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52 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
As with the majority of the North American Indians, color symbolism
is intimately associated with the rite of circumambiilation, of
which further mention is made (p. 63).
Sacred numbers.—Four is the fundamental sacred number in
Cherokee ritual and seems always to have been. Although seven is
also frequently met with, it would seem that this number has no
claim to as venerable an age as has four.
Seven may have grown in importance by such outside and acci-
dental influences as the 7-day week and by the reduction to seven
of the number of Cherokee clans.
There are traces of the significance of another number, viz, 12
(and also of its multiple 24) as evidenced by
The 12 runs in the ball game.
The 24 days' taboo of a woman after her delivery (this 24 days can
be reduced to 12 by using an appropriate medicine).
The 24 different plants used against amsGfna diseases.
The formulas and the notes appended to them simply teem with
illustrations of the importance of the sacred numbers, especially of 4
and 7. I therefore considered it superfluous to multiply the examples
here. Attention has been called on page 122 to the interesting process
of rationalization by which a sanction of the use of the number
4 is alleged to be found in a (nonodsting) North Carolina State law.
Materia Medica
In this section I endeavor to give a summary description of Chero-
kee materia medica. I would have very much preferred to incor-
porate in this paper a detailed Cherokee "pharmacopojia," but the
Cherokee botanical materia medica is so extensive as to command
separate treatment. It is considered best to withhold this material,
and to publish it, probably in the form of a paper on Cherokee
ethnobotany, in the near future.
As a general and preliminary consideration it may be stated that
although the Cherokee believe to a limited extent in the therapeutic
value of certain matters of animal and vegetal origin, their materia
medica consist primarily of botanical elements. It is happily ignorant
of any human ingredients, the use of wdiich is so conspicuous in the
primitive medicine of numerous tribes, nay, in the folk medicine of so
many civilized countries; even the belief in the curative power of
saliva (cf. our "fasting spittle") is found wanting; stcrcoraria are
never used, and as a whole, their materia medica is very much
cleaner than, for instance, that of the rural communities of Europe.
The generic name for any particle possessing medicinal properties
is nQ"Vo"t4', the meaning of which is literally "to treat with," but the
emotional value of which had better be rendered "to cure with."
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