Fig. 713 exhibits drawings of various masks used in dancing, the characters of which were obtained by Mr. G. K. Gilbert from rocks at Oakley springs and were explained to him by Tubi, the chief of the Oraibi Pueblos. They are representations of masks as used by the Moki, Zuñi, and Rio Grande Pueblos.
Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U. S. Army, writing from Camp Verde, Arizona, kindly furnished the following account of Yuman ceremonies, in which the making of sand pictures was prominent:
All the medicine men meet occasionally and with considerable ceremony “make medicine.” They went through the performance early in the summer of 1874 on the reservation for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Indians were afflicted the summer previous. In the middle of one of the villages they made a round ramada, or house of boughs, some 10 feet in diameter, and under it, on the sand, illustrated the spirit land in a picture about 7 feet across, made in colors by sprinkling powdered leaves and grass, red clay, charcoal, and ashes on the smoothed sand. In the center was a round spot of red clay about 10 inches in diameter, and around it several successive rings of green and red alternately, each ring being an inch and a half wide. Projecting from the outer ring were four somewhat triangular-shaped figures, each one of which corresponded to one of the cardinal points of the compass, giving the whole the appearance of a Maltese cross. Around this cross and between its arms were the figures of men with their feet toward the center, some made of charcoal, with ashes for eyes and hair, others of red clay and ashes, etc. These figures were 8 or 9 inches long, and nearly all of them lacked some portion of the body, some an arm, others a leg or the head. The medicine men seated themselves around the picture on the ground in a circle, and the Indians from the different bands crowded around them, the old men squatting close by and the young men standing back of them. After they had invoked the aid of the spirits in a number of chants, one of their number, apparently the oldest, a toothless, gray-haired man, solemnly arose and, carefully stepping between the figures of the men, dropped on each one a pinch of the yellow powder which he took from a small buckskin bag which had been handed to him. He put the powder on the heads of some, on the chests of others, and on other parts of the body, one of the other men sometimes telling him where to put it. After going all around, skipping three figures, however, he put up the bag, and then went around again and took from each figure a large pinch of powder, taking up the yellow powder also, and in this way collected a heaping handful. After doing this he stepped back and another medicine man collected a handful in the same way, others following him. Some of the laymen, in their eagerness to get some, pressed forward, but were ordered back. But after the medicine men had supplied themselves the ramada was torn down and a rush was made by men and boys; handfuls of the dirt were grabbed and rubbed on their bodies or carried away. The women and children, who were waiting for an invitation, were then called. They rushed to the spot in a crowd, and grabbing handfuls of dirt tossed it up in the air so that it would fall on them, or they rubbed their bodies with it, mothers throwing it over their children and rubbing it on their heads. This ended the performance.
According to Stephen Powers (in Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 140), there is at the head of Potter valley, California, “a singular knoll of red earth which the Tatu or Hūchnom believe to have furnished the material for the erection of the original coyote-man. They mix this red earth into their acorn bread, and employ it for painting their bodies on divers mystic occasions.”
Descriptions of ceremonies in medicine lodges and in the initiation of candidates to secret associations have been published with and without illustrations. The most striking of these are graphic ceremonial charts made by the Indians themselves, a number of which besides those immediately following appear in different parts of the present work.
Fig. 714.—Shaman’s lodge. Alaska.
Fig. 714 was drawn and interpreted by Naumoff, a Kadiak native, in San Francisco, California, in 1882. It represents the ground plan of a shaman’s lodge, with the shaman curing a sick man.
The following is the explanation:
a, the entrance to the lodge; b, the fireplace; c, a vertical piece of wood upon which is placed a crosspiece, upon each end of which is a lamp; d, the musicians upon the raised seats drumming and producing music to the movements of the shaman during his incantations in exorcising the “evil spirit” supposed to have possession of the patient; e, visitors and friends of the afflicted seated around the walls of the lodge; f, the shaman represented in making his incantations; g, the patient seated upon the floor of the lodge; h represents the shaman in another stage of the ceremonies, driving out of the patient the “evil being”; i, another figure of the patient—from his head is seen to issue a line connecting it with j; j, the “evil spirit” causing the sickness; k, the shaman in the act of driving the “evil being” out of the lodge—in his hands are sacred objects, his personal fetich, in which the power lies; l, the flying “evil one”; m, n, are assistants to the shaman stationed at the entrance to hit and hasten the departure of the evil being.