The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604))

DUST FROM CHURCHES – ITS USE

The last ceremonial powder to be described is dust from the ground, as among some of the Australians who smear their heads with pipe-clay as a sign of mourning.⁴⁴²

The French writers mention among the ceremonies of the Natchez one in which the Great Sun "gathered dust, which he threw back over his head, and turned successively to the four quarters of the world in repeating the same act of throwing dust."⁴⁴³

Mention is made of "an old woman who acted as beadle" of a church, who "once brought to the bedside of a dying person some of the sweepings from the floor of the altar, to ease and shorten a very lingering death."⁴⁴⁴

Altar dust was a very ancient remedy for disease. Frommann says that, of the four tablets found in a temple of Esculapius, one bore this inscription: "Lucio affecto lateris dolore; veniret et ex ara tollerit cinerem et una cum vino comisceret et poneret supra latus; et convaluit," etc.⁴⁴⁵

It seems then that the mediæval use of altar dust traces back to the Roman use of altar ashes.

So hard is it to eradicate from the minds of savages ideas which have become ingrafted upon their nature that we need not be surprised to read in the Jesuit relations of affairs in Canada (1696-1702) that, at the Mission of Saint Francis, where the Indians venerated the memory of a saintly woman of their own race, Catheraine Tagikoo-ita, "pour guérir les malades que les rémèdes ordinaires ne soulagent point, on avale dans l'eau ou dans un bouillon un peu de la poussière de son tombeau."

A few persons are to be found who endeavor to collect the dust from the feet of one hundred thousand Brahmins. One way of collecting this dust is by spreading a cloth before the door of a house where a great multitude of Brahmins are assembled at a feast, and, as each Brahmin comes out, he shakes the dust from his feet as he treads upon this cloth. Many miraculous cures are declared to have been performed upon persons using this dust.⁴⁴⁶

A widow among the Armenian devil-worshipers is required "to strew dust on her head and to smear her face with clay."⁴⁴⁷

CLAY-EATING

The eating of clay would appear to have once prevailed all over the world. In places the custom has degenerated into ceremonial or is to be found only in myths. The Aztec devotee picked up a pinch of clay in the temple of Tezcatlipoca and ate it with the greatest reverence.⁴⁴⁸

Sahagun is quoted by Squier⁴⁴⁹ as saying that the Mexicans swore by the sun and "by our sovereign mother, the Earth," and ate a piece of earth.

But the use of clay by the Mexicans was not merely a matter of ceremony; clay seems to have been an edible in quite common use.

Edible earth was sold openly in the markets of Mexico; "yaun tierra," says Gomara in the list of foods given by him.⁴⁵⁰

The eating of clay was forbidden to Mexican women during pregnancy.

Diego Duran describes the ceremonial eating of clay in the temples of Mexico; "Llegó el dedo al suelo, y cogiendo tierra en él lo metió en la boca; á la cual ceremonia llamaban comer tierra santa."⁴⁵¹ And again he says that in their sacrifices the Mexican nobles ate earth from the feet of the idols. "Comian tierra de la que estaba á los pies del Ydolo."⁴⁵² But the Mexicans did not limit themselves to a ceremonial clay-eating alone. Thomas Gage relates that "they ate a kind of earth, for at one season in the yeer they had nets of mayle, with the which they raked up a certaine dust that is bred upon the water of the Lake of Mexico, and that is kneaded together like unto oas of the sea."⁴⁵³

Diego Duran⁴⁵⁴ mentions the ceremonial clay-eating at the feast of Tezcatlipoca agreeing with the note already taken from Kingsborough.

There is reference to clay-eating in one of the myths given in the Popol-Vuh. The Quiche deities Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, desiring to overcome the god Cabrakan, fed him upon roasted birds, but they took care to rub one of the birds with "tizate" and to put white powder around it. The circle of white powder was, no doubt, a circle of hoddentin or something analogous thereto, intended to prevent any baleful influence being exercised by Cabrakan. "Mais ils frottèrent l'un des oiseaux avec du tizate et lui mirent de la poussière blanche à l'entour."⁴⁵⁵

In a footnote the word "tizate" is explained to be a very friable whitish earth, used in polishing metals, making cement, etc.: "Terre blanchâtre fort friable, et dont ils se servent pour polir les métaux, faire du ciment, etc."

