sprig of grass, while reciting a supplication for the happy ending of his hunt or raid. The neighbouring tribes have the same form of worship; and the Hualpais, a people ranging next to the Apaches on the west, and their counterpart in almost all things save language and mortuary ceremonies, have, so Mr. Charles Spencer[1] reports, a still more decided peculiarity.
In their country, near Kingman, on the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, is a sacred rock, against which, at the moment of initiation, or upon occasions of special importance, "medicine-men" rub their backs. Another sacred rock is in the territory of the Moquis, and there are several in the Sioux country.
Finally, in taking an oath, as civilised people would call it, the Apache places a stone upon the ground in front of him, and says: "My words shall endure while this stone lasts." By such a ceremony have Eskiminzin, Deltche (the red ant), Cha-ut-li-pun (the buckskin hat), Hieronymo (Jerome), at various times during the past fifteen years added strength and solemnity to their protestations of friendship. The very same, or a strikingly similar, ceremony was noticed in New England when the newly-arrived English colonists made a treaty with Bomazun, at Falmouth, in 1610.[2]
The asseverations of the Sioux were once made while holding a buffalo "chip" in each hand.
Plants and Trees
are not worshipped; traces of such veneration are discernible, but too faint and too complicated with other phases of the religious impulse to merit special recognition.
The reader may tabulate for himself those mentioned in
