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CHAPTER X.
THE NATIVE PRIESTHOOD

Their titles.—Practitioners of the healing art by supernatural means.—Their power derived from natural magic and the exercise of the clairvoyant and mesmeric faculties.—Examples.—Epidemic hysteria.—Their social position.—Their duties as religious functionaries.—Terms of admission to the Priesthood.—Inner organization in various nations.—Their esoteric languages and secret societies.

THUS picking painfully amid the ruins of a race gone to wreck centuries ago, thus rejecting much foreign rubbish and scrutinizing each stone that lies around, if we still are unable to rebuild the edifice in its pristine symmetry and beauty, yet we can at least discern and trace the ground plan and outlines of the fane it raised to God. Before leaving the field to the richer returns of more fortunate workmen, it will not be inappropriate to add a sketch of the ministers of these religions, the servants in this temple.

Shamans, conjurers, sorcerers, medicine men, wizards, and many another hard name have been given them, but I shall call them priests, for in their poor way, as well as any other priesthood, they set up to be the agents of the gods, and the interpreters of divinity. No tribe was so devoid of religious sentiment as to be without them. Their power was terrible, and their use of it unscrupulous. Neither men nor gods, death nor life, the winds nor the waves, were beyond their control. Like Old Men of the Sea, they have clung to the neck of their nations, throttling all attempts at progress, binding them to the thraldom of superstition and profligacy, dragging them down to wretchedness and death. Christianity and civilization meet in them their most determined, most implacable foes. But what is this but the story of priestcraft and intolerance everywhere, which Old Spain can repeat as well as New Spain, the white race as well as the red? Blind leaders of the blind, dupers and duped fall into the ditch.

In their own languages they are variously called; by the Algonkins and Dakotas, “those knowing divine things” and “dreamers of the gods” (manitousiou, wakanwacipi); in Mexico, “masters or guardians of the divine things” (teopixqui, teotecuhtli); in Cherokee, their title means, “possessed of the divine fire” (atsilung kelawhi); in Iroquois, “keepers of the faith” (honundeunt); in Quichua, “the learned” (amauta); in Maya, “the listeners” (cocome). The popular term in French and English of “medicine men” is not such a misnomer as might be supposed. The noble science of medicine is connected with divinity not only by the rudest savage but the profoundest philosopher, as has been already adverted to. When sickness is looked upon as the effect of the anger of a god, or as the malicious infliction of a sorcerer, it is natural to seek help from those who assume to control the unseen world, and influence the fiats of the Almighty. The recovery from disease is the kindliest exhibition of divine power. Therefore the earliest canons of medicine in India and Egypt are attributed to no less distinguished authors than the gods Brahma and Thoth;⁴¹⁰ therefore the earliest practitioners of the healing art are universally the ministers of religion.

But, however creditable this origin is to medicine, its partnership with theology was no particular advantage to it. These mystical doctors shared the contempt still so prevalent among ourselves for a treatment based on experiment and reason, and regarded the administration of emetics and purgatives, baths and diuretics, with a contempt quite equal to that of the disciples of Hahnemann. The practitioners of the rational school formed a separate class among the Indians, and had nothing to do with amulets, powwows, or spirits.⁴¹¹ They were of different name and standing, and though held in less estimation, such valuable additions to the pharmacopœia as guaiacum, cinchona, and ipecacuanha, were learned from them. The priesthood scorned such ignoble means. Were they summoned to a patient, they drowned his groans in a barbarous clangor of instruments in order to fright away the demon that possessed him; they sucked and blew upon the diseased organ, they sprinkled him with water, and catching it again threw it on the ground, thus drowning out the disease; they rubbed the part with their hands, and exhibiting a bone or splinter asserted that they drew it from the body, and that it had been the cause of the malady, they manufactured a little image to represent the spirit of sickness, and spitefully knocked it to pieces, thus vicariously destroying its prototype; they sang doleful and monotonous chants at the top of their voices, screwed their countenances into hideous grimaces, twisted their bodies into unheard of contortions, and by all accounts did their utmost to merit the honorarium they demanded for their services. A double motive spurred them to spare no pains. For if they failed, not only was their reputation gone, but the next expert called in was likely enough to hint, with that urbanity so traditional in the profession, that the illness was in fact caused or much increased by the antagonistic nature of the remedies previously employed, whereupon the chances were that the doctor’s life fell into greater jeopardy than that of his quondam patient.

