THE MEDICINE HAT.
The medicine hat of the old and blind Apache medicine-man, Nan-ta-do-tash, was an antique affair of buckskin, much begrimed with soot and soiled by long use. Nevertheless, it gave life and strength to him who wore it, enabled the owner to peer into the future, to tell who had stolen ponies from other people, to foresee the approach of an enemy, and to aid in the cure of the sick. This was its owner's own statement in conversation with me, but it would seem that the power residing in the helmet or hat was not very permanent, because when the old man discovered from his wife that I had made a rude drawing of it he became extremely excited and said that such a delineation would destroy all the life of the hat. His fears were allayed by presents of money and tobacco, as well as by some cakes and other food. As a measure of precaution, he insisted upon sprinkling pinches of hoddentin over myself, the hat, and the drawing of it, at the same time muttering various half-articulate prayers. He returned a month afterwards and demanded the sum of $30 for damage done to the hat by the drawing, since which time it has ceased to "work" when needed.
This same old man gave me an explanation of all the symbolism depicted upon the hat and a great deal of valuable information in regard to the profession of medicine-men, their specialization, the prayers they recited, etc. The material of the hat, as already stated, was buckskin. How that was obtained I can not assert positively, but from an incident occurring under my personal observation in the Sierra Madre in Mexico in 1883, where our Indian scouts and the medicine-men with them surrounded a nearly grown fawn and tried to capture it alive, as well as from other circumstances too long to be here inserted, I am of the opinion that the buckskin to be used for sacred purposes among the Apache must, whenever possible, be that of a strangled animal, as is the case, according to Dr. Matthews, among the Navajo.
The body of Nan-ta-do-tash's cap (Fig. 434, p. 503) was unpainted, but the figures upon it were in two colors, a brownish yellow and an earthy blue, resembling a dirty Prussian blue. The ornamentation was of the downy feathers and black-tipped plumes of the eagle, pieces of abalone shell, and chalchihuitl, and a snake's rattle on the apex.
Nan-ta-do-tash explained that the characters on the medicine hat meant: A, clouds; B, rainbow; C, hail; E, morning-star; F, the God of Wind, with his lungs; G, the black "kan"; H, great stars or suns.
"Kan" is the name given to their principal gods. The appearance of the kan himself and of the tail of the hat suggest the centipede, an important animal god of the Apache. The old man said that the figures represented the powers to which he appealed for aid in his "medicine" and the kan upon whom he called for help. There were other doctors with other medicines, but he used none but those of which he was going to speak to me.
Fig. 440.—Apache war bonnet.
When an Apache or other medicine-man is in full regalia he ceases to be a man, but becomes, or tries to make his followers believe that he has become, the power he represents. I once heard this asserted in a very striking way while I was with a party of Apache young men who had led me to one of the sacred caves of their people, in which we came across a great quantity of ritualistic paraphernalia of all sorts.
"We used to stand down here," they said, "and look up to the top of the mountain and see the kan come down." This is precisely what the people living farther to the south told the early Spanish missionaries.
The Mexicans were wont to cry out "Here come our gods!" upon seeing their priests masked and disguised, and especially when they had donned the skins of the women offered up in sacrifice.[716]
The headdresses worn by the gods of the American Indians and the priests or medicine-men who served them were persistently called "miters" by the early Spanish writers. Thus Quetzalcoatl wore "en la cabeça una Mitra de papel puntiaguda."[717] When Father Felician Lopez went to preach to the Indians of Florida, in 1697, among other matters of record is one to the effect that "the chief medicine man called himself bishop."[718] Possibly this title was assumed because the medicine-men wore "miters."
Duran goes further than his fellows. In the headdress used at the spirit dances he recognizes the tiara. He says that the Mexican priests at the feast of Tezcatlipoca wore "en las cabezas tiaras hechas de barillas."[719] The ghost dance headdress illustrated in this paper (Fig. 441) is known to the Chiricahua Apache as the "ich-te," a contraction from "chas-a-i-wit-te," according to Ramon, the old medicine-man from whom I obtained it. He explained all the symbolism connected with it. The round piece of tin in the center is the sun; the irregular arch underneath it is the rainbow. Stars and lightning are depicted on the side slats and under them; the parallelograms with serrated edges are clouds; the pendant green sticks are rain drops; there are snakes and snake heads on both horizontal and vertical slats, the heads in the former case being representative of hail.
Fig. 441.—Ghost-dance headdress.
There are feathers of the eagle to conciliate that powerful bird, turkey feathers to appeal to the mountain spirits, and white gull feathers for the spirits of the water. There are also small pieces of nacreous shells and one or two fragments of the "duklij," or chalchihuitl, without which no medicine-man would feel competent to discharge his functions.
