10 I pray, I say, for a long life to live with you where the good people are.
11 I live in poverty.
12 I wish the people there to speak of goodness and to talk to me.
13 I wish you to divide your good things with me, as a brother.
14 Ahead of me is goodness, lead me on.
While this prayer is worded as if uttered by the supplicant, it is in reality offered by the medicine-man in his behalf.
There are head medicine-men and medicine-men of lesser degree. The man who becomes influential enough to be considered the head medicine-man of the tribe is more of a politician than a doctor of diseases, and in important cases only is he called to treat in a healing ceremony. It requires a particularly capable Indian to attain the position of head medicine-man, for to do so he must not only make the people subservient to his will, but must wrest the leadership from some other and usually older medicine-man who is himself an influential character. Unfortunately it is apt to be the most crafty, scheming man who gains such power over his tribesmen.
A case in point was the recent strife between Das Lan and Goshonné. For some years the latter, an Indian of exceptional ability and withal apparently an honest man in his treatment of diseases, was the head medicine-man of the White Mountain Apache. Then it came to pass that the crafty old Das Lan of the Cibicu had his vision, in which was revealed a special[pg 038] message brought by Chuganaái Skhĭn from Kútĕrastan to the Apache people. This was the beginning of the present so-called messiah craze.
Maternity Belt - Apache