Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/507

Rh people. The third word Severiano had much difficulty in translating. Finally, he said he thought that it meant "favour", "boon", or "protection". If this be so, the prayer freely put into English would mean, "Be good, we beg, and grant favour to the people (Apaches) here."

Experience has taught that the translation of words out of the common run, made by Mexican captives like Severiano, should not be hastily accepted. The word Sichizi does not mean "favour", "boon" or "protection". On the contrary, it is a contraction of three words well known: Si or Shi meaning "mine" or "our", which is prefixed to every noun concerning which the Apache is especially desirous of making known his possessory right. Thus, all parts of the face and head, the limbs, etc., are combined with this particle. An Apache always says, "my nose", "my ear", "my hair", and not simply, nose, ear, hair, etc., and, in much the same way, he will tell a stranger compiling a vocabulary, "my father", "my mother", etc. The next syllable is the abbreviation for Chídin or ghost.

The ultimate syllable zi is the terminal of indezi, or "great", or it may be zé—(the word is pronounced both Sichizí and Sichizé)—and a contraction of izzé="medicine", used in the sense of "powerful", which would amount to about the same thing. If this substitution be accepted, Sichizí is equivalent to "our great, our powerful spirits". In other respects the translation remains as before.

In the word, Akudé, é is an exploded consonant, sounded with the Zulu click.

Severiano, who had often assisted at such ceremonies and claimed to be something of a "medicine-man" himself, gave the following jumble, which, he alleged, never failed to restore health when intoned in time: