Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

80 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
ate but little and was hungry aU the time; still I always felt well;
but when I came back home for a few months, I again ate all I liked,
just my own. business, and as much as I wanted; I suffered from
stomach troubles all the time. The food we eat may have some
disease in it. There may be a disease in apples, eggs, potatoes,
etc." (W.)
Attitude of the Community Toward the Sick
In a community such as is here described not a thing, of however
small import, happens to a member without all the others Imowing
about it and taking a keen interest in it.
Illness is too fickle a thing and is of too restless and shifting a nature
to think or to talk lightly about it, even if it is onl}^ our neighbor
who happens to be stricken just now. Who can tell whether we our-
selves will not be the next to be visited?
The sick man therefore can rely on the S3^mpathy and the commiseration
of his fellows. If a member of the sufferer's houshold is met,
or one of his neighbors, or any one at all who is expected to know
how he is, questions as to his condition are alwaj^s eagerly asked, and
you can feel that these are urged by motives of sympathy and pity
rather than by civility or iiiquisitiveness.
Nor do the people give proof of their sympathy by mere display
of words—the actions are not found wanting. If the head of a family
is ill, and is unable to provide for his family, all the able-bodied
members of the settlement turn out on an appointed day and work
all day felling trees and sawing and cutting the logs, so that the
family may have firewood. If the man is still ill at corn-planting
time the whole com-munity will again rise to the occasion, plow his
fields and plant his corn, etc.; even hoeing the fields of the sick and
gathering their harvests is done for them free of charge, and with the
most cheerful good will in the worid.
This "mutual aid society," as it might aptly be called, has a chief
chosen by the members, who holds office for a year. The election is
a very informal aft'air and as a rule merely consists in the nomination .
of a popular individual by two or three of his friends and the oral i
assent of the rest; it usually takes place about corn-planting time, (
when as a rule the members have to meet anyway to work for some
sick neighbor. The chief is assisted by a kind of messenger, who, at s
the former's bidding, has to call out the members whenever necessary, i
This chief is at present looked upon pretty much as the chief of "
the settlement; it is also his duty, in times of drought, to go, accompanied
by six other men, and invite a medicine man, who is expert at ,
rain making, to use his art for the benefit of the people and their crops.
The same fine community spirit is displaj^ed on the occasion of such '
a calamity as a fire. If a member of the settlement loses his cabin and