Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/490

434 surprising that the Apache should look with awe upon the pretty, denticulated crystals of silica.

Twigs cut down by lightning are, perhaps, the most highly regarded of all talismans employed. This results logically from the worship paid to lightning—a worship prevailing as well among the Sioux and Cheyennes of the Great Plains, where lightning is so vivid and destructive.

On the Sierra Madre expedition, one of the young "medicine-men" excited curiosity by the carefulness with which he preserved from scrutiny a little buckskin bag, elaborately dotted with brass-headed tacks. After much persuasion, he allowed several officers to examine it, to feel it, and to peer into, but not to empty it. It contained a couple of these twigs and one or more pieces of stone of some kind.

Under the head of mortuary customs, the Apache treatment of the bodies of the dead should be more fully