Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/489

Rh circumspection and secrecy. Detection of the criminal is consequently rare. Severiano—a Mexican captive, brought up in the ideas of the Apaches and married in the tribe—complained that no less than four of his children had been bewitched and had died. Mr. Cooley, the chief of scouts at the neighbouring post of Fort Apache, a gentleman familiar with the facts, diagnosed the disease as scarlet-fever.

Associated with the idea of prayer, often, if not always, will be discovered amulets and talismans.

The Apaches have no fetiches, at least none of the small animal-figures treasured by Moquis, Zunis, and Rio Grande Pueblos; but no one of them is so poor that he cannot provide himself with talismans of conceded potency. These may be the rattle of a snake, the beak or claw of an eagle, the claws of the bear, or, more frequently, small fragments of petrified wood, quartz crystals, or twigs which have been knocked by the lightning from the parent stem. Bear-claws will be worn as a necklace, serving the double purpose of amulet and decoration.

No explanation has been obtained why petrified wood should be venerated. In the country of the Moquis (who live north of the Apaches and west of the Navajoes) this silicified wood occurs in great quantity and in large pieces. Petrified forests furnish an inexhaustible supply. The Moquis make the larger fragments do duty as idols.

It is not strange that crystalline quartz should be regarded as "medicine", because, in the form of dog-tooth spar, it bears a strong resemblance to the fang of a wolf or other wild animal, capable of doing harm.

If the people of Ceylon, with their comparatively greater enlightenment, can bend the knee to a fossil elephant's tusk, saying it is the tooth of Buddha, it is not