798 BUBEAU OP AMEiRICAJSr ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



many incisions in the flesh of the sick person in the place where he feels the pain. 

 After that they suck the blood, either with the mouth or with the end of a bison 

 horn, which they have sawed off and of which they have made a kind of cone 

 (comet) which they apply to the place. This is what they call a bleeding. (Du- 

 mont, 1753, vol. 1, pp. 172-173; Swanton, 1911, pp. 80-81.) 



Du Pratz and other Louisiana writers express high regard for the 

 efficacy of Indian treatments, but the recovery of men living in the 

 manner of the ancient Natchez is less to be wondered at now that we 

 understand how much nature will bear and do by herself. Du Pratz 

 states that he sent to France more than 300 simples obtained from the 

 natives "with their numbers, and a memorandum which detailed their 

 qualities and taught the manner of using them" (Du Pratz, 1758, vol. 1, 

 pp. 211-212 ; Swanton, 1911, pp. 83-84). He himself extols the virtues 

 of the sweet gum, a vine he calls "the barbed creeper," the China root, 

 the maidenhair fern, the ground ivy, and some other native productions 

 (Du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 28-29, 55-58, 60-62; Swanton, 1911, pp. 

 84-85). The Natchez also used the sweat bath, and I am sure all phy- 

 sicians will be glad to learn the following simple remedy for insanity, 

 an Indian secret revealed to us by Dumont de Montigny : 



To what I have already said [on the subject of the native doctors] I will add 

 here something about their method of curing lunatics, those who have lost their 

 senses on account of some fear or by some other accident. It is this which the 

 savages call "no longer having a soul (esprit)." For there are insane in Louisiana 

 as well as in Europe, and it is there that one can say truly that all the insane 

 are not in the Petites-Maisons, because such establishments are entirely unknown 

 among these barbarians. Here is the method followed by the Alexis in treating 

 this sickness. 



These savage doctors use on these occasions neither baths, nor bleedings, nor 

 any of the remedies which are in use among ourselves for such maladies. They 

 merely take lettuce seed (graine de laitue) and nuts with their shells on, in equal 

 measure, and having placed all in a mortar, or more correctly in an Indian 

 crusher, they crush them and pound them until they form a kind of opiate (or 

 paste?), two or three drahms of which they make their sick people take morning 

 and evening. With this single remedy they cure them completely. (Dumont, 1753, 

 vol. 2, pp. 278-279.) 



The writer obtained the names of a considerable number of plants 

 used as medicines from a Natchez informant in the Cherokee country 

 south of Fort Gibson. It was still believed that animals caused 

 diseases. When a man becomes sick at the stomach and vomited it 

 was thought that a dead person was eating out of the same dish with 

 him. Doctors would blow into pots of medicine and sing appropriate 

 songs for each, facing the east as they did so. Sometimes they ad- 

 dressed the four points of the compass in which case they began with. 

 the north and ended with the east as with the Creeks. They al- 

 ways got bark, roots, or limbs from the east side of a tree or bush 

 because that was the good luck quarter and stood for strength 



