Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/482

 426 starting, he consults the spirits nightly, and predicts success or advises retreat; and to him are committed the arrangement of the dance held upon the return to the rancheria of the raiders, driving before them the spoil of the Na-káy-de, or Mexicans.

It is not essential that a "medicine-man" be old in years; anyone, possessing the requisite shrewdness, penetration, plausibility, and "cheek", can aspire to and attain this proud dignity. Even Mexican captives are not debarred from the office. Antonio Besias, while a slave among the Apaches, became one of their most influential "medicine-men", and other instances may be cited were it deemed necessary. Hand in hand with this goes a sort of hereditary succession, exemplified in the persons of young boys, who can be seen on most important occasions sitting apart with the old men, engaged in the work of divination.

Women are not absolutely excluded from participation in the minor offices, but to the more recondite, such as are celebrated in sacred caves, they are rigorously denied admission, the theory obtaining among Apaches (as it does among Sioux, Cheyennes, and others) that the mere presence of women, in certain conditions, would render nugatory the best directed efforts of the most potent "medicine-men".

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Omens are constantly watched by the Apaches. Not such as the Roman soothsayers noted—the entrails of animals or the peckings of chickens—but as already written, the hooting of owls, the flight of parrots, and the trail of serpents.

On the Sierra Madre expedition, one of the commanders (Mr. Randall) caught an owlet, which he fastened to the pommel of his saddle. When the ugly bird began its low-muttered notes, the excitement among the Apache scouts was something wonderful to witness. Their head-men