Considering the probable result of this treatment, we may be allowed to doubt whether it redounded on the whole very much to the honor of the fraternity. Their strong points are rather to be looked for in the real knowledge gained by a solitary and reflective life, by an earnest study of the appearances of nature, and of those hints and forest signs which are wholly lost on the white man and beyond the ordinary insight of a native. Travellers often tell of changes of the weather predicted by them with astonishing foresight, and of information of singular accuracy and extent gleaned from most meagre materials. There is nothing in this to shock our sense of probability—much to elevate our opinion of the native sagacity. They were also adepts in tricks of sleight of hand, and had no mean acquaintance with what is called natural magic. They would allow themselves to be tied hand and foot with knots innumerable, and at a sign would shake them loose as so many wisps of straw; they would spit fire and swallow hot coals, pick glowing stones from the flames, walk naked through a fire, and plunge their arms to the shoulder in kettles of boiling water with apparent impunity.⁴¹² Nor was this all. With a skill not inferior to that of the jugglers of India, they could plunge knives into vital parts, vomit blood, or kill one another out and out to all appearances, and yet in a few minutes be as well as ever; they could set fire to articles of clothing and even houses, and by a touch of their magic restore them instantly as perfect as before.⁴¹³ If it were not within our power to see most of these miracles performed any night in one of our great cities by a well dressed professional, we would at once deny their possibility. As it is, they astonish us only too little.

One of the most peculiar and characteristic exhibitions of their power, was to summon a spirit to answer inquiries concerning the future and the absent. A great similarity marked this proceeding in all northern tribes from the Eskimos to the Mexicans. A circular or conical lodge of stout poles four or eight in number planted firmly in the ground, was covered with skins or mats, a small aperture only being left for the seer to enter. Once in, he carefully closed the hole and commenced his incantations. Soon the lodge trembles, the strong poles shake and bend as with the united strength of a dozen men, and strange, unearthly sounds, now far aloft in the air, now deep in the ground, anon approaching near and nearer, reach the ears of the spectators. At length the priest announces that the spirit is present, and is prepared to answer questions. An indispensable preliminary to any inquiry is to insert a handful of tobacco, or a string of beads, or some such douceur under the skins, ostensibly for the behoof of the celestial visitor, who would seem not to be above earthly wants and vanities. The replies received, though occasionally singularly clear and correct, are usually of that profoundly ambiguous purport which leaves the anxious inquirer little wiser than he was before. For all this, ventriloquism, trickery, and shrewd knavery are sufficient explanations. Nor does it materially interfere with this view, that converted Indians, on whose veracity we can implicitly rely, have repeatedly averred that in performing this rite they themselves did not move the medicine lodge; for nothing is easier than in the state of nervous excitement they were then in to be self-deceived, as the now familiar phenomenon of table-turning illustrates.

But there is something more than these vulgar arts now and then to be perceived. There are statements supported by unquestionable testimony, which ought not to be passed over in silence, and yet I cannot but approach them with hesitation. They are so revolting to the laws of exact science, so alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our lives. Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put aside without serious consideration? Are there not in the history of each of us passages which strike our retrospective thought with awe, almost with terror? Are there not in nearly every community individuals who possess a mysterious power, concerning whose origin, mode of action, and limits, we and they are alike in the dark? I refer to such organic forces as are popularly summed up under the words clairvoyance, mesmerism, rhabdomancy, animal magnetism, physical spiritualism. Civilized thousands stake their faith and hope here and hereafter, on the truths of these manifestations; rational medicine recognizes their existence, and while it attributes them to morbid and exceptional influences, confesses its want of more exact knowledge, and refrains from barren theorizing. Let us follow her example, and hold it enough to show that such powers, whatever they are, were known to the native priesthood as well as the modern spiritualists, and the miracle mongers of the Middle Ages.

