Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/127

1866.] chastity[Pg 119] is a national medicine. With the Mandans, friendship for the whites is supposed to be the source of national and individual advantage.

Besides the varieties of medicine already alluded to, there are in use charms of almost every kind. When game is scarce, medicine is made to call back the buffalo. The Man in the Sun is invoked for fair weather, for success in war or chase, and for a cure of wounds. The spirits of the dead are appeased by medicine songs and offerings. The curiosity of some may be attracted by the following rude and literal translation of the song of a Blackfoot woman to the spirit of her son, who was killed on his first war-party. The words were written down at the time, and are not in any respect changed or smoothed.

O my son, farewell!

You have gone beyond the great river,

Your spirit is on the other side of the Sand Buttes;

I will not see you for a hundred winters;

You will scalp the enemy in the green prairie,

Beyond the great river.

When the warriors of the Blackfeet meet,

When they smoke the medicine-pipe and dance the war-dance,

They will ask, 'Where is Isthumaka?—

Where is the bravest of the Mannikappi?'

He fell on the war-path.

Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo.

Many scalps will be taken for your death;

The Crows will lose many horses;

Their women will weep for their braves,

They will curse the spirit of Isthumaka.

O my son! I will come to you

And make moccasins for the war-path,

As I did when you struck the lodge

Of the 'Horse-Guard' with the tomahawk.

Farewell, my son! I will see you

Beyond the broad river.

Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo," etc., etc.

Sung in a plaintive minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the dirge was far more impressive than the words would indicate.

It cannot be denied that the whites, who consort much with the ruder tribes of Indians imbibe, to a considerable degree, their veneration for medicine. The old trappers and voyageurs are, almost without exception, observers of omens and dreamers of dreams. They claim that medicine is a faculty which can in some degree be cultivated, and aspire to its possession as eagerly as does the Indian. Sometimes they acquire a reputation that is in many ways beneficial to them.

As before said, it is no object of this paper to defend or combat the Indian notion of medicine. Such a system exists as a fact; and whoever writes upon American Demonology will find many fruitful topics of investigation in the daily life of the uncontaminated Indian. There may be nothing of truth in the supposed prediction by Tecumseh, that Tuckabatchee would be destroyed by an earthquake on a day which he named; the gifts of the "Prophet" may be overstated in the traditions that yet linger in Kentucky and Indiana; the descent of the Mandans from Prince Madoc and his adventurous Welchmen, and the consideration accorded them on that account, may very possibly be altogether fanciful; but whoever will take the trouble to investigate will find in the real Indian a faith, and occasionally a power, that quite equal the faculties claimed by our civilized clairvoyants, and will approach an untrodden path of curious, if not altogether useful research.