long life and years spent according to his will. Good Apaches have another world to expect when they die. Bad Apaches are stuck in the ground, and that is the last of them." (In repeating the prayer, Eskiminzin was careful to address the sun as Ostin.)
Stone-Worship.
The worship of stones is encountered among all the tribes of the South-West. Under the head of "Talismans" allusion has been made to the appearance of quartz and petrified wood.
The list can properly be increased by the addition of the sacred turquoise-like Chalchihuitl. It is scarcely ever to be discovered among the Apaches of to-day. Fourteen or fifteen years ago no distinguished chief or warrior was wanting in this part of his equipment. Its "medicine" powers were recognised as well by Navajoes as by Apaches, both of whom paid high prices for the precious mineral to the thrifty traders of the Rio Grande Pueblos. Necklaces generally contained one or more beads of it; smaller particles were sewed to the war-shirt, and fragments inlaid in the stocks of carbines or rifles.[1]
The Apache post-offices, dotting out-of-the-way mountains and table-lands in Arizona, were "prayer-heaps",[2] increased by each passing warrior, who added a stone and a
- ↑ To show the value placed upon Chalchihuitl by the Indians further to the south, Bancroft (Native Races, Pacific Slope, vol. ii, 458) quotes Las Casas as saying: "He that stole precious stones, more especially the stone called Chalchihuitl, no matter from whence he took it, was stoned to death in the market-place, because no man of the lower order was allowed to possess this stone."
- ↑ Of prayer-heaps, Bancroft says (Native Races, Pacific Slope, ii, 738): "In Guatemala, small chapels were placed at short intervals on all lines of travel, where each passer halted for a few moments at least, gathered a handful of herbs, spat reverently upon them, and placed them prayerfully upon the altar, with a small stone, and some trifling offering of pepper, salt, and cacao."
