Another rain-rhyme from Altmark, sung by children in the streets when it rains, is harsh in tone, and somewhat derisive as well (p. 153):—
"Räg'n blatt, maok mi nich natt,
Maok den olln Paop'n natt
De'n Büd'l vull Geld hat."
["Rain, don't make me wet,
Make the old priest wet,
Who has a purse full of money.">[
Concerning the Kansa Indians, Rev. J. Owen Dorsey informs us that the members of the Tcihacin or Kanze gens are looked upon as "wind people," and when there is a blizzard the other Kansa appeal to them: "O, Grandfather, I wish good weather! Please cause one of your children to be decorated!" The method of stopping the blizzard is as follows: "Then the youngest son of one of the Kanze men, say one over four feet high, is chosen for the purpose, and painted with red paint. The youth rolls over and over in the snow and reddens it for some distances all around him. This is supposed to stop the storm" (433. 410).
With the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island, as with the Shushwaps and Nootka, twins are looked upon in the light of wonderful beings, having power over the weather. Of them it is said "while children they are able to summon any wind by motions of their hands, and can make fair or bad weather. They have the power of curing diseases, and use for this purpose a rattle called K.'oã'qaten, which has the shape of a flat box about three feet long by two feet wide." Here the "weather-maker" and the "doctor" are combined in the same person. Among the Tsimshian Indians, of British Columbia, twins are believed to control the weather, and these aborigines "pray to wind and rain: 'Calm down, breath of the twins'" (403. 51).
In the creation-legend of the Indians of Mt. Shasta (California), we are told that once a terrific storm came up from the sea and shook to its base the wigwam,—Mt. Shasta itself,—in which lived the "Great Spirit" and his family. Then "The 'Great Spirit' commanded his daughter, little more than an infant, to go up and bid the wind be still, cautioning her at the same time, in his fatherly way, not to put her head out into the blast, but only to thrust out her little red arm and make a sign before she delivered her message." But the temptation to look out on the world was too strong for her, and, as a result, she was caught up by the storm and blown down the mountain-side into the land of the grizzly-bear people. From the union of the daughter and the grizzly-bear people sprang a new race of men. When the "Great Spirit" was told his daughter still lived, he ran down the mountain for joy, but finding that his daughter had become a mother, he was so angry that he cursed the grizzly-people and turned them into the present race of bears of that species; them and the new race of men he drove out of their wigwam,—Little Mt. Shasta,—then "shut to the door, and passed away to his mountains, carrying his daughter; and her or him no eye has since seen." Hence it is that "no Indian tracing his descent from the spirit mother and the grizzly, will kill a grizzly-bear; and if by an evil chance a grizzly kill a man in any place, that spot becomes memorable, and every one that passes casts a stone there till a great pile is thrown up" (396. III. 91).
Here the weather-maker touches upon deity and humanity at once.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CHILD AS HEALER AND PHYSICIAN.
Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Iudæus, monachus, histrio, rasor, anus. [Any unskilled person, priest, Jew, monk, actor, barber, old woman, turns himself into a physician.]—Medical Proverb.
The Child as Healer and Physician.