Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/270

] A butterfly with striped wings causes internal pains. The treatment consists in singing the butterfly song (p. 295) and pressing the body of the patient with four or five images of the butterfly cut from deerskin.

The worm, kămmâlt, when found dead and dried is ground up in the mortar and the powder used to cure sores around the baby's mouth.

One's teeth will fall out if he eats food over which some caterpillars have crawled.

The nausea of pregnancy is caused by unfaithfulness on the part of the woman. It is cured by singing the proper songs and striking two sticks a foot long over the patient afterwards.

The remolinos, or whirlwinds, that are so common in Pimería, cause pains in the legs, but not swellings. The remedy is to sing the wind song (p. 324) and to rub the limbs with the black gum of the okatilla, Fouquiera splendens.

The sun may cause disease for which there would seem to be no special song. However, a small colored image of the sun with feather rays attached is used by the medicine-man.

A captured Apache child might cause lameness in some member of the family by whom he was kept. It was cured by some one who had killed an Apache singing over the patient. Then the child must be sold to the Mexicans or Americans. It was also supposed that the touch of an Apache woman might cause paralysis.

Piholt was once a man, but is now an evil spirit living in the east, and causing a disease which has its songs.

The Nyavolt, an evil spirit, may induce a horse to throw his rider and injure him. The patient is cured by singing the Nyavolt song (p. 329) and swinging a pair of crossed sticks over the injured part.

A certain disease of the throat is called wheita, and the same name is given to a stick made from mesquite root, which is thrust down the patient's throat four times and then passed four times over the heart to cure him.

Tcnyĭm is an evil spirit that causes sickness in children. The most characteristic symptom is fretfulness. The Tcnyĭm song is sung and the child's body is pressed with a strand of hair taken in war from an Apache's head. The hair is cleaned and washed by some old person, then the ends are glued together with the gum of the creosote bush before it is ready to use. Âmĭna sticks tied with bluebird and redbird feathers are also used.

Kâʼmâl tkâk (pl., b), who was accustomed to assist the doctors, states that this name is applied to a disease of the throat which causes the victim to lose flesh. The treatment consists in placing âʼmina in an olla of water to soak while the doctor or his assistant blows through a tube, called the tcnyĭm cigarette, upon