Their highest development is what our ancestors called “second sight.” That under certain conditions knowledge can pass from one mind to another otherwise than through the ordinary channels of the senses, is familiarly shown by the examples of persons en rapport. The limit to this we do not know, but it is not unlikely that clairvoyance or second sight is based upon it. In his autobiography, the celebrated Sac chief Black Hawk, relates that his great grandfather “was inspired by a belief that at the end of four years, he should see a white man, who would be to him a father.” Under the direction of this vision he travelled eastward to a certain spot, and there, as he was forewarned, met a Frenchman, through whom the nation was brought into alliance with France.⁴¹⁴ No one at all versed in the Indian character will doubt the implicit faith with which this legend was told and heard. But we may be pardoned our scepticism, seeing there are so many chances of error. It is not so with an anecdote related by Captain Jonathan Carver, a cool-headed English trader, whose little book of travels is an unquestioned authority. In 1767, he was among the Killistenoes at a time when they were in great straits for food, and depending upon the arrival of the traders to rescue them from starvation. They persuaded the chief priest to consult the divinities as to when the relief would arrive. After the usual preliminaries, this magnate announced that next day, precisely when the sun reached the zenith, a canoe would arrive with further tidings. At the appointed hour the whole village, together with the incredulous Englishman, was on the beach, and sure enough, at the minute specified, a canoe swung round a distant point of land, and rapidly approaching the shore brought the expected news.⁴¹⁵

Charlevoix is nearly as trustworthy a writer as Carver. Yet he deliberately relates an equally singular instance.⁴¹⁶

But these examples are surpassed by one described in the Atlantic Monthly of July, 1866, the author of which, John Mason Brown, Esq., has assured me of its accuracy in every particular. Some years since, at the head of a party of voyageurs, he set forth in search of a band of Indians somewhere on the vast plains along the tributaries of the Copper-mine and Mackenzie rivers. Danger, disappointment, and the fatigues of the road, induced one after another to turn back, until of the original ten only three remained. They also were on the point of giving up the apparently hopeless quest, when they were met by some warriors of the very band they were seeking. These had been sent out by one of their medicine men to find three whites, whose horses, arms, attire, and personal appearance he minutely described, which description was repeated to Mr. Brown by the warriors before they saw his two companions. When afterwards, the priest, a frank and simple-minded man, was asked to explain this extraordinary occurrence, he could offer no other explanation than that “he saw them coming, and heard them talk on their journey.”⁴¹⁷

Many tales such as these have been recorded by travellers, and however much they may shock our sense of probability, as well-authenticated exhibitions of a power which sways the Indian mind, and which has ever prejudiced it so unchangeably against Christianity and civilization, they cannot be disregarded. Whether they too are but specimens of refined knavery, whether they are instigations of the Devil, or whether they must be classed with other facts as illustrating certain obscure and curious mental faculties, each may decide as the bent of his mind inclines him, for science makes no decision.

Those nervous conditions associated with the name of Mesmer were nothing new to the Indian magicians. Rubbing and stroking the sick, and the laying on of hands, were very common parts of their clinical procedures, and at the initiations to their societies they were frequently exhibited. Observers have related that among the Nez Percés of Oregon, the novice was put to sleep by songs, incantations, and “certain passes of the hand,” and that with the Dakotas he would be struck lightly on the breast at a preconcerted moment, and instantly “would drop prostrate on his face, his muscles rigid and quivering in every fibre.”⁴¹⁸

There is no occasion to suppose deceit in this. It finds its parallel in every race and every age, and rests on a characteristic trait of certain epochs and certain men, which leads them to seek the divine, not in thoughtful contemplation on the laws of the universe and the facts of self-consciousness, but in an entire immolation of the latter, a sinking of their own individuality in that of the spirits whose alliance they seek. This is an outgrowth of that ignoring of the universality of Law, which belongs to the lower stages of enlightenment.⁴¹⁹ And as this is never done with impunity, but with iron certainty brings its punishment with it, the study of the mental conditions thus evoked, and the results which follow them, offers a salutary subject of reflection to the theologian as well as the physician. For these examples of nervous pathology are identical in kind, and alike in consequences, whether witnessed in the primitive forests of the New World, among the convulsionists of St. Medard, or in the excited scenes of a religious revival in one of our own churches.

