siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL. LIFE 235
duced among them by the whites, the most pernicious and fatal in all its
features, bearings, and consequences, to the Choctaw people, was, is, and
ever will be, Okahumma (red water or whiskey) ; which, when once formed
into habit, seemed to grow to a species of insanity equal even to that so often
exliibited among the whites/'
In 1730, when the French officer De Lusser was traveling through
the Choctaw country, he was seized with a violent attack of nose-
bleed, which an Indian doctor stopped by the application of an herb.
De Lusser also records the case of a Frenchman named Tarascon
who was ill with " a sort of leprosy which afflicts him from head to
foot and which had made him blind." He had recovered his sight
" by means of the fire with which the Indians treated him and with
which they maintain that they are curing him." *^
For late forms of medical practice in the Bayou Lacomb band of
Choctaw, a list of 25 medicine plants, and the manner of using them,
the reader is referred to Mr. Bushnell's bulletin.^"
According to Simpson Tubby, it was a common Choctaw belief
that people got diseases from the food they ate, and therefore be-
fore killing a chicken it was shut up and fed by the owner until
what it had foraged for itself was out of it. On the other hand, it
was thought that animals gathered their own medicine. The hog
roots in the ground for his medicine and a dog should not be shut
up or he will not be able to find his own proper remedies. This
was one of the reasons advanced by Masliulatubbi in opposing allot-
ment. He maintained that in time the stock would be enclosed so
that they could not get to their natural medicine and that the same
thing would sooner or later happen to the Indians. The old Choctaw
doctors are said to have held, like the Creeks, that animals
caused diseases.
The same informant averred that the head chief appointed from
one to three doctors from each of the five Choctaw bands, and that
he and the doctors together appointed medicine givers who were
later to be appointed doctors themselves. xVfter their appointment
the doctors and medicine givers were placed in charge of the band
captains wdio had to see that they carried out their instructions.
Since it is said that medicine could be given onlj'^ in the presence of
one of these people, and that a m.an had to be present to see that a
male patient took the medicine and a woman to see that a female
took it, it would seem that the medicine givers at least were of both
sexes. Medicine was administered by '' swallows," " fractions of
swallows," and "' drops." He also said that no one was allowed to
*^ Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. i;30.
*' Ms. in French Archives.
6" Bull. 48, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 23-25.