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Olbrechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 75
Even though this rite be gone through while the person for whose
benefit it is performed is abeady ill, it is none the less a rite which,
from a Cherokee point of view, has a decided prophylactic character.
It is not expected to cure the patient but to prevent any "worker of
evil" taking advantage of his weakened condition to cast another and
more deadly illness on the sufferer.
A variant of this rite is the smoking of the same sacred tobacco
(blended, on account of its excessive scarcity, with at least 90 per cent
of ordinary smoking tobacco) out of a pipe. The medicine man lights
the pipe (preferably an old native carved soapstone pipe, although if
such a specimen is not available a usual white trader's pipe is reluc-
tantly substituted) and slowly wallcs round the patient's cabin,,
starting on the east side; after having inhaled a powerful puff of smoke:
he blows it toward the sky, then straight in front of him, then toward
the east, and finally toward the ground.
This is done because some witches can not only wallv on the ground
(ad libitum in their human shape, or in the shape of any quadruped
they choose) but they can also fly through the air, and can evert
travel under the surface of the earth. The smoke of the sacred
tobacco prevents them from approaching in any of these ways.
Continuing his circuit, the medicine man halts at the north side,
next at the west, and finally at the south side of the house, blowing
the three puffs every time he halts, until the circumambulation is
completed.
Contagious diseases.—It is the feeling of those who have made a
special study of the problem of epidemics in pre-Columbian times that
this scourge was relatively rare on the American continent. In view
of this, we can easily follow the mode of reasoning of the natives,
when they ascribe the origin of contagious disease to the whites. They
often even go so far as to accuse the white people, and especially the
white physicians, of purposely letting an epidemic loose among the
Indians, in order to wipe them from the face of the continent by a
quick and efficacious expedient. (See p. 39.)
With the Cherokee, as soon as there were rumors of an epidemic
breaking loose—when it was known that a near-by settlement was,
affected, or when there was a case of illness which was pronounced by
the old people, who had witnessed previous epidemics, to be a case^
of the disease in question—one of the most reputed medicine meni
announced his intention to hold a medicine dance, to safeguard thes
people against the coming evil. The whole community turned out
at the scheduled time; the medicine dance was danced, the medicine
"against all diseases" was prepared by the medicine men and drunk
by the people. The medicine dance has not been staged for such a long
time now that the only medicine man who knew the songs and the
medicine used died during my stay with the tribe, in the spring of 1927.