Sleeplessness and abstemiousness, carried to the utmost verge of human endurance—seclusion, and the pertinacious fixing of the mind on one subject—obstinate gloating on some morbid fancy, rarely failed to bring about hallucinations with all the garb of reality. Physicians are well aware that the more frequently these diseased conditions of the mind are sought, the more readily they are found. Then, again, they were often induced by intoxicating and narcotic herbs. Tobacco, the maguey, coca; in California the chucuaco; among the Mexicans the snake plant, ollinhiqui or coaxihuitl; and among the southern tribes of our own country the cassine yupon and iris versicolor,⁴²⁰ were used; and, it is even said, were cultivated for this purpose. The seer must work himself up to a prophetic fury, or speechless lie in apparent death before the mind of the gods would be opened to him. Trance and ecstasy were the two avenues he knew to divinity; fasting and seclusion the means employed to discover them. His ideal was of a prophet who dwelt far from men, without need of food, in constant communion with divinity. Such an one, in the legends of the Tupis, resided on a mountain glittering with gold and silver, near the river Uaupe, his only companion a dog, his only occupation dreaming of the gods. When, however, an eclipse was near, his dog would bark; and then, taking the form of a bird, he would fly over the villages, and learn the changes that had taken place.⁴²¹

But man cannot trample with impunity on the laws of his physical life, and the consequences of these deprivations and morbid excitements of the brain show themselves in terrible pictures. Not unfrequently they were carried to the pitch of raving mania, reminding one of the worst forms of the Berserker fury of the Scandinavians, or the Bacchic rage of Greece. The enthusiast, maddened with the fancies of a disordered intellect, would start forth from his seclusion in an access of demoniac frenzy. Then woe to the dog, the child, the slave, or the woman who crossed his path; for nothing but blood could satisfy his inappeasable craving, and they fell instant victims to his madness. But were it a strong man, he bared his arm, and let the frenzied hermit bury his teeth in the quivering flesh. Such is a scene at this day not uncommon on the northwest coast, and few of the natives around Milbank Sound are without the scars the result of this horrid custom.⁴²²

This frenzy, terrible enough in individuals, had its most disastrous effects when with that peculiar facility of contagion which marks hysterical maladies, it swept through whole villages, transforming them into bedlams filled with unrestrained madmen. Those who have studied the strange and terrible mental epidemics that visited Europe in the middle ages, such as the tarantula dance of Apulia, the chorea Germanorum, and the great St. Vitus’ dance, will be prepared to appreciate the nature of a scene at a Huron village, described by Father le Jeune in 1639. A festival of three days and three nights had been in progress to relieve a woman who, from the description, seems to have been suffering from some obscure nervous complaint. Toward the close of this vigil, which throughout was marked by all sorts of debaucheries and excesses, all the participants seemed suddenly seized by ten thousand devils. They ran howling and shrieking through the town, breaking everything destructible in the cabins, killing dogs, beating the women and children, tearing their garments, and scattering the fires in every direction with bare hands and feet. Some of them dropped senseless, to remain long or permanently insane, but the others continued until worn out with exhaustion. The Father learned that during these orgies not unfrequently whole villages were consumed, and the total extirpation of some families had resulted. No wonder that he saw in them the diabolical workings of the prince of evil, but the physician is rather inclined to class them with those cases of epidemic hysteria, the common products of violent and ill-directed mental stimuli.⁴²³

