Plate VIII.
APACHE MEDICINE SHIRT.
The medicine shirts of the Apaches, several of which are here represented, do not require an extended description. The symbolism is different for each one, but may be generalized as typical of the sun, moon, stars, rainbow, lightning, snake, clouds, rain, hail, tarantula, centipede, snake, and some one or more of the "kan" or gods.
The medicine sashes follow closely in pattern the medicine shirts, being smaller in size only, but with the same symbolic decoration. Similar ornamentation will be found upon the amulets (ditzi), made of lightning-struck pine or other wood. All of these are warranted, among other virtues, to screen the wearer from the arrows, lances, or bullets of the enemy. In this they strongly resemble the salves and other means by which people in Europe sought to obtain "magical impenetrability." The last writer to give receipts for making such salves, etc., that I can recall, was Etmüller, who wrote in the early years of the seventeenth century.
Fig. 448.—Apache medicine sash.
Such as the reader can imagine the medicine-man to be from this description of his paraphernalia, such he has been since the white man first landed in America. Never desirous of winning proselytes to his own ideas, he has held on to those ideas with a tenacity never suspected until purposely investigated. The first of the Spanish writers seem to have employed the native terms for the medicine-men, and we come across them as cemis or zemis, bohiti, pachuaci, and others; but soon they were recognized as the emissaries of Satan and the preachers of witchcraft, and henceforth they appear in the documents as "hechicheros" and "brujos" almost exclusively. "Tienan los Apaches profetas ó adivinos que gozan de la mas alta estimacion. Esos adivinos pratican la medicina lamas rudimental, la aplicacion de algunas yerbas y esto acompañado de ceremonias y cantos supersticiosos."[745] Pimentel seems to have derived his information from Cordero, a Spanish officer who had served against the Apache at various times between 1770 and 1795, and seemed to understand them well.
"There was no class of persons who so widely and deeply influenced the culture and shaped the destiny of the Indian tribes as their priests. In attempting to gain a true conception of the race's capacities and history there is no one element of their social life which demands closer attention than the power of these teachers.... However much we may deplore the use they made of their skill, we must estimate it fairly and grant it its due weight in measuring the influence of the religious sentiment on the history of man."[746]
"Like Old Men of the Sea, they have clung to the neck of their nations, throttling all attempts at progress, binding them to the thraldom of superstition and profligacy, dragging them down to wretchedness and death. Christianity and civilization meet in them their most determined, most implacable foes."[747]
In spite of all the zeal and vigilance of the Spanish friars, supported by military power, the Indians of Bogotá clung to their idolatry. Padre Simon cites several instances and says tersely: "De manera que no lo hay del Indio que parece mas Cristiano y ladino, de que no tenga ídolos á quien adore, como nos lo dice cada dia la experiencia." (So that there is no Indian, no matter how well educated he may appear in our language and the Christian doctrine, who has not idols which he adores, as experience teaches us every day.)[748]
"The Indian doctor relied far more on magic than on natural remedies. Dreams, beating of the drum, songs, magic feasts and dances, and howling to frighten the female demon from the patient, were his ordinary methods of cure."[749]