Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/15

Rh On Tuesdays and Fridays they gather earth from people's footprints, and with this can do great harm. Idem, page 301.

This idea is the same as is held by the Mojave Indians, who, however, have improved upon it to this extent. Whenever a witch or several witches has or have brought upon the tribe some such poorly understood epidemic as the "hoop-me-koff" (i. e. the whooping-cough), the medicine-men proceed to find the witch or witches by carefully inspecting all trails leading to the infected hut, and by taking up a pinch of earth from any suspected footprint they believe that they can prevent the escape of the delinquent, and eventually apprehend her or them. See my article, "Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojaves of the Rio Colorado," in "Journal of American Folk-Lore."

Leland also says that the "conjuring stones" of the negro Voudoos "once a week should be dipped or touched with whiskey." Idem, page 372.

Love-philters.—Maria Antonia Cavazo de Garza vouched for all the following:—

1. "Take some of the bulb of the Yerba Gonzalez (specimen sent to the U. S. National Museum), dry it, reduce to powder, put some inside the shoe of the young woman, at time of catamenial purgation; she cannot help falling in love with you."

2. "Kill a jack-rabbit; take out its eyes, dry them, grind into a powder; put this in tobacco, make a cigarette, and give to the young lady to smoke. The result will be as above."

3. Or, take the insect called cantaria (it seems to me that this is a kind of potato-bug, allied to the cantharis, although my informant insists that she knows cantharides and buys them in the "botica," or drug-store, for making "parchas," or plasters,—and that this is a different insect), dry, grind to powder, put a very small pinch into a cigarette, and let the young woman smoke as before, or let it be put in her food or drink.

A young Mexican in Rio Grande City, Texas, whose name I have, assured me that he once went to consult a "vieja"—old woman—in the city of San Luis Potosi, to ask her help in securing the affections of a young woman who scorned him; by her advice he induced the young lady to smoke a package of cigarittos prepared by himself of tobacco previously dampened and dried by methods fully described in my volume on "Scatalogic Rites." He was successful in his suit, and attributed his good fortune to the suggestions of the old woman.

Lumbago.—Take the bulb of the "sacasal," dry and reduce to powder, mix with "brea" (tar). Apply as a plaster, the surface of which should be sprinkled with mescal. Apply to the small of the