ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 83 
nature to see that this is but an exaggeration of a nat- 
ural feehng, excited by disappointment, which culture 
and civilization have subdued or controlled. 
Henry, in his Travels in Canada, gives an account 
of an Indian physician he saw put to death by the in- 
furiated friends of a deceased patient. Many other 
authors corroborate the existence of this custom.* 
Father Hennepin says that in case of failure on the 
part of the Indian physicians, jugglers, and priests, to 
cure a patient, it is ten to one that the parents or 
friends of the deceased will kill the physician on the 
spot without any formality. Alexander Ross, in his 
Adventures on the Oregon River, p. 304, records what 
he observed of the treatment of medical men when 
they fail to cure, by the Flathead Indians, and says : 
" On whomsoever (physician) their imagination fixes, 
be he far or near, he is secretly hunted out, waylaid, 
and put to death ; and this is generally the fate of all 
of them." In the published account of Captain 
Wilkes'.s exploring expedition (vol. iv., pp. 368-9) it is 
stated that the Indians of the Willamette Valley fre- 
quently kill their medical men when they fail to cure. 
They even apply this rule to white physicians or 
others who take the risk of prescribing for the sick. 
Captain Wilkes records the instance of the killing of 
Mr. Black, who was not a physician, but who had 
■^Father Charlevoix's Travels in Canada, p. 271 ; Alex. Henry's 
Travels in Canada, p. 124; Rev. Samuel Parker's Journal of a Tour 
beyond the Rocky Mountains, p. 245 ; C. C. Jones's Antiquities of the 
Southern Indians, p. 33 ; Hunter's Narrative, p. 352; Hennepin's Con- 
tinuation of Discoveries in America, p. 59 ; Wilkes's Exploring Ex- 
pedition, vol. iv., p. 368. 