Cabeza de Vaca says that the Indians of Florida ate clay – "de la terre."⁴⁵⁶ He says also⁴⁵⁷ that the natives offered him many mesquite beans, which they ate mixed with earth – "mele avec de la terre."⁴⁵⁸

The Jaguaces of Florida ate earth (tierra).⁴⁵⁹

At the trial of Vasco Pocallo de Figueroa, in Santiago de Cuba, in 1522, "for cruelty to the natives," he sought to make it appear that the Indians ate clay as a means of suicide: "el abuso de los Indios en comer tierra … seguian matandose de intento comiendo tierra."⁴⁶⁰

The Muiscas had in their language the word "jipetera," a "disease from eating dirt."⁴⁶¹ Whether the word "dirt" as here employed means filth, or earth and clay, is not plain; it probably means clay and earth.

Venegas asserts that the Indians of California ate earth. The traditions of the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, California, and vicinity show that "they had fed upon a kind of clay," which they "often used upon their heads by way of ornament."⁴⁶²

The Tátu Indians of California mix "red earth into their acorn bread … to make the bread sweet and make it go further."⁴⁶³

Long⁴⁶⁴ relates that when the young warrior of the Oto or Omaha tribes goes out on his first fast he "rubs his person over with a whitish clay," but he does not state that he ate it.

Sir John Franklin⁴⁶⁵ relates that the banks of the Mackenzie River in British North America contain layers of a kind of unctuous mud, probably similar to that found near the Orinoco, which the Tinneh Indians "use occasionally as food during seasons of famine, and even at other times chew as an amusement… It has a milky taste and the flavour is not disagreeable."

Father de Smet⁴⁶⁶ says of the Athapascan: "Many wandering families of the Carrier tribe … have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment." This does not seem to have been intentionally eaten.

"Some of the Siberian tribes, when they travel, carry a small bag of their native earth, the taste of which they suppose will preserve them from, all the evils of a foreign sky."⁴⁶⁷

We are informed that the Tunguses of Siberia eat a clay called "rock marrow," which they mix with marrow. "Near the Ural Mountains, powdered gypsum, commonly called 'rock meal,' is sometimes mixed with bread, but its effects are pernicious."⁴⁶⁸

"The Jukabiri of northeastern Siberia have an earth of sweetish and rather astringent taste," to which they "ascribe a variety of sanatory properties."⁴⁶⁹

There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the Mene (a species of Hæmadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Australia.⁴⁷⁰

The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in the same manner it is known to both the Zuñi and Tusayan.

Wallace says that eating dirt was "a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites."⁴⁷¹

"Los apassionados à comer tierra son los Indios Otomacos."⁴⁷²

"The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is fat and unctuous."⁴⁷³

Waitz⁴⁷⁴ cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Orinoco eat large quantities of a fatty clay.

Clay was eaten by the Brazilians generally.⁴⁷⁵

The Romans had a dish called "alica" or "frumenta," made of the grain zea mixed with chalk from the hills at Puteoli, near Naples.⁴⁷⁶

According to the myths of the Cingalese, their Brahmins once "fed on it [earth] for the space of 60,000 years."⁴⁷⁷

PREHISTORIC FOODS USED IN COVENANTS

It has been shown that the Apache, on several occasions, as when going out to meet strangers, entering into solemn agreements, etc., made use of the hoddentin. A similar use of food, generally prehistoric, can be noted in other regions of the world.

It was a kind of superstitious trial used among the Saxons to purge themselves of any accusation by taking a piece of barley bread and eating it with solemn oaths and execrations that it might prove poisonous or their last morsel if what they asserted or denied was not true.⁴⁷⁸ Those pieces of bread were first execrated by the priest, from which he infers that at a still earlier day sacramental bread may have been used for the same purpose.

