.MTM1OA.MTE1MDEz

248

which as a rule are kept shut. a fire is kept burning in a stove and the result is that the air in the room is sim[ply indescribable. imagine. a family of five or six. persons with twice or three times a many dogs occupying a small room. ten by ten and probably eight feet high.. These are the conditions which breed diseases hither to unknown among the indians. When an indian is sick he is simply "Sick" the same treatment applies to all classes of diseases for the reason that they have no classes. The medecine man cannot discriminate between a case of rheumatism and one of measles. and therefore he treats all alike Small Pox is a disease which the indian has at times contracted from the whites and they fear it as a most fatal disease which in deed it is whole villages have been desolated by it and families become extinct.

     In the treatment of diseases among the Dakota the work of healing proceeds by succesive steps.  When the patient is announced sick the women of the lodge set up an uncanny howl. to drive out the evil spirit if this fail the aid of the neighbors is solicited and they Join the howl finally when [crossed out:  every thing else] the combined howl has failed. the aid of the Medecine Man is [?] he comes to the lodge and with rattles in hand chants a song and rattles the rattles [?] over the sick man his incantation.  If these fail he calls an assistant who takes the tom tom. and accompanied by the howl of the women and barks of the dogs. with the chant of the Medecine Man and his rattles. beats the tom tom, with all his vigor in the ears of the patient..  This generally brings things to a crisis. and the sufferer speedily recovers or dies. generally the latter.  It has been said that some remarkable cures have been wrought by the indian Medecine Man.  even upon white patients and when the case has been abandoned by the regular physician.. We have never seen such. nor have we authentic proof of it.
  The Dakota Medecine Man gives no drugs or nostrums.  as does the [crossed out:  Chippewa] Ojibway his practice seems to be psychological entirely and we see a r eason for this in the fact that the wild indian like the wild animal should never be sick.  If he inherit a constitution rugged enough to carry him to addolescens [sic].  he should live till old age [?] him down. free from disease altogether. and such is usually the case.  With white man's ways come white man's diseases.