The Shamans or Wise Men of the Tribe--Healers and Priests
in One--Disease Caused by Looks and Thoughts--Everybody and
Everything has to be Cured--Nobody Feels Well without His
"Doctor"--Sorcery--The Powers of Evil are as Great as those
of Good--Remarkable Cure for Snake-bite--Trepanning Among the
Ancient Tarahumares.
Without his shaman the Tarahumare would feel lost, both in this life
and after death. The shaman is his priest and physician. He performs
all the ceremonies and conducts all the dances and feasts by which
the gods are propitiated and evil is averted, doing all the singing,
praying, and sacrificing. By this means, and by instructing the people
what to do to make it rain and secure other benefits, he maintains
good terms for them with their deities, who are jealous of man and
bear him ill-will. He is also on the alert to keep those under his care
from sorcery, illness, and other evil that may befall them. Even when
asleep he watches and works just as if his body were awake. Though
real illness is the exception with him, the Tarahumare believes that
an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, and for this
reason he keeps his doctor busy curing him, not only to make his body
strong to resist illness, but chiefly to ward off sorcery, the main
source of trouble in the Indian's life. The demand for shamans is
therefore great, but the supply is quite equal to it. For instance,
in the little village of Nararachic and the neighbouring ranches,
where there are about 180 households, twenty-five shamans are living,
each of whom takes care of about twenty souls, though only about ten
of them enjoy great reputation in the community.
Before a man is allowed to consider himself a shaman, he is examined
by a "board" of recognised members of the profession, who pass upon
his fitness to enter their ranks.
These priest-doctors have their specialties. Some sing only at
rutuburi or yumari dances, others only at hikuli-feasts. A few of
them do not sing at all, but are merely healers, although far the
greater number also sing at the feasts. Those who make a specialty
of the hikuli cult are considered the greatest healers. They all
conscientiously fast and pray, complying with the demands of the
gods, which impose restrictions and abstinence, and they are therefore
called "righteous men" (owiruami). They are the wise men of the tribe;
and as rain-makers, healers, and keepers of the heritage of tribal
wisdom and traditions, their influence is powerful.
Their services are never rendered gratuitously; in fact, what with
the payments they receive from singing at feasts and curing the
sick, they generally manage to live better than the rest of the
people. Whenever a shaman is hungry, he goes to the house of some of
his well-to-do clients and cures the family, receiving all the food he
wants in payment for his efforts, for what would become of the people
if the shaman should die? The Devil would surely take them away at
once. Therefore the best parts of the meat from the animal killed
for the feast is given to the shamans, and they generally get all
the tesvino they can hold. In winter time, when numerous feasts are
being held, the shamans are nearly all the time under the influence
of their native stimulants. Yet this does not seem to harm them, nor
does it in the estimation of the people detract from the efficacy of
their singing; the curing is no less potent, even though the doctor can
hardly keep from falling all over his patient. It is always incumbent
on the shamans to be peaceful, and they never fight at the feasts.
The singing shamans invariably have a primitive musical instrument,
the rattle, with which they beat time to their singing and
dancing. Ordinarily it is made from a gourd filled with pebbles and
mounted on a short stick which serves as a handle. Another kind
is made from coarse shavings glued together. The latter variety
is not infrequently decorated with daubs of red or some similar
painting. Sometimes at the feast the shaman, even nowadays, may be
seen wearing a head-dress made of the plumes of birds. Through the
plumes the birds are thought to impart all that they know. Besides,
the plumes are supposed to keep the wind from entering the shaman's
body, and thus prevent him from falling ill.
When curing, the shamans may sometimes use rational means. There is
in existence around Norogachic for instance, a kind of sweating-bath,
made by placing in a hole in the ground, just large enough for a man
to sit in, several hot stones, pouring water on them, and covering
them up with branches of the fragrant mountain cedar. The steam
passing through the latter is credited with curative power.
The Indians know several excellent medicinal herbs. Palo amarillo is
a kind of household remedy used extensively in every family. There
are many other highly valued herbs and trees, some of which have a
wonderfully refreshing and invigorating aromatic scent. Headache is
cured by a green herb called pachoco, of which they smell until they
begin to sneeze. To cure constipation they boil ari with a grain
of salt, or they heat stones and pour water over them and sit over
the steam.
