of different kinds, some with crowns (head-dresses) and some without. They draw the figure of the 'mono', called in the Apache language Kán, which is represented as dancing with a high, double-pointed cap and mask.
"After having painted or drawn all these in the sand, they bring in the sick man and put him in the middle of the ring, face downward, upon the figure of the centipede. Upon the sick man's face and back have been painted a scorpion and a centipede. They (the "medicine-men") pick up a pinch of earth from each figure of reptile delineated upon the sand, and rub this dust upon the body of the sick man, at same time blowing upon him, singing and dancing. Then at a given signal, they all run out, masked men and all." (He had previously said that four of the head "medicine-men" wore masks during the incantation.) "This is the very last thing the Apache 'doctors' can do for a sick man." It corresponds, so Antonio piously reiterated, to Extreme Unction!
A better idea of the appearance of these "monos" will be derived by examining the representations of war-shirts and sashes of a pictograph obtained in Pueblo of Jemez, N.M., and of wall decoration in school-buildings at San Carlos Agency, A. T.[1]
The limbs and bodies of Apaches are rarely disfigured by tattooing, but when they are so marked the designs will almost invariably be snakes, centipedes, and scorpions, or the same rain and cloud symbol as is used by the Zunis and Moquis. The Zunis and Moquis worship every one of
- ↑ The natives of Mexico had religious usages, almost identical with the foregoing, at the birth of children; these "to a modified extent exist to the present day. When a woman was about to be confined the relatives assembled in the hut and commenced to draw on the floor figures of various animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was completed. This operation continued until the moment of birth, and the figures or figure that then remained sketched upon the ground was called the child's tona, or second self." (Bancroft (speaking of Zapotees), Native Races., Pacific Slope., ii, 661.)
