Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
long. The free end of the twine is held between the thumb and
index finger of the right hand, while the left hand, with the fingers
stretched out, is placed over the right, ostensibly in a free, easymanner,
and without any particular purpose, but actually to sliield the
function of the middle finger of the right hand, wliich is to stealthily
transmit to the dangling stone its ''occult " metion. The direction in
which the stone starts swingingis the one in which the search is to be started.
By this method often things are found, the whereabouts of which
are not so completely unknown to the medicine man as he pretends,
A procedure where prestidigitation is likewise often met with is
when the medicine man sucks the swollen part of a patient's body,
and after much exertion usually succeeds in spitting out "the disease,"
viz, a pebble, an insect, etc., objects, of course, wliich he held hidden
in his cheek before the performance began. I know of a case where
Og., as a doctor, and as a man as honest a fellow as you could care to
meet, produced a worm after having sucked the jaw of a man suffering
with toothache.
Needless to say, just as in any other communities and as in every
other professional group, there are also among the Cherokee medicine
men individual differences as far as professional ethics are concerned.
One of them told me the following story which throws some light on his
methods of keeping up liis reputation:
He once went to Yellowhill (e*'lawo*'Di) and on the way met an
acquaintance who told him tluit he had built a fish trap but could
not manage to catch more than two or three fish a day. He asked the
medicine man if he did not know a formula to catch fish.
This cunning fellow said "he was sony, he loiew no such formula;
as a matter of fact ho would Yory much like to get one himself."^''
Anyhow the man insisted that the medicine man come to Ms house,
look at the trap, and spend the night at liis house.
Next morning, before breakfast, the owner of the trap went down
to the river and came back Avith a whole washtub full of fish. There
must have been more than a hundred of them; and he had to go back
again, and fetch a second washtub fidl. He cUdn't doubt for an instant
that the medicine man had recited a formula, and said so. The
medicine man just smiled a mysterious grin, and let liim continue in
his belief.
(The real reason of this "prodigious catch" was, the branch by
wliich the fish usually passed had been poisoned by a sawmill near by,
letting its sawdust loose in it. This had made the fish come by another
branch of the river, the one on which the trap had been set.)
Frequently, after having consulted the spirits by means of the fire
or of the beads divination, the medicine man will foretell or prophesy
*8 This in spite of the fact tliat he did know at least three or four fishing con-
jurations.—r. M. O.