Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/497

Rh people. This would show that the Apache word for horse is in reality their old word for dog, that now given being Tchlin-cha.

Among the Indians along the Rio Grande parrots are venerated. The feathers of these birds are preserved with great care by these Indians, as well as by Moquis and Zunis. The birds themselves are kept in cages in the Pueblo of Santo Domingo. Neither the parrot nor the macaw belongs to Arizona, although the former appears occasionally near Mount Graham, a short distance north of the Mexican boundary. It is frequently seen in the Sierra Madre, Mexico; and when General Crook led his expedition into that precipitous range, his Apache scouts let no opportunity escape for securing each one which came near camp.

The centipede, tarantula, scorpion, or "gila monster", and all varieties of lizard, are reverenced in the direct ratio of their real or imputed virulence. Upon this point Antonio Besias may be quoted, giving his exact language, as transcribed at the moment: "I was once a 'medicine-man', and I want you to know what is the very last thing that the Apache 'medicine-men' can do for their sick; it is all the same if a 'padre' (priest) were to go visit a dying Christian." (Meaning that the ceremonies to be described partook of the sacred and solemn import of the administration of the last sacrament of the Church.) "When a man is sick, and has about reached his last hour, the final remedy is this: They (the "medicine-men") make a circle, in which they erect a close 'jacal' (lodge) of branches, sprinkling its floor with fine sand. They next gather together and grind up different coloured earths, yellow, red, etc., and with these make upon the sanded floor a representation of a big centipede, around which are delineated, in the coloured earths, rattlesnakes, 'gila monsters', lizards, swifts, deer, toads, etc. After this they paint 'monos' (literally "monkeys", but explained by Antonio as clown-like figures of men, that is to say, gods