Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
besides the traditionalists or conservatives, a lot of "progressive"
Cherokee who did not look unfavorably upon the adoption of white
culture.
Such being the condition, the death of every old medicine man, of
every staunch traditionalist, means a blow to the culture of yore that
is truly irremediable : A considerable portion of the aboriginal religion,
ritual, and science dies with liim; and maybe a score of myths and
stories, a song or six, and a couple of dances will never again be heard.
If one has had the sad experience to witness such a departure—as
Mooney lived to see Ay. die and as I helped to carry Og. to his grave
on a Bi^ Cove mountain slope—only then does one realize that, if
with one man so much of the aboriginal knowledge dies, how much this
tribe must have lost and forgotten during the last few generations.
In spite of all this, however much of their ritual and however many
of their tenets of belief they may have lost, it is remarkable how uncontaminated
by white or an}^ other influence is the bulk of Cherokee
medicinal knowledge.
The following are the only beliefs and practices in the domain of
medicine that can actually be traced to European influence:
A crowing hen causes a death in the family; the death can be averted
by killing the animal.
This is a very general common European belief ;^^ that it actually
crossed the Atlantic mth the Eiu-opean settlers appears from Bergen,
Fanny D., Animal and Plant Lore, nos. 1335-38 and also Notes, p. 160.
A howling dog hkewise "causes" death. (It is interesting to note
that what in Em'opean folldore is considered as an omen may become
a cause in Cherokee belief. (See p. 37.) ^^ W. told me that his mother,
Ayo., used to scold the dog, and command the animal to either stop
howling or else to die itself. If the dog died, its evil-foreboding
howling had no further effect.
The burning of old shoe soles in a purificatory rite against contagious
disease is another practice which is undoubtedly of European origin;
old shoe soles were considered an efficacious means to combat the
plague in Shakespeare's time,^* and also the Negro has borrowed this
remarkable panacea from the white man's pharmacy. (Puckett, pp.
377-379.)
^' Tetzner, Dr. Fr., Deutsches Sprichworterbuch, Leipzig, (n. d.), p. 268.
Eckart, R.: Niederdeutsche Sprichworter, Braunschweig, 1893, p. 558. Le
Roux de Lincy: Le Livre des proverbes fran^ais, Paris, 1842, Part I, p. 146.
De Cock, Alfons, Spreekwoorden en Zegswijzen over de Vromven, de Liefde en
het Huwelijk, Gent, 1911, p. 32.
« Cf. Rolland, Eug., Faune populaire de la France, Paris, 1877-1909, Part IV,
pp. 66 seq. De Cock, Alfons, Spreekwoorden, Gezegden en Uitdrukkingen op
Volksgeloof berustend, Antwerpen, 1920, Part I, p. 97.