

 roote which they call wighsacan and water, wherof they take soe great a 

 quantity, that yt purgeth them in a very violent manner, so that in three 

 or four dales after they scarce recover their former health. Sometymes they 

 are sore trobled with dropseyes, swelling, aches, and such like deceases, by 

 reason of their uncleanenes and fowle feeding; for cure whereof they buyld a 

 stove in the forme of a dove howse, with matts soe close, that a fewe coals 

 therein, covered with a pott, will make the patient sweat extreamely. 



For swelling, also, they use small pieces of touch wood in the forme of 

 cloves, which, pricking on the grief, they burne close to the flesh, and from 

 thence drawe the corruption with their mouthe. They have many professed 

 phisitians, who, with their charmes and rattles, with an infernall rowt of 

 words and accions, will seeme to suck their inward grief from their navells, or 

 their affected places ; but concerning our chirugians they are generally so con- 

 ceipted of them, that they believe that their plaisters will heale any hurt. 

 (Strachey, 1849, pp. 108-109.) 



Spelman had a more intimate knowledge of the Potomac Indians: 



When any be sicke among them, ther preests cums unto the partye whom he 

 layeth on the ground uppon a matt. And hauing a boule of water, sett between 

 him and the sicke partye ; and a Rattle by it, The preest kneelinge by the sick mans 

 side dipps his hand in the boule, which takinge vp full of watter, he supps into his 

 mouth, spowting it out againe, vppon his oune armes, and brest, then takes he the 

 Rattle, and with one hand takes that, and with the other he beates his brest, 

 makinge a great noyes, which hauinge dunn he easilye Riseth (as loith to wake 