These various considerations prove beyond a doubt that the power of the priesthood did by no means rest exclusively on deception. They indorse and explain the assertions of converted natives, that their power as prophets was something real, and entirely inexplicable to themselves. And they make it easily understood how those missionaries failed who attempted to persuade them that all this boasted power was false. More correct views than these ought to have been suggested by the facts themselves, for it is indisputable that these magicians did not hesitate at times to test their strength on each other. In these strange duels à l’outrance, one would be seated opposite his antagonist, surrounded with the mysterious emblems of his craft, and call upon his gods one after another to strike his enemy dead. Sometimes one, “gathering his medicine,” as it was termed, feeling within himself that hidden force of will which makes itself acknowledged even without words, would rise in his might, and in a loud and severe voice command his opponent to die! Straightway the latter would drop dead, or yielding in craven fear to a superior volition, forsake the implements of his art, and with an awful terror at his heart, creep to his lodge, refuse all nourishment, and presently perish. Still more terrible was the tyranny they exerted on the superstitious minds of the masses. Let an Indian once be possessed of the idea that he is bewitched, and he will probably reject all food, and sink under the phantoms of his own fancy.

How deep the superstitious veneration of these men has struck its roots in the soul of the Indian, it is difficult for civilized minds to conceive. Their power is currently supposed to be without any bounds, “extending to the raising of the dead and the control of all laws of nature.”⁴²⁴ The grave offers no escape from their omnipotent arms. The Sacs and Foxes, Algonkin tribes, think that the soul cannot leave the corpse until set free by the medicine men at their great annual feast;⁴²⁵ and the Puelches of Buenos Ayres guard a profound silence as they pass by the tomb of some redoubted necromancer, lest they should disturb his repose, and suffer from his malignant skill.⁴²⁶

While thus investigating their real and supposed power over the physical and mental world, their strictly priestly functions, as performers of the rites of religion, have not been touched upon. Among the ruder tribes these, indeed, were of the most rudimentary character. Sacrifices, chiefly in the form of feasts, where every one crammed to his utmost, dances, often winding up with the wildest scenes of licentiousness, the repetition of long and monotonous chants, the making of the new fire, these are the ceremonies that satisfy the religious wants of savages. The priest finds a further sphere for his activity in manufacturing and consecrating amulets to keep off ill luck, in interpreting dreams, and especially in lifting the veil of the future. In Peru, for example, they were divided into classes, who made the various means of divination specialties. Some caused the idols to speak, others derived their foreknowledge from words spoken by the dead, others predicted by leaves of tobacco or the grains and juice of cocoa, while to still other classes, the shapes of grains of maize taken at random, the appearance of animal excrement, the forms assumed by the smoke rising from burning victims, the entrails and viscera of animals, the course taken by a certain species of spider, the visions seen in drunkeness, the flights of birds, and the directions in which fruits would fall, all offered so many separate fields of prognostication, the professors of which were distinguished by different ranks and titles.⁴²⁷

As the intellectual force of the nation was chiefly centred in this class, they became the acknowledged depositaries of its sacred legends, the instructors in the art of preserving thought; and from their duty to regulate festivals, sprang the observation of the motions of the heavenly bodies, the adjustment of the calendars, and the pseudo-science of judicial astrology. The latter was carried to as subtle a pitch of refinement in Mexico as in the old world; and large portions of the ancient writers are taken up with explaining the method adopted by the native astrologers to cast the horoscope, and reckon the nativity of the newly-born infant.

