SwANTON] INDIAN'S OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 787 



cured him in ten days so that he went about. I knew another blown up with 

 powder, that was cured to admiration. I never saw an Indian have an ulcer, 

 or foul wound in my life; neither is there any such thing to be found amongst 

 them. They cure the pox by a berry that salivates as mercury does; yet they 

 use sweating and decoctions very much with it, as they do almost on every 

 occasion; and when they are thoroughly heated, they leap into the river. The 

 pox is frequent in some of these nations; amongst which I knew one woman 

 die of it; and they could not, or would not, cure her. We had a planter in 

 Carolina who had got an ulcer in his leg, which had troubled him a great many 

 years; at last he applied himself to one of these Indian conjurers, who was a 

 Pampticough Indian, and was not to give the value of fifteen shillings for the 

 cure. Now, I am not positive whether he washed the ulcer with any thing 

 before he used what I am now going to speak of, which was nothing but the 

 rotten, doated grains of Indian corn, beaten to powder and the soft down 

 growing on a turkey's rump. This dried the ulcer up immediately, and no 

 other fontanel was made to discharge the matter, he remaining a healthful man 

 till the time he had the misfortune to be drowned, which was many years after. 

 Another instance, not of my own knowledge, but I had it confirmed by several 

 dwellers in Maryland, where it was done, was, of an honest planter that had 

 been possessed with a strange, lingering distemper, not usual amongst them, 

 under which he emaciated and grew every month worse than another, it having 

 held him several years, in which time he had made trial of several doctors, 

 as they call them, which, I suppose, were ship surgeons. In the beginning of 

 this distemper, the patient was very well to pass, and was possessed of several 

 slaves, which the doctors purged all away, and the poor man was so far from 

 mending that he grew worse and worse every day. But it happened that one 

 day as his wife and he were commiserating his miserable condition, and that 

 he could not expect to recover, but looked for death very speedily, and condoling 

 the misery he should leave his wife and family in, since all his negroes were 

 gone. At that time, I say, it happened that an Indian was in the same room, 

 who had frequented the house for many years, and so was become as one of the 

 family, and would sometimes be at this planter's house and at other times 

 amongst the Indians. 



This savage, hearing what they talked of, and having a great love for the 

 sick man, made this reply to what he had heard: Brother, you have been a 

 long time sick, and I know you have given away your slaves to your English 

 doctors. What made you do so, and now become poor? They do not know 

 how to cure you; for it is an Indian distemper, which your people know not 

 the nature of. If it had been an English disease, probably they could have 

 cured you; and had you come to me at first I would have cured you for a 

 small matter, without taking away your servants that made corn for you 

 and your family to eat ; and yet, if you will give me a blanket to keep me warm, 

 and some powder and shot to kill deer withal, I will do my best to make you 

 well still. The man was low in courage and pocket too, and made the Indian 

 this reply: Jack, my distemper is past cure, and if our English doctors cannot 

 cure it I am sure the Indians cannot. But his wife accosted her husband in 

 very mild terms, and told him, he did not know but God might be pleased to 

 give a blessing to that Indian's undertaking more than he had done to the 

 English; and further added, if you die I cannot be much more miserable, by 

 giving this small matter to the Indian ; so I pray you, my dear, take my advice, 

 and try him — to which, by her persuasions, he consented. After the bargain 

 was concluded, the Indian went into the woods and brought in both herbs and 

 roots, of which he made a decoction, and gave it the man to drink, and bade 



