ut not
always. One of their medicines is a great yellow fungus which grows on the
pine trees. This is dried and powdered, and administered either dry or in
an infusion. It is a purgative. As a rule, these doctors, while practising
their rites, will not allow any one in the lodge, except the immediate
members of the sick man's family. Mr. Schultz, who on more than one
occasion has been present at a doctoring, gives the following account of
one of the performances.

"The patient was a man in the last stages of consumption. When the doctor
entered the lodge, he handed the sick man a strip of buckskin, and told him
to tie it around his chest. The patient then reclined on a couch, stripped
to the waist, and the doctor kneeled on the floor beside him. Having
cleared a little space of the loose dirt and dust, the doctor took two
coals from the fire, laid them in this place, and put a pinch of dried
sweet grass on each of them. As the smoke arose from the burning grass, he
held his drum over it, turning it from side to side, and round and
round. This was supposed to purify it. Laying aside the drum, he held his
hands in the smoke, and rubbed his arms and body with it. Then, picking up
the drum, he began to tap it rapidly, and prayed, saying: 'Listen, my
dream. This you told me should be done. This you said should be the
way. You said it would cure the sick. Help me now. Do not lie to me. Help
me, Sun person. Help me to cure this sick man.'

"He then began to sing, and as soon as the women had caught the air, he
handed the drum to one of them to beat, and, still singing himself, took an
eagle's wing and dipped the tip of it in a cup of 'medicine.' It was a
clear liquid, and looked as if it might be simply water. Placing the tip of
the wing in his mouth, he seemed to bite off the end of it, and, chewing it
a little, spat it out on the patient's breast. Then, in time to the
singing, he brushed it gently off, beginning at the throat and ending at
the lower ribs. This was repeated three times. Next he took the bandage
from the patient, dipped it in the cup of medicine, and, wringing it out,
placed it on the sick man's chest, and rubbed it up and down, and back and
forth, after which he again brushed the breast with the eagle
wing. Finally, he lighted a pipe, and, placing the bowl in his mouth, blew
the smoke through the stem all over the patient's breast, shoulders, neck,
and arms, and finished the ceremony by again brushing with th