The spirit dance itself is called "cha-ja-la." I have seen this dance a number of times, but will confine my description to one seen at Fort Marion (St. Augustine, Fla.), in 1887, when the Chiricahua Apache were confined there as prisoners; although the accompanying figure represents a ghost dance headdress seen among the Apache in the winter of 1885. A great many of the band had been suffering from sickness of one kind or another and twenty-three of the children had died; as a consequence, the medicine-men were having the Cha-ja-la, which is entered into only upon the most solemn occasions, such as the setting out of a war party, the appearance of an epidemic, or something else of like portent. On the terreplein of the northwest bastion, Ramon, the old medicine-man, was violently beating upon a drum, which, as usual, had been improvised of a soaped rag drawn tightly over the mouth of an iron kettle holding a little water.
Although acting as master of ceremonies, Ramon was not painted or decorated in any way. Three other medicine-men were having the finishing touches put to their bodily decoration. They had an under-coating of greenish brown, and on each arm a yellow snake, the head toward the shoulder blade. The snake on the arm of one of the party was double-headed, or rather had a head at each extremity.
Each had insignia in yellow on back and breast, but no two were exactly alike. One had on his breast a yellow bear, 4 inches long by 3 inches high, and on his back a kan of the same color and dimensions. A second had the same pattern of bear on his breast, but a zigzag for lightning on his back. The third had the zigzag on both back and breast. All wore kilts and moccasins.
While the painting was going on Ramon thumped and sang with vigor to insure the medicinal potency of the pigments and the designs to which they were applied. Each held, one in each hand, two wands or swords of lathlike proportions, ornamented with snake-lightning in blue.
The medicine-men emitted a peculiar whistling noise and bent slowly to the right, then to the left, then frontward, then backward, until the head in each case was level with the waist. Quickly they spun round in full circle on the left foot; back again in a reverse circle to the right; then they charged around the little group of tents in that bastion, making cuts and thrusts with their wands to drive the maleficent spirits away.
It recalled to my mind the old myths of the angel with the flaming sword guarding the entrance to Eden, or of St. Michael chasing the discomfited Lucifer down into the depths of Hell.
These preliminaries occupied a few moments only; at the end of that time the medicine-men advanced to where a squaw was holding up to them a little baby sick in its cradle. The mother remained kneeling while the medicine-men frantically struck at, upon, around, and over the cradle with their wooden weapons.
The baby was held so as successively to occupy each of the cardinal points and face each point directly opposite; first on the east side, facing the west; then the north side, facing the south; then the west side, facing the east; then the south side, facing the north, and back to the original position. While at each position, each of the medicine-men in succession, after making all the passes and gestures described, seized the cradle in his hands, pressed it to his breast, and afterwards lifted it up to the sky, next to the earth, and lastly to the four cardinal points, all the time prancing, whistling, and snorting, the mother and her squaw friends adding to the dismal din by piercing shrieks and ululations.
That ended the ceremonies for that night so far as the baby personally was concerned, but the medicine-men retired down to the parade and resumed their saltation, swinging, bending, and spinning with such violence that they resembled, in a faint way perhaps, the Dervishes of the East. The understanding was that the dance had to be kept up as long as there was any fuel unconsumed of the large pile provided; any other course would entail bad luck. It was continued for four nights, the colors and the symbols upon the bodies varying from night to night. Among the modes of exorcism enumerated by Burton, we find "cutting the air with swords."[720] Picart speaks of the "flêches ou les baguettes dont les Arabes Idolâtres se servoient pour deviner par le sort." He says that the diviner "tenoit à la main" these arrows, which certainly suggest the swords or wands of the Apache medicine-men in the spirit dance.[721]
There were four medicine-men, three of whom were dancing and in conference with the spirits, and the fourth of whom was general superintendent of the whole dance, and the authority to whom the first three reported the result of their interviews with the ghostly powers.
The mask and headdress of the first of the dancers, who seemed to be the leading one, was so elaborate that in the hurry and meager light supplied by the flickering fires it could not be portrayed. It was very much like that of number three, but so fully covered with the plumage of the eagle, hawk, and, apparently, the owl, that it was difficult to assert this positively. Each of these medicine-men had pieces of red flannel tied to his elbows and a stick about four feet long in each hand. Number one's mask was spotted black and white and shaped in front like the snout of a mountain lion. His back was painted with large arrowheads in brown and white, which recalled the protecting arrows tightly bound to the backs of Zuñi fetiches. Number two had on his back a figure in white ending between the shoulders in a cross. Number three's back was simply whitened with clay.
All these headdresses were made of slats of the Spanish bayonet, unpainted, excepting that on number two was a figure in black, which could not be made out, and that the horizontal crosspieces on number three were painted blue.
The dominos or masks were of blackened buckskin, for the two fastened around the neck by garters or sashes; the neckpiece of number three was painted red; the eyes seemed to be glass knobs or brass buttons. These three dancers were naked to the waist, and wore beautiful kilts of fringed buckskin bound on with sashes, and moccasins reaching to the knees. In this guise they jumped into the center of the great circle of spectators and singers and began running about the fire shrieking and muttering, encouraged by the shouts and the singing, and by the drumming and incantation of the chorus which now swelled forth at full lung power.