308 



The Aborigines of Brazil. 





tribe. He is employed to help and counsel in its most various 

 concerns, and the more his appearance is improved by age, 

 experience, or dignity of person, the greater confidence does 

 he inspire among his patients. He is commonly priest, pro- 

 phet, and soothsayer, and in addition worker of miracles, 

 and magician.* If we compare him with the Schaman of 

 the Asiatic nomadic races, we are struck with the great re- 

 semblance between them, and they may both be considered 

 measures of the intellectual and moral condition of the peo- 

 ple among whom they work. There can be no doubt that in 

 Schamanism the last fragments of a gone-by civilization, the 

 scattered traces of a higher knowledge of nature, are concealed. 

 This is also the case with the medicine of the Brazilian 

 savage. In the agency of the Paje, superstition and cre- 

 dulity, cleverness and deep knowledge are combined. He 

 believes in the remedies and the curative processes which he 

 prescribes, and is so far as scientific as the European physi- 

 cian : but like many of our profession, he does not despise 

 various formalities, which calculated for the superstition of the 

 blind multitude, are supposed to aid the uncertainty of the 

 remedy, by the increased confidence which they inspire in the 

 patient. 



The traces of ruin and of decay which are so striking in 

 all the social and political relations, in all the mental endow- 

 ments of the red men, the wonderful confusion which meets 

 us in their languages, which have separated from each other 

 to an endless extent, — are all to be found in their medical 

 knowledge. We can therefore regard the individual facts 

 which refer to the practice or theory of these men, only as 

 isolated and confused traditions, as the last remains of a 

 knowledge of nature, the foundations of which lie deeper 

 than that violent and uncertain catastrophe, of whose his- 

 torical date and cause we do not in the present state of our 



* See Catlin's account of the N. American medicine-men.— TV. 



