Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

O^BRECHTs] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 79
To give a dog water to drink with, which cartridges have been
rinsed, in order to make it a sure tracker, is another practice which
only too evidently" shows its pedigree.
There are, moreover, some beliefs and practices of which it is not
possible to say whether they have been borrowed from Eiu-opean
folklore or whether they have originated independently. Such are
to my mind:
The vomiting into the river. (See p. 63.)
The use of spider web as a stj^ptic.
The remarkable properties ascribed to such materia medica as
stump water (see p. 57) and lightning-struck wood (see p. 54).
The saying with regard to a shooting star. (See p. 37.) It is to
be noted, however, that in European folldore it is beUeved that when
you see a star shooting you should formulate a wish, which will
surely be fulfdled. So the two beliefs are not really identical; but
one may easily have been transformed into the other after having
passed through the oral tradition of several generations.
Not only is there this borrowing from the sources of European
folklore, there is also an unmistakable influence of white scientific
medical views, which, it is needless to say, are very ill digested and
pretty badly mutilated.
A medicine man who had been dead some years, "Standing
Deer," had told Del. that i;~'4iayo*'DO° i;'msiVask9' (lit., "when they
cough in a dry way," the Cherokee equivalent of our tuberculosis) is
caused by swallowing dust, which becomes a big ball in our lungs.
This view is no doubt a residue of the lessons in hj^giene taught at
the Government school. At one time T. gave me a similar account.
When I asked him in a fitting way his views on the origin of disease
he told me he could hardly answer that question—it was too difficult
for him. He had heard that "some pretend that all disease is caused
by very fine dust, so fine you can hardly see it, flying around in the
room. It gets into our body and makes disease there, they say.
Maybe it's true; maybe it isn't."
Some cases have come to my notice where these scientific medical
principles are not bluntly taken over, but are happily blended with
already existing aboriginal opinions. So, e. g., diseases that used to
be ascribed to neglect of ritual in Idlling game (asldng pardon, build-
ing a fire, etc.) are now often said to be caused by the hunter inhaling
"bad odors" of the animal while skinning and dressing it. Another
instance of this trend of ideas is the following, where it is easy to
see that such explanations of the disease as by "the food having been
changed" (see p. 33) has been active:
"Maybe disease results from what we eat. Whenever I went up
north, to the white people's settlements, I did not like the food; I
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