Medicine Men of Civilisation
My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for reflection at home.
It is curious to trace the savage in the civilised man, and to detect the hold of some
savage customs on conditions of society rather boastful of being high above them.
I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never to be got rid of, out
of the North American country? He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of occasions,
and with the absurdest 'Medicine.' I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find it
simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal 'Medicine' he sticks
upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty white
powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For his
religious 'Medicine' he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black
waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine
stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On occasions when the Medicine
Men in general, together with a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his
village, both male and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native 'Medicine'
is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things in antiquated
shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and red and
blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this particular Medicine culminates in a mock
battle-rush, from which many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not
observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James's Palace.
The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam too. This
creature takes cases of death and mourning under his supervision, and will frequently
impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and
drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms
consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very high. He
impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit
such scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in
their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more honourably and piously
they grieve for the dead. The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an
expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of
other unmeaning objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order
of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave,
and are then brought back again.
In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that when a hatchet is
irreparably broken, they say, 'His immortal part has departed; he is gone to the happy
hunting-plains.' This belief leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some
of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken
and buried with him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition
than the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief.
