Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/257

242 tNTDIAV TOMPOOIiBBY pOlM from six to eight feet, high, securely planted in the ground so aa' to make the diameter of three to fbor feet, around this is wrapped skins to make the inferior inyisible from without. The niediQino man then goes inside and voices some incantations, then a poor woman who has a very sick child knocks on the posts to announce her presence, and tells her tale of Woe to the medicine juggler. Then more mystic Words and jangling of his "juggler's rattle," which the cut shows to be like a tambourine, then there is a talk between a spirit and the magician (no doubt he is a ventriloquist). After a lot of flummery the child is brought to the medicine man, and here is where the deception comes in: The doctor keeps shaking the rattle and then applies some herbs to the part afilict- ed, then more chanting and gesticulations, , then a tube several inches long made from bone is taken into the mouth of the medicine man which he pretends to swallow, then another tube, until several are supposed to be inside; and now comes the cure, for after going ttirough various contortions and pretended vomiting, finally up comes the various tubes, one af terthe other, which are by violent motions, as if being thrown off the stomach, and ejected into a bowl, the pains (?) con- tinue until the five or six tubes are finally extracted and lodged in the bowl of water. The notion is by this procedure: the patient has the disease abstracted from his body through that of the juggler. And while the foolishness is going on the "famous and wOrld-wide physician" has several assistants pound- ing away on medicine drums, so vociferously as to nearly raise the dead or kill the livingf.