Название: The Native Races (Complete 5 Part Edition)
Автор: Hubert Howe Bancroft
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066379742
isbn:
CALIFORNIAN DIVERSIONS.
Most important events, such as the seasons of hunting, fishing, acorn-gathering, and the like, are celebrated with feasts and dances which differ in no essential respect from those practiced by the Northern Californians. They usually dance naked, having their heads adorned with feather ornaments, and their bodies and faces painted with glaring colors in grotesque patterns. Broad stripes, drawn up and down, across, or spirally round the body, form the favorite device; sometimes one half of the body is colored red and the other blue, or the whole person is painted jet black and serves as a ground for the representation of a skeleton, done in white, which gives the wearer a most ghastly appearance.555 The dancing is accompanied by chantings, clapping of hands, blowing on pipes of two or three reeds and played with the nose or mouth, beating of skin drums, and rattling of tortoise-shells filled with small pebbles. This horrible discord is, however, more for the purpose of marking time than for pleasing the ear.556 The women are seldom allowed to join in the dance with the men, and when they are so far honored, take a very unimportant part in the proceedings, merely swaying their bodies to and fro in silence.
Plays, representing scenes of war, hunting, and private life, serve to while away the time, and are performed with considerable skill. Though naturally the very incarnation of sloth, at least as far as useful labor is concerned, they have one or two games which require some exertion. One of these, in vogue among the Meewocs, is played with bats and an oak-knot ball. The former are made of a pliant stick, having the end bent round and lashed to the main part so as to form a loop, which is filled with a network of strings. They do not strike but push the ball along with these bats. The players take sides, and each party endeavors to drive the ball past the boundaries of the other. Another game, which was formerly much played at the missions on the coast, requires more skill and scarcely less activity. It consists in throwing a stick through a hoop which is rapidly rolled along the ground. If the player succeeds in this, he gains two points; if the stick merely passes partially through, so that the hoop remains resting upon it, one point is scored.
But, as usual, games of chance are much preferred to games of skill. The chief of these is the same as that already described in the last chapter as being played by the natives all along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and which bears so close a resemblance to the odd-and-even of our school-days. They are as infatuated on this subject as their neighbors, and quite as willing to stake the whole of their possessions on an issue of chance. They smoke a species of strong tobacco in the straight pipes before mentioned;557 but they have no native intoxicating drink.558
MEDICINE AND SWEAT-HOUSES.
The principal diseases are small-pox, various forms of fever, and syphilis. Owing to their extreme filthiness they are also very subject to disgusting eruptions of the skin. Women are not allowed to practice the healing art, as among the Northern Californians, the privileges of quackery being here reserved exclusively to the men. Chanting incantations, waving of hands, and the sucking powers obtain. Doctors are supposed to have power over life and death, hence if they fail to effect a cure, they are frequently killed.559 They demand the most extortionate fees in return for their services, and often refuse to officiate unless the object they desire is promised them. Sweat-houses similar to those already described are in like manner used as a means of cure for every kind of complaint.560 They have another kind of sudatory. A hole is dug in the sand of a size sufficient to contain a person lying at full length; over this a fire is kept burning until the sand is thoroughly heated, when the fire is removed and the sand stirred with a stick until it is reduced to the required temperature. The patient is then placed in the hole and covered, with the exception of his head, with sand. Here he remains until in a state of profuse perspiration, when he is unearthed and plunged into cold water. They are said to practice phlebotomy, using the right arm when the body is affected and СКАЧАТЬ