At Rome, in the time of Cicero and Horace, a master who suspected that his slaves had robbed him conducted them before a priest. They were each obliged to eat a cake over which the priest had "pronounced some magical words (carmine infectum)."⁴⁷⁹

The people living on the coast of Coramandel have an ordeal consisting in the chewing of unboiled rice. No harm will attach to him who tells the truth, but the perjurer is threatened with condign punishment in this world and in that to come.⁴⁸⁰ Bread is bitten when the Ostaaks of Siberia take a solemn oath, such as one of fealty to the Czar.⁴⁸¹

SACRED BREADS AND CAKES

Since the employment of hoddentin, or tule pollen, as a sacred commemorative food would seem to have been fairly demonstrated, before closing this section I wish to add a few paragraphs upon the very general existence of ritualistic farinaceous foods in all parts of the world. They can be detected most frequently in the ceremonial reversion to a grain or seed which has passed or is passing out of everyday use in some particular form given to the cake or bread or some circumstance of time, place, and mode of manufacture and consumption which stamps it as a "survival." So deeply impressed was Grimm⁴⁸² with the wide horizon spreading around the consideration of this topic that he observed: "Our knowledge of heathen antiquities will gain both by the study of these drinking usages which have lasted into later times and also of the shapes given to baked meats, which either retained the actual forms of ancient idols or were accompanied by sacrificial observances. A history of German cakes and bread rolls might contain some unexpected disclosures… Even the shape of cakes is a reminiscence of the sacrifices of heathenism."

The first bread or cake to be mentioned in this part of the subject is the pancake, still so frequently used on the evening of Shrove Tuesday. In antiquity it can be traced back before the Reformation, before the Crusades were dreamed of, before the Barbarians had subverted Rome, before Rome itself had fairly taken shape.

There seems to have been a very decided religious significance in the preparation of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. In Leicestershire, "On Shrove Tuesday a bell rings at noon, which is meant as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes."⁴⁸³

"The Norman Crispellæ (Du Cange) are evidently taken from the Fornacalia, on the 18th of February, in memory of the method of making bread, before the Goddess Fornax invented ovens."⁴⁸⁴

Under "Crispellæ," Du Cange says: "Rustici apud Normannos vocant Crespes, ova pauca mixta cum farina, et in sartagine frixa," and says that they are "ex herba, farina et oleo."⁴⁸⁵ These same Crispellæ are to be seen on the Rio Grande during Christmas week.

In the Greek Church and throughout Russia there is to the present time a "pancake feast" at Shrovetide.⁴⁸⁶

At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend's house to another, masked, and committing every conceivable prank. "Then the people feasted on blinnies – a pancake similar to the English crumpet."⁴⁸⁷

In the pancake we have most probably the earliest form of farinaceous food known to the nations which derived their civilization from the basin of the Mediterranean. Among these nations wheat has been in use from a time far beyond the remotest historical period, and to account for its introduction myth has been invoked; but this wheat was cooked without leaven, or was fried in a pan, after the style of the tortilla still used in Spanish-speaking countries, or of the pancake common among ourselves. Pliny⁴⁸⁸ says that there were no bakers known in Rome until nearly six hundred years after the foundation of the city, in the days of the war with Persia; but he perhaps meant the public bakers authorized by law. The use of wheat and the art of baking bread, as we understand it to-day, were practically unknown to the nations of northern Europe until within the recent historical period.⁴⁸⁹

Nothing would be more in consonance with the mode of reasoning of a primitive people than that, at certain designated festivals, there should be a recurrence to the earlier forms of food, a reversion to an earlier mode of life, as a sort of propitiation of the gods or goddesses who had cared for the nation in its infancy and to secure the continuance of their beneficent offices. Primitive man was never so certain of the power of the gods of the era of his own greatest development that he could rely upon it implicitly and exclusively and ignore the deities who had helped him to stand upon his feet. Hence, the recurrence to pancakes, to unleavened breads of all kinds, among various peoples. This view of the subject was made plain to me while among the Zuñi Indians. Mr. Frank H. Cushing showed me that the women, when baking the "loaves" of bread, were always careful to place in the adobe ovens a tortilla with each batch of the newer kind, and no doubt for the reason just given.

UNLEAVENED BREAD

The unleavened bread of the earliest period of Jewish history has come down to our own times in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, still observed by the Hebrews in all parts of the world, in the bread used in the eucharistic sacrifice by so large a portion of the Christian world, and apparently in some of the usages connected with the half-understood fast known as the "Ember Days." Brand quotes from an old work in regard to the Ember Days: "They were so called 'because that our elder fathers wolde on these days ete no brede but cakes made under ashes.'"⁴⁹⁰

The sacred cake or "draona" of the Parsi "is a small round pancake or wafer of unleavened bread, about the size of the palm of the hand. It is made of wheaten flour and water, with a little clarified butter, and is flexible."⁴⁹¹ A variety of the "draona," called a "frasast," is marked with the finger nail and set aside for the guardian spirits of the departed.⁴⁹²

