Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/395

 344 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [k. s. f i, 1899

by the phenomena of shadows and especially of echoes. Hence, in tribal society a ghost life is held in universal belief. Thus to imputation is added the ghost theory, or spiritism.

The savage man imputes the diseases which afflict mankind not to the bodies with which he peoples the world with animal creatures, but to the ghosts of these bodies. Hence we often find in a savage tribe that diseases are classified in a more or less vague way as the diseases of the stars, the diseases of the waters, the diseases of the rocks, the diseases of plants, and the diseases of animals. He does not consciously classify them in this manner, but he imputes them to the ghosts of these objects. When a patient is examined by the medicine-man, he may affirm that he has the elk disease, the bear disease, the wolf disease, the rattle- snake disease, or the green-snake disease, or he may say that he has the spider disease, or the fly disease. Especially are animals selected as the authors of ailments. I once witnessed the treat- ment of a child by an Indian shaman who claimed that its ail- ment was due to a little fossil abundantly found in the carbon- iferous rocks of Colorado, and known as Athyris subtilita. I have many times known colds to be attributed to insects, toothache to be attributed to worms, rheumatism to be attributed to snakes, fevers to be attributed to birds ; but on careful examination I have often found that the bodies of these things were not held to be the authors of the mischief, but that their ghosts were the active agencies. Not always can this explanation be obtained, and sometimes the thing itself will be exhibited as having been ex- tracted from the patient ; but, in the case of the Athyris, the medicine-man claimed to me that, when he extracted the disease from the child, he put the fossil in his mouth before he performed the act of suction by which the ghost was extracted, and that his office consisted in extracting the ghost from the child and return- ing it again to the body of the fossil.

It may be worth while for me to state how widely prevalent is this doctrine of disease among the North American Indians. I

�� �