Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

oisREcnTs] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 67
on the mode of collecting them. In Ms. II a formula occurs in which
the medicine man, when he goes out to gather the plants needed,
states in an appropriate formula how long a period of restrictions he is
going to prescribe to his patient.
A Typical Curing Procedure
We have now analyzed the different and multifarious elements and
concepts which we find entangled in Cherokee ideas on disease, its
causes, and its treatment. Needless to say, neither the native patient
nor the medicine man ever look at the problem in such a scrutinizing
and analytical way. We will therefore now present a sjmthetic picture
of the w^hole as it is presented to the mind of the native. The
following lines contain the account of a case of illness and of the
treatment and curing of the same. The account was given me quite
spontaneously and unsolicited by one (W.) who was an interested pa^t3^
Apart from correcting the more flagrant grammatical lapses in it
I have not changed it in any way and will give in footnotes what little
supplementary information may be necessary to make it intelligible.
"Many years ago^^ my cousin, Charlie, Je.'s^° son, was very ill ; he was
very poorly; he w^as just about to die.^^ My mother ^^ was very sorry
for her daughter and for her grandson, and she sent after Doctor
Mink,^^ asking him to come down to see what he could do. An
evening, soon after. Doctor Mink came to our house and said he
would spend the night.^* But my mother was anxious to know some-
thing about her grandson's illness and prepared the cloth and the
beads.^^ Mink examined with the beads, but he found that nothing
could be done. My mother cried and was sorry because of her grandson;
she got some more white cloth and two more white beads, and
asked the medicine man to try again. He did, but again he said the
boy could not recover. And again my mother put some more cloth
and two more beads down, but still there was no hope. A fourth
time she got cloth and beads and the medicine man examined once
more; but again he found that the boy was very poor, and that he
would have to die.
"I then proposed to go over the mountain to where the sick boy
lived, and to go and see him anyway. We all went, and when we got
there we found the boy unconscious.
20 Thirteen years ago (information given November, 1926).
30 W.'s half-sister; cf. pp. 9, 116 and pi. 12, a.
51 He was ill vi^ith G9'''wani'Gtst9°'.i, cf. p. 120.
52 Aye, herself a reputed medicine woman during her lifetime. (Cf. p. 9.)
33 Alias V/il., son of Gad. (cf. p. 9) ; two medicine men (now both deceased)
from whom James Mooney obtained the Mss. II and III.
31 Cf. p. 97.
35 Cf. p. 132.