Cakes and salt were used in religious rites by the ancients. The Jews probably adopted their appropriation from the Egyptians.⁴⁹³ "During all the Passover week – 14th to 21st Nisan, i.e., during this week's moon – Shemites fast, only eating unleavened bread, and most diligently – not without reason – cleansing their houses." "And especially had all leavened matter to be removed, for the new leavener had now arisen, and prayers with curses were offered up against any portions which might have escaped observation. The law of their fierce Jahveh was that, whoever during all this festival tasted leavened bread, 'that soul should be cut off,' which Godwyn mollifies by urging that this only meant the offender should die without children; which was still a pretty considerable punishment for eating a piece of bread!"⁴⁹⁴

"The great day of Pentecost is the 6th of Sivan, or, say, the 22d of May, 1874. From the first barley two loaves were then made, 'the offering of which was the distinguishing rite of the day of Pentecost.'"⁴⁹⁵

On St. Bridget's Eve every farmer's wife in Ireland makes a cake, called bairinbreac; the neighbors are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity.⁴⁹⁶ Vallencey identifies this as the same kind of offering that was made to Ceres, and to "the queen of heaven, to whom the Jewish women burnt incense, poured out drink offerings, and made cakes for her with their own hands."⁴⁹⁷

THE HOT CROSS BUNS OF GOOD FRIDAY

The belief prevailed that these would not mold like ordinary bread.⁴⁹⁸

"In several counties [in England] a small loaf of bread is annually baked on the morning of Good Friday and then put by till the same anniversary in the ensuing year. This bread is not intended to be eaten, but to be used as a medicine, and the mode of administering it is by grating a small portion of it into water and forming a sort of panada. It is believed to be good for many disorders, but particularly for a diarrhœa, for which it is considered a sovereign remedy. Some years ago a cottager lamented that her poor neighbour must certainly die of this complaint, because she had already given her two doses of Good Friday bread without any benefit. No information could be obtained from the doctress respecting her nostrum, but that she had heard old folks say that it was a good thing and that she always made it."⁴⁹⁹

Brand quotes a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine who shows that they were "formerly, at least, unleavened," p. 156. They "are constantly marked with the form of the cross." "It is an old belief that the observance of the custom of eating buns on Good Friday protects the house from fire, and several other virtues are attributed to these buns," p. 156. "Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, following Bryant's Analysis, derives the Good Friday bun from the sacred cakes which were offered at the Arkite Temples, styled Boun, and presented every seventh day," p. 155. A very interesting dissertation upon these sacred cakes as used by the Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews in the time of their idolatry, is to be found in Brand's work, pp. 155-156.⁵⁰⁰

Practices analogous to those referred to are to be noted among the Pueblo Indians. They offer not only the kunque, but bread also in their sacrifices.

In the sacred rabbit hunt of the Zuñi, which occurs four times a year and is carried on for the purpose of procuring meat for the sacred eagles confined in cages, a great fire was made on the crest of a hill, into which were thrown piles of bread crusts and in the smoke of which the boomerangs or rabbit sticks were held while the hunter recited in an audible tone and with downcast head the prayers prescribed for the occasion. One of the early Spanish writers informs us that the women of the pueblo of Santo Domingo, on the Rio Grande, offered bread on bended knees to their idols and then preserved it for the remainder of the year, and the house which did not have a supply of such blessed bread was regarded as unfortunate and exposed to danger.⁵⁰¹

A prehistoric farinaceous food of the Romans survives in our bridecake or wedding cake. It is well understood that among the Romans there were three kinds of marriage: that called "coemptio," that called "concubitu" or "usu," and the highest form of all, known as "confarratio," from the fact that bride and groom ate together of a kind of cake or bread made of the prehistoric flour, the "far." We have preserved the custom of having bridecake, which is still served with many superstitious ceremonies: "it must be cut by the bride herself; it must be broken in pieces (formerly these pieces were cast over the heads of the bridesmaids), and, after being passed through a wedding ring a certain number of times, it must be placed under the pillow of the anxious maiden to serve as a basis for her dreams."⁵⁰²