Both the sacred little cactus called hikuli and the maguey have
undoubtedly medicinal properties, but the administration of these
remedies, especially of the former, is connected with so many rites and
ceremonies that their therapeutic value becomes obscured. The curative
power of tesvino is absolutely magical, and this is the remedy to
which recourse is most commonly had. In administering it the shaman
makes his customary passes, and exhales over the patient to blow away
the disease. He also dips a small cross into the liquor, and with the
wetted end taps the sick man on the head, neck, shoulders, and back,
and draws crosses over his arms. Finally the patient is given three
spoonfuls of the liquor, while all the members of the family stand
around and murmur approvingly, "Thank you, thank you." Occasionally
tesvino is exclusively used for curing, with the aid of two small
crosses, one of red Brazil wood, the other of white pine. If he
chooses, a shaman may provoke illness as well as cure it, but he
cannot cure the person he made ill.
When a shaman is asked to cure a person of any complaint,
real or imaginary, his first move is to find the cause of the
trouble. According to his opinion illness is brought on either by
the wind or by sorcery. From the former kind of disease nobody dies,
although the heart, the liver, or the head may be attacked; but the
other kind is serious. Sorcerers may put snakes into the legs, and
such animals as centipedes, toads, larvae, scorpions, or even small
bears into the body of some unfortunate person, and these disturbers
have to be drawn out at once or else they will eat the sick man's
heart. The shaman therefore first feels the patient all over, to
find if something--in other words, the disease-bringing animal--is
moving underneath the skin. Illness may also result from small stones,
or the spine of the nopal placed in the body by the same agency.
A person suspected of having been bewitched is told to hold his mouth
open to the sun, that the shaman may see whether the evil entered the
body through this aperture. People become bewitched at night through
the openings of the body, and the shaman also examines the nostrils,
ears, etc. It is also the shaman's business to find out who caused
the trouble, and since he can see more than ordinary people he is
able to track the offender.
Some people by their mere looks or thoughts are liable to make
a. person ill. Such illness may be brought on in retaliation for some
slight or offence, and may even result in death. The first thoughts
of a person falling ill are: Whom have I offended? What have I taken
that I should have left alone, and what have I kept that I should have
given? Then the shaman may tell him to find the person to whom he had
refused to give food, and the sick one and his wife go from house to
house asking the people: "Was it you whom I refused food? Someone
has made me ill, and I want him to make me well again." If he can
find the person whom he had offended, and arrange matters with him,
he will recover.
The doctor may find that the person's heart is on the wrong side,
and prescribe a liberal allowance of tesvino to get it back to its
proper place. But generally the skill of the shaman is taxed more
severely and he resorts to the more direct and powerful methods of
magic. A common occurrence is that of illness caused by maggots, which
the shaman has to extract from the patient by means of a sucking-tube,
a short piece of reed about three inches long, cut from a kind of reed
different from that of the arrow-shaft. He places it on the afflicted
spot, and after sucking vigorously for a minute or so empties from
his mouth into his hand or into a corn-leaf, what purports to be the
maggots. I never had an opportunity of examining closely the small
white bits of something or other that he spit out, but they seemed
to me to be tiny pieces of buckskin which the man had secreted in his
mouth and which swelled up when saturated with saliva. To the shaman
they represent maggots; that is, the embodiment Of the disease, and
all the people firmly believe that they are maggots. The corn-leaf
and its contents are buried; a cross is made on the ground over the
spot and a ceremonial circuit run around it. When resting between
operations, the shaman places his sucking-tube into a bowl of water
in which some herbs are soaking.
The mode of curing, however, varies. A common way in use near
Guachochic is to make the patient stand on all fours and bathe him
well with water; then to place him on a blanket and carry him over
a fire toward the cross and the four corners of the world. When put
down on the ground again he lies or kneels on the blanket, and the
shaman places his tube against the afflicted part and begins to suck
forcibly, while the rest of the people stand around with sticks, ready
to kill the disease so as to prevent it from returning and doing harm
to others. Presently the shaman produces from his mouth a small stone,
which he asserts was the cause of the disease. While the people are
furiously beating the air, he proceeds at once to bury it in the earth,
or in the bottom of the river, into which he dives. He may suck out
as many as eight stones, but generally contents himself with four;
and for treating a man in this way he receives four almuds of maize.
