Plate V.
APACHE MEDICINE HAT USED IN GHOST DANCE.
AMULETS AND TALISMANS.
THE "TZI-DALTAI."
The Apache, both men and women, wear amulets, called tzi-daltai, made of lightning-riven wood, generally pine or cedar or fir from the mountain tops, which are highly valued and are not to be sold. These are shaved very thin and rudely cut in the semblance of the human form. They are in fact the duplicates, on a small scale, of the rhombus, already described. Like the rhombus, they are decorated with incised lines representing the lightning. Very often these are to be found attached to the necks of children or to their cradles. Generally these amulets are of small size. Below will be found figures of those which I was permitted to examine and depict in their actual size. They are all unpainted. The amulet represented was obtained from a Chiricahua Apache captive. Deguele, an Apache of the Klukaydakaydn clan, consented to exhibit a kan, or god, which he carried about his person. He said I could have it for three ponies. It was made of a flat piece of lath, unpainted, of the size here given, having drawn upon it this figure in yellow, with a narrow black band, excepting the three snake heads, a, b, and c, which were black with white eyes; a was a yellow line and c a black line; flat pearl buttons were fastened at m and k respectively and small eagle-down feathers at k on each side of the idol. The rear of the tablet, amulet, or idol, as one may be pleased to call it, was almost an exact reproduction of the front.
Fig. 443.—Tzi-daltai amulet (Apache).
The owner of this inestimable treasure assured me that he prayed to it at all times when in trouble, that he could learn from it where his ponies were when stolen and which was the right direction to travel when lost, and that when drought had parched his crops this would never fail to bring rain in abundance to revive and strengthen them. The symbolism is the rain cloud and the serpent lightning, the rainbow, rain drops, and the cross of the four winds.
These small amulets are also to be found inclosed in the phylacteries (Fig. 447) which the medicine-men wear suspended from their necks or waists.