Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

112 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
as an honorary president of a powerful amalgamation of scientific
societies. W. might have built and directed a splendidly equipped
and well-paying hospital; but Og. (pi. 9, a), whom we are going to
present now, would have been the altruistic and devoted scientist,
constantly busy in the laboratory, peering over tables and instruments,
testing, measuriDg, and titrating, doggedly in search after
methods and devices to improve the health and lengthen the life of
this sorely tried and cruelly stricken humanity.
Og. was 64 years old when he died in 1927, while I was working with
him. His knowledge was truly encyclopedic, and whenever the
rich fund of W.'s information tarried, and no one else could supply
the necessary elucidation, Og. was the last and usually happy resort.
When there was a diagnosis to be made that baffled everybody his
knowledge and experience was never called upon in vain; when
plants or roots were needed, the very names of which other medicine
men but faintly recollected, he was always able to describe them, to
find them, and to identify them.
When hoary origins of institutions and of practices were to be dug
up out of the voluminous mythological lore he was the man to do it,
when everybody else had failed.
If only he had had 10 per cent as much ambition as he had knowl-
edge of tribal, ritual, and medicinal affairs he woidd have been as
celebrated one day as that other "Oconostota" of Fort Loudon fame.
But his inherent shyness, which went so far as to actuall}'^ shun the
company even of his friends, his passion for his profession, his truly
philosophic turn of mind, made of this man a personality that in a
civilized community and in an educated environment might have
become an Edison or an Einstein.
Dotmg college juniors could not discuss the branch of their predi-
lection with so much zeal and enthusiasm as Og. could. Hours at a
stretch he could not only give information—or rather lecture on
Cherokee obstetrics or semeiology, as I w^oidd much rather put it
but he could investigate a problem, ask surprismgly keen questions, i
that often really stunulated thought and provoked solutions.
He was practically the only medicine man of the many I have ]
known who could be said to have a certain perspective in his Icnowledge i
and who was not hopelessly unable to connect two bits of information
that came from different branches of his "erudition." If his opinion
was asked regarding an obscure text in the formulas, he would of
his own accord consult liis fund of mythological lore, to see what he
could find there that might be of any use to shed some light on the
problem. t
His professional devotion was edifying, and his honesty was beyond
questioning. I have elsewhere drawn attention to the baffling fact i
t-hat even such a character as Og. used methods which can hardly
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