Exactly what this prehistoric food was it is now an impossibility to determine with exactness. Torquemada shows that long after the Romans had obtained the use of wheat they persisted in the sacrificial use of the "nola isla," "farro," and "escanda," forms of wild grain once roasted and ground and made into bread by their forefathers.⁵⁰³ A similar usage prevailed among the Greeks. Pliny speaks of "the bearded red wheat, named in Latin 'far,'" and tells us that rye was called "secale" or "farrago."⁵⁰⁴ The radical "far" is still to be found all over Europe in the word for flour, "farina," "farine," or "harina," while it is also possible that it may be detected in the ever-to-be-honored name of Farragut.⁵⁰⁵

In the eight marriage rites described by Baudhâyana, the initiatory oblation in the fourth (that in which the father gives his daughter away) consists of "parched grain." This rite is one of the four which are lawful for a Brahman. The parched grain to be used would seem to be either sesamum or barley, although this is not clear. Vasishtha says, chapter 27, concerning secret penances: "He who … uses barley (for his food) becomes pure."⁵⁰⁶

The pages of Brand⁵⁰⁷ are filled with references to various forms of cake which seem properly to be included under this chapter. In England there formerly prevailed the custom of preparing "soul cakes" for distribution among visitors to the family on that day and to bands of waifs or singers, who expected them as a dole for praying and singing in the interests of the souls of the dead friends and relatives of the family. On the island of St. Kilda the soul cake was "a large cake in the form of a triangle, furrowed round, and which was to be all eaten that night."⁵⁰⁸ In Lancashire and Hertfordshire the cake was made of oatmeal, but in many other parts it was a "seed cake"⁵⁰⁹ and in Warwickshire, "at the end of barley and bean seed time, there is a custom there to give the plowmen froise, a species of thick pancake."⁵¹⁰ "All-soul cakes" were distributed at time of All Souls' Day.

In England and Scotland the old custom⁵¹¹ was to have a funeral feast, which all friends and relations were expected to attend. Wine, currant cake, meat, and other refreshments, varying according to the fortune of the family, were served liberally. The bread given out was called "arvil-bread." There is no special reason for believing that this could be called a hoddentin custom, except that the writer himself calls attention to the fact that in the earlier times the bread was in the form of "wafers."⁵¹²

The Romans had a college of priests called the "Fratres Arvales," nine, or, as some say, twelve in number, to whose care were committed the sacrifices in honor of Ceres at the old limits of the city, to propitiate that goddess and induce her to bestow fertility upon the fields. These ceremonies, which are believed by the editor of Bohn's Strabo to survive in the Rogation Day processions of the Roman Catholic Church, recall the notes already taken upon the subject of the Arval bread of the Scotch.⁵¹³ The sacrifices themselves were designated "Ambarva" and "Ambarvalia."

In Scotland and England it was customary for bands of singers to go from door to door on New Year's Eve, singing and receiving reward. In the latter country "cheese and oaten cakes, which are called farls, are distributed on this occasion among the cryers." In the former country "there was a custom of distributing sweet cakes and a particular kind of sugared bread."⁵¹⁴

A fine kind of wheat bread called "wassail-bread" formed an important feature of the entertainment on New Year's Day in old England.⁵¹⁵

Among love divinations may be reckoned the dumb cake, so called because it was to be made without speaking, and afterwards the parties were to go backward up the stairs to bed and put the cake under their pillows, when they were to dream of their lovers.⁵¹⁶

References to the beal-tine ceremonies of Ireland and Scotland, in which oatmeal gruel figured as a dish, or cakes made of oatmeal and carraway seeds, may be found in Brand, Pop. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 226; in Blount, Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors, London, 1874, p. 131; and in Pennant's Tour in Scotland, in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. 3, p. 49. In "A Charm for Bewitched Land" we find the mode of making a cake or loaf with holy water.

The mince pie and plum pudding of Christmas are evidently ancient preparations, and it is not unlikely that the shape of the former, which, prior to the Reformation, was that of a child's cradle, had a reminiscence of the sacrifice of babies at the time of the winter solstice. Grimm has taught that where human sacrifice had been abolished the figure of a coffin or a cradle was still used as a symbol.

There is a wide field of information to be gleaned in the investigation of the subject of bean foods at certain periods or festivals of the year, and upon this point I have some notes and memoranda, but, as my present remarks are limited to prehistoric farinaceous foods, I do not wish to add to the bulk of the present chapter.⁵¹⁷

"Kostia – boiled rice and plums – is the only thing partaken of on Christmas Eve."⁵¹⁸