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oIbrechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 87
dealing with medicine or disease, had better be withheld to introduce
Ms. II, which contains several divinatory formulas, whereas not one
formula of this class occurs in the Ay. Ms.
The medicine men, claiming as theirs the specialty of rainm.aking,
driving off storms, etc., are on the verge of extinction. The formulas
used in their ceremonies are equally scanty. The Ay. manuscript
does not contain a single specimen of them. There are some, how-
ever, in Mss. II and III, and since the matter does not pertain
directly to the subject discussed in this paper, it is deemed advisable
to go into details about it in its proper place.
Ga'^ht'aDtn9"''Da"ne!a', she makes it (i. e., the baby) jump down
for her (the parturiens).
This is the way in which a midmfe is generally referred to. Since
formerly there was an injunction that a parturient woman must be
assisted by four female attendants, all the women are more or less
conversant with the help to be tendered to mother and infant.
Some of them, however, perhaps a daughter of a medicine man or
a woman who has married one, become more proficient in the matter,
and extend their knowledge so as to be able to attend to complications
and to prenatal and puerperal troubles; they may gradually come to
be looked upon as regular medicine women, in which case, as already
described (see p. 84), they will also treat ailments of different nature.
One of these women is usually preferred to a male doctor to assist
at partus and to supervise and direct the other women attendants.
O. (pi. 12, b) and Jo. (pi. 12, a) were the leading midvvives at Big
Cove during our stay there, se-hyemi (pi. 8, b) and my informant, W.'s
wife, also enjoying quite an enviable reputation.
Df'Dane''s8Gi''ski, he kills people by witchcraft (hab.).
This name, which can not be sufficiently analyzed—the stem may
have connection with -yj-ne's- "to droop"; there is, however, no
causative element in the expression—is given to the medicine man who
has attained the summit of occult power: he can kill a person by
reciting an incantation against him, and thus "spoiling his saliva" or
"making his soul dispirited." This is also done by obtaining stealth-
ily some saliva of the victim and burning it, by shooting invisible
arrowheads, sharp sticks, or pebbles into his body, even by stealing
his soul. When they exert their powers in this way their activity is
hardly different from that of witches. (See p. 129.)
As a rule they only harm people when asked and hired to do so by
the victim's enemies. The ceremony is usually performed near the
river, which accounts for the name ama''yi Df'Dadzo".stt''sGi (see
p. 85) also occasionally being bestowed on these medicine men, but
everybody feels that there is a black abyss between their activity and
their formulas and those of the "priest."