On one occasion, when I had taken a little cold, I asked a shaman
friend whether he could cure me. "Certainly I can," was the confident
reply. He took from a little basket, in which he kept his hikuli
or sacred cacti and probably similar valuables, three black stones
and said that he would sell one of these to me; if I put it into
warm water it would cure me. This was not quite to my liking, as I
wanted him to perform the magical feat of sucking maggots out of the
skin. He complied with my request, and told me to go ahead to my camp,
whither he would follow me soon. On his arrival I offered him some
food, as my case was not urgent, but he declined, and proceeded
to cure me. A saddle blanket was spread out for me to kneel on,
and my Mexican and Indian attendants were told to retire, while he
made his examination. Having ascertained that I had a headache,
he took my head between his dirty hands, pressed it, applied his
lips to my right ear, and commenced to suck very energetically. This
was rather trying to my nerves, though not unendurably so. Presently
he let go his hold, and spit out quite a lot of blood into a cup an
Indian boy was holding out to him. He repeated the operation on my
left ear with the same result. "More pain?" he asked. "Yes," I said,
"in my right hand." He immediately grabbed that member in his mouth,
biting almost through the skin over the pulse, and after having
sucked for a little while, deposited contents, of a similar nature,
into the cup from his mouth. It was afterward found that the blood
was mixed with a considerable number of grass seeds, which had been
the cause of my illness. I had not known that I was so "seedy."
The curing is often performed at dances, during the night, as
the family who give the feast expect to receive, in return for
all their trouble and expense, the benefit of the shaman's magic
powers, whether any of them are ill or not. Once a man, his wife,
and his child had been cured with tesvino, but nevertheless they still
anxiously looked to the shaman for more treatment, apparently feeling
that they needed more strength against coining evil. The woman said:
"Yesterday I fell into the water and got wet and felt ill, and in the
night I dreamed that I was dead and that you cured me." To this the
doctor replied, "Yes, that is why I came to cure you." Then, yielding
to their beseeching glances, he daubed them again, this time holding
their hands and with a little cross in his left hand. Then he said:
"Now you need not be afraid; I have cured you well. Do not walk about
any more like fools and do not get wet again." And they were content.
There is a shaman near Baqueachic (baka = bamboo reed) who has a
great reputation for curing cattle, or rather for keeping them in
health. Every year he makes a tour of the different ranches, and the
Indians bring their animals to him to be treated. A large hole is dug
in the ground and a fire kindled in it. Then some green branches of
the mountain cedar and some copal are thrown in and burned, and the
animals driven one by one through the smoke. Since the veterinary
gets one animal for each ceremony, he becomes quite rich.
The shamans also undertake to cure the sun and the moon, because these,
too, are often ill and have to be righted. Not a feast is held in which
some spoonfuls from the jars containing the remedies are not thrown
up for the benefit of the sun and the moon. Occasionally, however,
special ceremonies have to be performed to cure the celestial bodies,
particularly the moon, because from her all the stars receive their
light. At the period of the dark moon she is considered to be sick and
tied up by the Devil, and the world is sad. Then the shamans assemble
to consult about her ailment and the means of curing her. An ox may
be killed and tesvino made. In killing the animal, care is taken
not to injure the heart, which is treated with great ceremony. The
people always avoid touching it, and at sacrifices they hang it
with the lungs to a stick raised near the cross. The shamans stand
near, with small earthenware dishes containing copal incense; while
the oldest cuts with his knife four crosses on four diametrically
opposite points of the heart, and from the upper part all but slices
off a piece, which is left hanging down beside the main part. All the
blood the heart contained is sacrificed to the four cardinal points
with much singing. Then the shaman asks for an earthen bowl which has
never been used before, and in this he places the heart and burns it
without adding fat or anything else. The ashes he rubs between his
fingers until reduced to a fine dust, which he mixes with water and
some medicinal herbs. The shamans stand in the middle, and the people
around them, and all are unanimous in their prayer that they may see
the moon. Each shaman takes three spoonfuls of medicine, the rest of
which is thrown on the cross, and the shamans watch all night.
The Christian Tarahumares even feel called upon to cure the church when
those buried in and around it have been noisily dancing and damaging
the building to make the people give them tesvino. The principal shaman
heads the procession, carrying a jar of the liquor. His assistant holds
in one hand a bowl containing water mixed with the crushed leaves of
the maguey, and in the other some fresh maguey leaves. The tesvino,
as well as the green water, is liberally thrown upon the walls and
the floor of the church to lay the perturbed spirits.
How to cure smallpox is beyond the ken of the shamans, but they try
to keep off the dread enemy by making fences of thorny branches
of different trees across the paths leading to the houses; and
snake-skins, the tail of the grey fox, and other powerful protectors or
charms, are hung around the doors of their dwellings to frighten the
disease away. The same purpose is accomplished through the pungent
smell produced by burning in the house the horns of cows, sheep,
and goats.
The shamans also profess to produce springs by sowing water. They make
a hole one yard deep in the rocky ground. Water is brought in a gourd
and poured into it, together with half an almud of salt. The hole is
then covered up with earth, and after three years a spring forms.
