“ It is made of roots and red ocher. With this they paint their faces, believing it to possess a power so irresistible as to cause the object of their desire to love them. But the moment this medicine is taken away and the charm withdrawn the person who before was almost frantic with love hates with a perfect hatred. ”

“ When we are willing to admit that the Indian has a religion which he holds sacred, even though it be different from our own, we can then admire the consistency of the theory, the particularity of the ceremonial and the beauty of the expression. So far from being a jumble of crudities, there is a wonderful completeness about the whole system which is not surpassed even by the ceremonial religions of the East. It is evident from a study of these formulas that the Cherokee Indian was a polytheist and that the spirit world was to him only a shadowy counterpart of this. ”

“ There is a realm of anthropology in this lower state of mankind which we call savagery, that is hard to understand from the standpoint of modern civilization, where science, theology, religion, medicine and the esthetic arts are developed as more or less discrete subjects. In savagery these great subjects are blended in one, as they are interwoven into a vast plexus of thought and action, for mythology is the basis of philosophy, religion, medicine, and art. ”

“ Having thus rendered himself attractive to womankind, he turns his attention to the girl whom he particularly desires to win. He begins by filling her soul with a sense of desolation and loneliness. In the beautiful language of the formula, her path becomes blue and she is veiled in loneliness. He then asserts, and reiterates, that he is of the one only clan which was allotted for her when the seven clans were established. ”

“ It is astonishing to find how little the condition of a life to come is involved. The future beyond the grave is scarcely heeded, or when recognized it seems not to affect the daily life of the people to any appreciable degree. That which occupies the attention of the savage mind relates to the pleasures and pains, the joys and sorrows of present existence.
Perhaps the chief motive is derived from the consideration of health and disease, as the pleasures and pains arising therefrom are forever present to the experience or observation. ”

“ They are shaking the road which shall never be joyful. The miserable Terrapin has come and fastened himself upon them as they go about. They have lost all strength. They have become entirely blue.
But now my admirers of the ball play have their roads lying along in this direction. The Red Bat has come and made himself one of them. There in the first heaven are the pleasing stakes. There in the second heaven are the pleasing stakes. ”

“ There under the earth, where the black war clubs shall be moving about like ball sticks in the game, there his soul shall be, never to reappear. We cause it to be so. He shall never go and lift up the war club. ”

“ In this formula for childbirth the idea is to frighten the child and coax it to come, by telling it, if a boy, that an ugly old woman is coming, or if a girl, that her grandfather is coming only a short distance away. The reason of this lies in the fact that an old woman is the terror of all the little boys of the neighborhood, constantly teasing and frightening them by declaring that she means to live until they grow up and then compel one of them to marry her, old and shriveled as she is. ”

“ Each spirit of good or evil has its distinct and appropriate place of residence. The Rabbit is declared to live in the broomsage on the hillside, the Fish dwells in a bend of the river under the pendant hemlock branches, the Terrapin lives in the great pond in the West, and the Whirlwind abides in the leafy treetops. Each disease animal, when driven away from his prey by some more powerful animal, endeavors to find shelter in his accustomed haunt. ”

“ No one is ever lonely with me. I am very handsome. I shall certainly never become blue. I am covered by the everlasting white house wherever I go. No one is ever lonely with me. Your soul has come into the very center of my soul, never to turn away. ”

“ The formulas contained in these manuscripts are not disjointed fragments of a system long since extinct, but are the revelation of a living faith which still has its priests and devoted adherents, and it is only necessary to witness a ceremonial ball play, with its fasting, its going to water, and its mystic bead manipulation, to understand how strong is the hold which the old faith yet has upon the minds even of the younger generation. ”

“ It is certain that by no tribe of the United States was agriculture pursued to such an extent as to free its members from the practice of the hunter’s or fisher’s art. Admitting the most that can be claimed for the Indian as an agriculturist, it may be stated that, whether because of the small population or because of the crude manner in which his operations were carried on, the amount of land devoted to agriculture within the area in question was infinitesimally small as compared with the total. ”

“ Now, whenever the hunter brings down a deer, the Little Deer, who is swift as the wind and can not be wounded, runs quickly up to the spot and bending over the blood stains asks the spirit of the deer if it has heard the prayer of the hunter for pardon. ”

“ Each tree, shrub, and herb, down, even to the grasses and mosses, agreed to furnish a remedy for some one of the diseases named, and each said: “I shall appear to help man when he calls upon me in his need.” Thus did medicine originate, and the plants, every one of which has its use if we only knew it, furnish the antidote to counteract the evil wrought by the revengeful animals. When the doctor is in doubt what treatment to apply for the relief of a patient, the spirit of the plant suggests to him the proper remedy. ”

“ The tendency is exactly the reverse of what it is in the case of those who view the Indian at a distance and with no precise knowledge of any of his characteristics. In the estimation of such persons the Indian’s vices greatly outweigh his virtues; his language is a gibberish, his methods of war cowardly, his ideas of religion utterly puerile.
The above tendencies are accentuated in the attempt to estimate the comparative worth and position of individual tribes. No being is more patriotic than the Indian. ”

“ In its development the human mind is limited by no boundaries of tribe or race.
Again, a long acquaintance with many tribes in their homes leads to the belief that savage people do not lack industry so much as wisdom. They are capable of performing, and often do perform, great and continuous labor. The men and women alike toil from day to day and from year to year, engaged in those tasks that are 37 presented with the recurring seasons. In civilization, hunting and fishing are often considered sports, but in savagery they are labors, and call for endurance, patience, and sagacity. ”

