“After these ceremonies the women come forward, holding their hoes in their hands, and dance about the lodge one after another in single file, following the leading woman. Four times they dance about the lodge. She cannot pass the priest the fifth time. These ceremonies and the songs and prayers were to ask for a blessing on the hunt and on the corn, and to learn whether they would be blessed in both. After the women had danced and gone back to their places, everybody looked on the floor of the lodge to see whether there were any buffalo hairs there. If they saw them, they all said, ‘Now we are going to be successful in our hunt and in our corn.’ Everybody said, ‘We are blessed.’
“Then when they would go out on the hunt they would find plenty of buffalo, and the messenger sent back to the village from the hunt would return to the camp and say, ‘We have plenty of corn.’ If they saw a great many buffalo hairs they would get many buffalo; if but few they would get some buffalo.
“The next day after these ceremonies every one would begin to clear up their patches and get ready to plant corn. The leading woman who prepared the dance is respected and highly thought of. After that she is like a chief.
“This ceremony is the next principal thing we have after the burnt offering of the animal and of the scalp. We did not invent this. It came to us from the Ruler, and we worship him through it. He gave us the corn and blessed us through it. By it we are made strong.
“We are like seed and we worship through the corn.”
III. MEDICINE AND MYSTERY.
It has been said that the “medicine men” or doctors among the Pawnees occupied a position by themselves. Their guild was entirely distinct from that of the priests. A priest might be a doctor as well, but not because he was a priest.
The doctors were primarily healers. Their function was to fight disease. Like many other savage nations, the Pawnees believed that sickness was caused by evil spirits, which had entered into the patient and must be driven out if he was to recover. In their treatment of injuries the doctors were often singularly successful. Major North has cited for me a number of instances, in which men, whose hurts had refused to yield to the treatment of the United States Army surgeons, had been cured by Pawnee doctors. Some of these have been detailed elsewhere. As might be imagined, however, the Pawnee treatment of disease was less efficacious. Simple ailments were often treated with success by means of the familiar sudatory, or “sweat house;” but in the case of more serious complaints, the dancing and rattling, which constitute so large a part of the doctor’s treatment, tend to aggravate rather than to check the disease. I have not space to discuss the very interesting subject of the system of therapeutics practiced by the Pawnee doctors. Mr. Dunbar has gone into this matter quite fully, and the reader is referred to his papers for an account of their practice.
As the doctors had to fight evil spirits, it is not surprising that they should have summoned magic to their aid; but this magic probably served its more important purpose in impressing the other Indians with a belief in the doctors’ powers. Some of the performances which took place at the doctors’ dances were very marvellous, and most of them were quite inexplicable to those who saw what was done. That they should have imposed on the Indian spectator is perhaps not surprising; but it is further to be noted that clear-headed, intelligent white men, whose powers of observation have been highly trained, have confessed themselves wholly unable to explain these startling performances, or to hazard a guess as to the means by which they were accomplished. That these things happened as detailed is well authenticated by the testimony of many perfectly credible witnesses.