High as the shamans stand in the estimation of the people, they are by
no means exempt from the instability of mundane conditions, and the
higher a man rises the less secure is his position. The power to see
everything, to guard against evil, and to cure illness issues from the
light of his heart, which was given him by Tata Dios. It enables him to
see Tata Dios himself, to talk to him, to travel through space at will,
for the shamans are as bright as the sun. But all this supposed great
power to do good may at any moment be turned to evil purposes. There
are indeed some shamans whose kindly, sweet-tempered manners and
gentle ways enable them to retain their good reputation to the end;
but few go through life who can keep themselves always above suspicion,
especially when they grow older; and innocent persons have on this
account been cruelly persecuted. Such a fate is all the more liable
to befall them on account of the recognised ability of a shaman to
both cure and produce disease.
No doubt the great quantity of stimulants taken by shamans in the
course of their career causes them to go periodically through a
state of excitement, which, combined with the enthusiasm which
they work themselves up to, gradually gives to these men, who
frequently are richly endowed with animal magnetism, a supernatural
appearance. Advancing years have their share in making such a man
look odd and uncanny, not only on account of his grey hair, wrinkled
face, and shaggy eyebrows, but still more by his reserved bearing
and distinctive personality. Women shamans, too, may turn bad and
become witches.
Much as in cases of heresy among Christian ministers, the other shamans
hold a consultation regarding a suspected colleague, and may decide
that the light of his heart has failed him and that he is no longer one
of them. From that time on, good people avoid him; they no longer give
him food, and do not tolerate him about their homes; they are afraid
of him; and the better a shaman he was before, the more terrible a
sorcerer he is now supposed to have become. Soon every accident that
happens in the locality is laid at the accused man's door.
There are, on the other hand, many evil-minded persons who pretend to
possess supernatural powers to do harm, and accept payment for services
of that kind; in short, who make it a business to be sorcerers. The
power of the sorcerer to do evil is as great as the ability of the
good shaman to cure it. The sorcerer may rasp on his notched stick,
and sing death and destruction to a person or to attain his ends
he may use hikuli, smooth stones, the corpse or the foreleg of
some highly venerated animal and powerful rain-maker, as the toad,
which is never killed except by bad persons. A terrible thing in
the hands of a sorcerer is a humming-bird stripped of its feathers,
dried, and wrapped in pochote wool. To the Tarahumares the brilliant
little bird, often mentioned in their songs, is a good and mighty
hero-god, but the sorcerer perverts his great power to his own evil
purposes. The sorcerer is feared by all; pregnant women, especially,
go out of his way, as he may hinder them from giving birth to their
children. When Tarahumares see a shooting star they think it is a
dead sorcerer coming to kill a man who did him harm in life, and they
huddle together and scream with terror. When the star has passed,
they know that somewhere a man has been killed, and that now the
sorcerer is taking out his heart.
If a man does any harm to a powerful sorcerer, the latter, after
death, enters into a mountain lion or jaguar or bear, and watches by
the wayside until the offender comes, when he kills him.
Sorcerers are also believed to prevent rain from falling, and therefore
the people were once much pleased when they saw me photographing a
sorcerer. The camera was considered a powerful rain-maker, and was
thought to make the bad man clean. The people may chastise a man
suspected of sorcery, to frighten him from doing further mischief. A
sick person also is supposed to improve when the sorcerer who made
him ill is punished; but if accidents and misfortune continue to
happen, the accused man may be killed. Such extreme measures have
been resorted to even in recent years, though rarely.
The magical powers of a sorcerer are appalling. When a Tarahumare walks
with a sorcerer in the forest and they meet a bear, the sorcerer may
say: "Don't kill him; it is I; don't do him any harm!" or if an owl
screeches at night, the sorcerer may say: "Don't you hear me? It is
I who am calling."
The sorcerer dies a terrible death. Many dogs bark and run away and
come back; they look like fire, but they are not; they are the evil
thoughts of the sorcerer. The river, too, makes a greater noise
as it flows, as if somebody were dipping up water and pouring it
out again. Uncanny, weird noises come from every part of the house,
and all the people in it are much frightened. Hardly anyone goes to
talk to the dying man, and no one bids him good-bye. The Christian
Tarahumares do not bury him in the churchyard with other people, but
alone in a remote cave, and they bury all his things with him--his
machete his axe, and heavy things that other people never take along,
but which the sorcerer, because he is very powerful, can carry with
him when he goes to heaven.