How was this superior power obtained? What were the terms of admission to this privileged class? In the ruder communities the power was strictly personal. It was revealed to its possessor by the character of the visions he perceived at the ordeal he passed through on arriving at puberty; and by the northern nations was said to be the manifestation of a more potent personal spirit than ordinary. It was not a faculty, but an inspiration; not an inborn strength, but a spiritual gift. The curious theory of the Dakotas, as recorded by the Rev. Mr. Pond, was that the necromant first wakes to consciousness as a winged seed, wafted hither and thither by the intelligent action of the Four Winds. In this form he visits the homes of the different classes of divinities, and learns the chants, feasts, and dances, which it is proper for the human race to observe, the art of omnipresence or clairvoyance, the means of inflicting and healing diseases, and the occult secrets of nature, man, and divinity. This is called “dreaming of the gods.” When this instruction is completed, the seed enters one about to become a mother, assumes human form, and in due time manifests his powers. Four such incarnations await it, each of increasing might, and then the spirit returns to its original nothingness. The same necessity of death and resurrection was entertained by the Eskimos. To become of the highest order of priests, it was supposed requisite, says Bishop Egede, that one of the lower order should be drowned and eaten by sea monsters. Then, when his bones, one after another, were all washed ashore, his spirit, which meanwhile had been learning the secrets of the invisible world, would return to them, and, clothed in flesh, he would go back to his tribe. At other times a vague and indescribable longing seizes a young person, a morbid appetite possesses them, or they fall a prey to an inappeasable and aimless restlessness, or a causeless melancholy. These signs the old priests recognize as the expression of a personal spirit of the higher order. They take charge of the youth, and educate him to the mysteries of their craft. For months or years he is condemned to entire seclusion, receiving no visits but from the brethren of his order. At length he is initiated with ceremonies of more or less pomp into the brotherhood, and from that time assumes that gravity of demeanor, sententious style of expression, and general air of mystery and importance, everywhere deemed so eminently becoming in a doctor and a priest. A peculiarity of the Moxos was, that they thought none designated for the office but such as had escaped from the claws of the South American tiger, which, indeed, it is said they worshipped as a god.⁴²⁸

Occasionally, in very uncultivated tribes, some family or totem claimed a monopoly of the priesthood. Thus, among the Nez Percès of Oregon, it was transmitted in one family from father to son and daughter, but always with the proviso that the children at the proper age reported dreams of a satisfactory character.⁴²⁹ Perhaps alone of the Algonkin tribes the Shawnees confined it to one totem, but it is remarkable that the greatest of their prophets, Elskataway, brother of Tecumseh, was not a member of this clan. From the most remote times, the Cherokees have had one family set apart for the priestly office. This was when first known to the whites that of the Nicotani, but its members, puffed up with pride and insolence, abused their birthright so shamefully, and prostituted it so flagrantly to their own advantage, that with savage justice they were massacred to the last man. Another was appointed in their place who to this day officiates in all religious rites. They have, however, the superstition, possibly borrowed from Europeans, that the seventh son is a natural born prophet, with the gift of healing by touch.⁴³⁰ Adair states that their former neighbors, the Choctaws, permitted the office of high priest, or Great Beloved Man, to remain in one family, passing from father to eldest son, and the very influential piaches of the Carib tribes very generally transmitted their rank and position to their children.

In ancient Anahuac the prelacy was as systematic and its rules as well defined, as in the Church of Rome. Except those in the service of Huitzilopochtli, and perhaps a few other gods, none obtained the priestly office by right of descent, but were dedicated to it from early childhood. Their education was completed at the Calmecac, a sort of ecclesiastical college, where instruction was given in all the wisdom of the ancients, and the esoteric lore of their craft. The art of mixing colors and tracing designs, the ideographic writing and phonetic hieroglyphs, the songs and prayers used in public worship, the national traditions and the principles of astrology, the hidden meaning of symbols and the use of musical instruments, all formed parts of the really extensive course of instruction they there received. When they manifested a satisfactory acquaintance with this curriculum, they were appointed by their superiors to such positions as their natural talents and the use they had made of them qualified them for, some to instruct children, others to the service of the temples, and others again to take charge of what we may call country parishes. Implicit subordination of all to the high priest of Huitzilopochtli, hereditary pontifex maximus, chastity, or at least temperate indulgence in pleasure, gravity of carriage, and strict attention to duty, were laws laid upon all.

The state religion of Peru was conducted under the supervision of a high priest of the Inca family, and its ministers, as in Mexico, could be of either sex, and hold office either by inheritance, education, or election. For political reasons, the most important posts were usually enjoyed by relatives of the ruler, but this was usage, not law. It is stated by Garcilasso de la Vega⁴³¹ that they served in the temples by turns, each being on duty the fourth of a lunar month at a time. Were this substantiated it would offer the only example of the regulation of public life by a week of seven days to be found in the New World.