“ White—which occurs in this formula only by an evident error—denotes peace and happiness. In ceremonial addresses, as at the green corn dance and ball play, the people figuratively partake of white food and after the dance or the game return along the white trail to their white houses. In love charms the man, in order to induce the woman to cast her lot with his, boasts “I am a white man,” implying that all is happiness where he is. White beads have the same meaning in the bead conjuring and white was the color of the stone pipe anciently used in ratifying peace treaties. ”

“ In the treatment of wounds the Cherokee doctors exhibit a considerable degree of skill, but as far as any internal ailment is concerned the average farmer’s wife is worth all the doctors in the whole tribe.
The faith of the patient has much to do with his recovery, for the Indian has the same implicit confidence in the shaman that a child has in a more intelligent physician. The ceremonies and prayers are well calculated to inspire this feeling, and the effect thus produced upon the mind of the sick man undoubtedly reacts favorably upon his physical organization. ”

“ The simple and rude ethics of a tribal people are very important to them, the more so because of their communal institutions; and everywhere throughout the tribes of the United States it is discovered that their rules of conduct were deeply implanted in the minds of the people. An organized system of teaching is always found, as it is the duty of certain officers of the clan to instruct the young in all the industries necessary to their rude life, and simple maxims of industry abound among the tribes and are enforced in diverse and interesting ways. ”

“ Lighting his pipe, he goes slowly around the house, puffing the smoke in the direction of every trail by which the witch might be able to approach, and probably repeating the same or another formula the while. He then goes into the house and awaits results. When the witch approaches under cover of the darkness, whether in his own proper shape or in the form of some animal, the sharpened stick on that side of the house shoots up into the air and comes down like an arrow upon his head, inflicting such a wound as proves fatal within seven days. ”

“ The peculiar institutions prevailing in this respect gave to each tribe or clan a profound interest in the skill, ability and industry of each member. He was the most valuable person in the community who supplied it with the most of its necessities. For this reason the successful hunter or fisherman was always held in high honor, and the woman, who gathered great store of seeds, fruits, or roots, or who cultivated a good corn-field, was one who commanded the respect and received the highest approbation of the people. ”

“ A long residence with any one tribe frequently inoculates the student with the same patriotic spirit. Bringing to his study of a particular tribe an inadequate conception of Indian attainments and a low impression of their moral and intellectual plane, the constant recital of its virtues, the bravery and prowess of its men in war, their generosity, the chaste conduct and obedience of its women as contrasted with the opposite qualities of all other tribes, speedily tends to partisanship. ”

“ Thus, when a sickness is caused by a fish, the Fish-hawk, the Heron, or some other fish-eating bird is implored to come and seize the intruder and destroy it, so that the patient may find relief. When the trouble is caused by a worm or an insect, some insectivorous bird is called in for the same purpose. When a flock of redbirds is pecking at the vitals of the sick man the Sparrow-hawk is brought down to scatter them, and when the rabbit, the great mischief-maker, is the evil genius, he is driven out by the Rabbit-hawk. ”

“ The spider also occupies a prominent place in the love and life-destroying formulas, his duty being to entangle the soul of his victim in the meshes of his web or to pluck it from the body of the doomed man and drag it way to the black coffin in the Darkening Land. ”

“ They say that when a witch in the shape of a bear is being chased all at once she will run round a tree or a hill, so as to be lost sight of for a time by her pursuers, and then, instead of seeing a bear they behold an old woman walking quietly along or digging up roots, and looking as innocent as a lamb. The fox witches are known by the flame of fire which proceeds out of their mouths every time they bark. ”

“ No matter how widely separated geographically two families of languages may be, no matter how unlike their vocabularies, how distinct their origin, some words may always be found which appear upon superficial examination to indicate relationship. There is not a single Indian linguistic family, for instance, which does not contain words similar in sound, and more rarely similar in both sound and meaning, to words in English, Chinese, Hebrew, and other languages. ”

“ Thus, when he begins to treat a sick man for a disease caused by rabbits, he expects to receive a certain ugista ́‘tĭ; but, should he decide after a time that the terrapin or the red bird is responsible for the trouble, he adopts a different course of treatment, for which another ugista ́‘tĭ is necessary. Should the sickness not yield readily to his efforts, it is because the disease animal requires a greater ugista ́‘tĭ, and the quantity of cloth must be doubled, so that on the whole the doctrine is a very convenient one for the shaman. ”

“ Not only is precise data wanting respecting the limits of land actually held or claimed by many tribes, but there are other tribes, which disappeared early in the history of our country, the boundaries to whose habitat is to be determined only in the most general way. Concerning some of these, our information is so vague that the very linguistic family they belonged to is in doubt. In the case of probably no one family are the data sufficient in amount and accuracy to determine positively the exact areas definitely claimed or actually held by the tribes. ”

“ The task of studying many hundreds of languages and deriving therefrom ultimate conclusions as contributions to the science of philology is one of great magnitude, and in its accomplishment an army of scholars must be employed. The wealth of this promised harvest appeals strongly to the scholars of America for systematic and patient labor. The languages are many and greatly diverse in their characteristics, in grammatic as well as in lexic elements. The author believes it is safe to affirm that the philosophy of language is some time to be greatly enriched from this source. ”