As we have seen, the medical education of the shamans is extremely
limited. Their rational _materia medica_ is confined to the hikuli
cactus and a few roots and plants. Aside from this they have a cure
for snakebites which is really remarkable. The injured man kills the
reptile, cuts out its liver and gall, and smears the latter over the
wound; he may also eat a piece of the liver, but it must be taken from
the animal that inflicted the injury; then he will be well again in
three days. If people die of snake-bites, it is because the reptile
escaped. The gall of a rattlesnake has a sickening smell; even my
dogs were repulsed by it when I once killed a four-foot rattler. The
method may be considered as in accord with the modern theory that
the bile of many animals contains strong antitoxins.
However, there is nothing new under the sun. In the Talmud we find
recommended as a cure for hydrophobia to eat the liver of the dog
that bites one; and in the Apocrypha we read that Tobias was cured
of blindness by the gall of a fish.
Most surprising of all is the fact that this tribe, which to-day
shows but very slight knowledge of surgery, should in former times
have practised trepanning. That the Tarahumares understood this art is
evident from two skulls which I brought back from their country. The
skulls were found under the following circumstances:
In 1894 I stayed for a fortnight in a remote part of the Sierra Madre,
called Pino Gordo on account of its magnificent pine-trees. The
district is separated on the north from the central part of the
Tarahumare country by the deep Barranca de San Carlos, and there are
no Mexicans living within its confines. The place in which I found one
of the skulls is twenty miles north of the mining town of Guadalupe
y Calvo. A lonely trail leads through it on which, only occasionally,
perhaps once in the course of a month, a Mexican from the ranches at
Guachochic may journey to Guadalupe y Calvo.
One day the principal man of the locality, who had been very friendly
to me, showed me a burial-cave. I had persuaded him that it was
better for me to take away the bones contained in it, in order to
keep them in a good house, than to let them remain where they were,
"killing sheep and making people sick." "But why do you want them?" he
asked. Having been satisfied on this point, he one day led the way to
a wild, steep arroyo, pointed at its head, and having thus indicated
where the cave was, at once left me. I made my way as best I could
up the steep little gorge, accompanied by one of my men. On arriving
at the top I found the entrance to the cave completely covered with
stones plastered together with mud. A heap of stones was also piled
outside against the wall.
The cave I found very small, and, contrary to the exaggerated reports
of the Indians, it contained only three skeletons. According to the
custom prevailing throughout part of the country of the Tarahumares,
these remains had not been buried. The skeletons were simply lying
on their backs, from east to west, as if looking toward the setting
sun. A few crudely made clay vessels of the ordinary Tarahumare type
were found alongside of them. On gathering the three skulls I was at
once struck by a circular hole in the right parietal bone of one of
them. As they undoubtedly belonged to the Tarahumares, the question
at once occurred to me: Can it be possible that this barbaric tribe,
not particularly advanced in the arts, was capable of trepanning? The
remoteness of the place entirely negatives the suggestion that a
civilised surgeon could have had anything to do with it.
The skull, the lower jaw of which is missing, is that of a Tarahumare
woman over fifty years of age. The age of the specimen itself is
impossible to arrive at, on account of the peculiar circumstances in
which it was preserved. However, the cranial walls still contained
some animal matter, were still somewhat fatty to the touch, and
retained some odour. A spindle provided with a whorl made from a
piece of pine-bark, which was lying among the bones in the cave,
indicates that the body of this female had not been put there in
recent times. This variety of whorl, so far as I can ascertain, has
not been observed among the Tarahumares of the present day. It is,
indeed, possible that the skeleton may be pre-Columbian.
The skull does not present any deformities or fractures, and the
singular aperture is almost exactly round, measuring two centimetres
in diameter. A careful examination shows that the cut was made a long
time, several years in fact, before death. The regularity of the hole
indicates beyond doubt that it is artificial.
Another skull taken from a burial-cave near Nararachic is also that of
a female, and the opening here, too, is in the parietal bone, and in
almost the same place as the opening in the first skull described. In
this second specimen the cavity is almost filled in with new bone,
and as in this instance the edges are very regular and uniform,
and distinctly beveled, they show that the operation was performed
by scraping. This cannot be said of the first specimen found; the
almost circular form of the opening, and its perpendicular walls,
prove conclusively that in this instance the surgeon did not employ
the simple method of scraping the bone. I have never found among the
Tarahumares any implement with which such an operation could have
been performed. Possibly it was done with a kind of flint wimble with
three teeth, much like the instrument used to-day in trepanning by
the Berbers in L'Aures, who cure even headaches by this method. It
is, of course, impossible to say now whether the ancients performed
the operation simply to relieve the patient of bone splinters, pus,
blood, etc., pressing on the brain, or whether it was done to let
out an evil spirit. It is the first time that cases of trepanning
have been found in Mexico.