The rule enjoined among the Apache is that for the first four times one of their young men goes out on the warpath he must refrain from scratching his head with his fingers or letting water touch his lips. How to keep this vow and at the same time avoid unnecessary personal discomfort and suffering is the story told by these petty fragments from the Apache's ritual. He does not scratch his head with his fingers; he makes use of this scratch stick. He will not let water touch his lips, but sucks it into his throat through this tiny tube. A long leather cord attached both stick and reed to the warrior's belt and to each other. This was all the information I was able to obtain of a definite character. Whether these things had to be prepared by the medicine-men or by the young warrior himself; with what ceremonial, if any, they had to be manufactured, and under what circumstances of time and place, I was unable to ascertain to my own satisfaction, and therefore will not extend my remarks or burden the student's patience with incoherent statements from sources not absolutely reliable. That the use of the scratch stick and the drinking reed was once very general in America and elsewhere, and that it was not altogether dissociated from ritualistic or ceremonial ideas, may be gathered from the citations appended.
In her chapter entitled "Preparatory ceremony of the young warrior" Mrs. Emerson says: "He does not touch his ears or head with his hand," explaining in a footnote, "the head was sometimes made a sacrificial offering to the sun."[197] Tanner relates that the young Ojibwa warrior for the "three first times" that he accompanies a war party "must never scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers, but if he is compelled to scratch he must use a small stick."[198] Kohl states that the Ojibwa, while on the warpath, "will never sit down in the shade of a tree or scratch their heads; at least, not with their fingers. The warriors, however, are permitted to scratch themselves with a piece of wood or a comb."[199] Mackenzie states regarding the Indians whom he met on the Columbia, in 52° 38′, N. lat., "instead of a comb they [the men] have a small stick hanging by a string from one of the locks [of hair], which they employ to alleviate any itching or irritation in the head."[200]
The Tlinkit of British North America use these scratchers made of basalt or other stone.
"The pipe-stem carrier (i.e., the carrier of the sacred or 'medicine' pipe) of the Crees, of British North America, dares not scratch his own head, without compromising his own dignity, without the intervention of a stick, which he always carries for that purpose."[201]
Bancroft[202] quotes Walker as saying that "a Pima never touches his skin with his nails, but always with a small stick for that purpose, which he renews every fourth day and wears in his hair."
As part of the ceremony of "initiating youth into manhood" among the Creeks, the young neophyte "during the twelve moons ... is also forbidden to pick his ears or scratch his head with his fingers, but must use a small splinter to perform these operations."[203] The Apache-Yuma men carry in their hair "a slender stick or bone about 8 inches long, which serves them as a comb."[204]
The idea that these scratch sticks replace combs is an erroneous one; Indians make combs in a peculiar way of separate pieces of wood, and they are also very fond of brushing their long locks with the coarse brushes, which they make of sacaton or other grass.
"One other regulation, mentioned by Schomburgk, is certainly quaint; the interesting father may not scratch himself with his finger nails, but may use for this purpose a splinter, especially provided, from the mid-rib of a cokerite palm."[205]
When a Greenlander is about to enter into conversation with the spirits "no one must stir, not so much as to scratch his head."[206]
In the New Hebrides most of the natives "wear a thin stick or reed, about 9 inches long, in their hair, with which they occasionally disturb the vermin that abound in their heads."[207]