Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

OLMECHTs] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 111
Altogether, W. was by far the most impressive and most important
personality in the settlement at the time of my stay. If only so much
antipathy had not been rampant against him he would without any
doubt have been considered, implicitly if not outspokenly, the leader
of the community.
This role, however, it has been given to T. (63 years old, bachelor,
pi. 10, c) to fulfill. Vastly inferior to W., both in intelligence and
knowledge, his disposition and temperament have secured for him a
universal love and a public esteem, to which by the mere accomplishments
of his mind he could never have attained.
His social intercourse is replete with a distinction and a nobility
that would create a sensation in an aristocratic drawing-room.
Children that run and scramble away into hiding when W. comes
briskly stepping along the trail, approach with glee and hail with joy
the person of T. as he leisurely and serenely comes strolling along.
There is in the whole of his appearance, in his intercourse, in his deal-
ings with young and old alike, a kindly amiability tempered with a
dignified reserve that immediately betrays the wisdom of life.
Humbly realizing his importance, he never hurries, speaks but little
and then slowly, as if he deliberately chose and weighed the value of
his words; he is stoic and calm in illness and adversity as in victory
and success. He not only professes to be humble, but actually con-
siders his professional knowledge as a loan extended to him for the
benefit of his people.
Although he has passed through the various grades of the profession,
it speaks for his personality that he now only retains such specialties
as divination, praying for long life, love attraction, etc. But anyone
appealing to his medical knowledge is never disappointed—at least
not by T.'s willingness.
The general consideration in which he is held has brought him the
honor of preparing the Big Cove team for the ball game whenever they
have been challenged by a rival team of another settlement. The
meaning of this appointment has been explained (p. 91).
It wUl be noticed that after all, the professional aspect of T.'s
character is scarcely touched upon here, and this portrays conditions
exactly as I found them. To a question, which of the two, W. or
T., is the better medicine man, a Cherokee answers that T. is so
u'Da'Nttfyu', such a nice fellow.
The contrast between these two men, whose characters I have
sketched as objectively as can be done by such a method as here used,
is clearly brought out, and goes to prove that with the Cherokee
superior knowledge in a medicine man may have to give the right of
way to a more hinnan disposition.
If all the remarkable and noteworthy persons here discussed had
been born and educated in a white environment I like to think of T.
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