796 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



poultice of pounded ground ivy for a few days, then carefully washing the 

 afflicted part with the resin of the copal-tree which proved very efficacious; to 

 produce a copious perspiration, a hot decoction of the China root swallowed, 

 had the desired effect. They possessed an antidote for the bite and sting of 

 snakes and insects, in the root of a plant called rattlesnake's master, having 

 a pungent yet not unpleasant odor. The root of the plant was chewed, and 

 also a iwultice made of it was applied to the wound, which at once checked 

 the poison and the patient was well in a few days. The medical properties of 

 the sassafras, sarsaparilla, and other medicinal plants, were known to them. 

 They possessed many valuable secrets to cure dropsy, rheumatism, and many 

 other diseases, which, no doubt, will ever remain a secret with thfem, proving 

 that their powers of observation, investigation and discrimination, are not, 

 by any means, to be regarded as contemptible; while their belief, that the 

 Great Spirit has provided a remedy in plants for all diseases to which poor 

 humanity seems an heir, and never refuses to make it known to those who 

 seek the knowledge of it by proper supplications, is praiseworthy in them to 

 say the least of it. (Cushman, 1899, pp. 228-229 ; Swanton, 1931 a, p. 234.) 



He has the following to say of the mortality among Indians owing 

 to white contact : 



The greatest mortality among them was generally confined to the younger 

 children ; while longevity was a prominent characteristic among the adults. After 

 the age of six or eight years the mortality of disease among them was less than 

 among the white children of the present day after that age. But after those 

 baneful diseases, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, whooping-cough, diseases un- 

 known to them before, had been introduced among them, the fatality among the 

 children was distressing, frequently destroying the greater number of children 

 in a village or neighborhood : — being wholly ignorant as they were of the proper 

 mode of treatment was a great cause of the fearful fatality. Mental or nervous 

 diseases were unknown to the ancient Choctaws ; and idiocy and deformity were 

 seldom seen. But of all the "diseases" introduced among them by the whites, 

 the most pernicious and fatal in all its features, bearings, and consequences, to 

 the Choctaw people, was, is, and ever will be, Okahumma (red water or whiskey) ; 

 which, when once formed into habit, seemed to grow to a species of insanity 

 equal even to that so often exhibited among the whites. (Cushman, 1899, p. 230; 

 Swanton, 1931 a, pp. 234-235.) 



Du Pratz supplies us with a unique account of the regimentation of 

 a sick person among the Natchez : 



When the natives are sick they eat no fish and very little meat, and they even 

 abstain from that entirely if the nature of the malady demands it. Then they 

 take only hominy or meal cooked in meat broth. If the sick person is worse they 

 have a small quantity of coarse meal cooked in the same rich broth, and give of 

 this broth [itself] only to one who is doing well. 



As soon as a man is indisposed his wife sleeps with another woman on the 

 bed which touches that of the sick person at the foot or at the head. The husband 

 of this neighbor finds another place in which to lie down. In this way the wife is 

 in a position to help her husband without inconveniencing him in any manner. 

 (Du Pratz, 1758, vol. 3, pp. 12-13 ; Swanton, 1911, p. 80.) 



We might look for greater separation between priests and medicine 

 men in this tribe, but it was probably prevented by the absorption of 

 priestly functions by the civil leaders included in the Sun caste. The 



