Of late years, especially since the establishment of schools among
them, the Cherokees are gradually beginning to lose confidence in
the abilities of their own doctors and are becoming more disposed
to accept treatment from white physicians. The shamans are naturally
jealous of this infringement upon their authority and endeavor to
prevent the spread of the heresy by asserting the convenient doctrine
that the white man’s medicine is inevitably fatal to an Indian unless
eradicated from the system by a continuous course of treatment for
four years under the hands of a skillful shaman. The officers of the
training school established by the Government a few years ago met with
considerable difficulty on this account for some time, as the parents
insisted on removing the children at the first appearance of illness
in order that they might be treated by the shamans, until convinced by
experience that the children received better attention at the school
than could possibly be had in their own homes. In one instance, where
a woman was attacked by a pulmonary complaint akin to consumption, her
husband, a man of rather more than the usual amount of intelligence,
was persuaded to call in the services of a competent white physician,
who diagnosed the case and left a prescription. On a second visit, a
few days later, he found that the family, dreading the consequences of
this departure from old customs, had employed a shaman, who asserted
that the trouble was caused by a sharpened stick which some enemy
had caused to be imbedded in the woman’s side. He accordingly began a
series of conjurations for the removal of the stick, while the white
physician and his medicine were disregarded, and in due time the woman
died. Two children soon followed her to the grave, from the contagion
or the inherited seeds of the same disease, but here also the
sharpened sticks were held responsible, and, notwithstanding the three
deaths under such treatment, the husband and father, who was at one
time a preacher, still has faith in the assertions of the shaman. The
appointment of a competent physician to look after the health of the
Indians would go far to eradicate these false ideas and prevent
much sickness and suffering; but, as the Government has made no such
provision, the Indians, both on and off the reservation, excepting the
children in the home school, are entirely without medical care.