THE NAVAJO 
 MEDICINE MAN 
 
 G AN you imagine how it would seem 
 when 3 7 ou are sick to have a big man 
 come and sing over you all night and 
 instead of feeling your pulse and looking at 
 your tongue, make queer motions with sticks 
 and feathers around your head ? 
 
 A Navajo Hogan 
 
 If you were a Navajo Indian child, you 
 would be given very little medicine, and instead 
 of being tucked away cozily in a soft, warm bed 
 
to rest and get well, you would have to lie on a 
 buffalo robe or blanket thrown down on the 
 dirt floor of a hogan. Then your friends would 
 sit around on the floor beside you and join the 
 medicine man in his strange, wild songs during 
 the whole night or maybe for two or three 
 nights. There would be no organ, no piano, 
 no musical instrument of any kind but some old 
 Indian would hold a dry gourd in his hand and 
 shake it all the time, to make the seeds rattle 
 and so keep time to the music. 
 
 Sometimes the medicine man would put a 
 pinch of some kind of powder on your head and 
 arms and feet, and once in a while give you 
 something to drink from a little cup, and some- 
 times he has a lot of corncobs and waves them 
 in the air one after another; or he waves 
 sticks and eagle feathers trimmed with bits of 
 bright yarn and little shells. At other times 
 he holds a small tumble weed on the head and 
 shoulders of one who is getting well and makes 
 a strange sound with his lips — a sound that 
 makes one think of the droning of a bagpipe. 
 
 The medicine men are not only the doctors 
 but the religious teachers of the Indians as 
 well. Sometimes their singing and ceremonies 
 are for the sick and sometimes they are in honor 
 of their gods, for the Navajos worship a great 
 many strange gods. 
 
 One religious ceremony that few white 
 
people ever see is the sand painting which is 
 made on the floor of the hogan. The floor is 
 swept very clean, then the medicine man sifts 
 earth of different colors through his fingers and 
 so makes a picture on the floor. The picture 
 does not stay there long for the floor is soon 
 swept again and the family life goes on as 
 usual. 
 
 But in spite of the bad work of the medicine 
 men, the Spirit of God is already at work in the 
 hearts of the Navajos and their children. One 
 of them has for three years sent his little son 
 and daughter to the mission school. The boy 
 was sweet tempered from the first but the girl 
 was very cross and cruel and we thought that 
 because of her brutal treatment of a little girl 
 younger than herself, she would have to go 
 home and stay. But during her third year of 
 school, she has become sweet and lovable and 
 without knowing it, is proving to all who know 
 her what God can do in the heart of the child 
 of a savage. 
 
 One day during a rainstorm we found 
 shelter in the home of a medicine man. He 
 was very kind and nice to us and did all he 
 could to make our stay pleasant. After a while 
 he took down from the wall a bundle of the 
 queer things used in his ceremonies over the 
 sick. He carefully untied the deerskin wrapper 
 and showed us the sticks and eagle feathers 
 
trimmed with small shells and bits of bright 
 colored yarn. There was a sly twinkle in his 
 eye and he afterwards told us that he knew his 
 work would not cure the sick, but so long as 
 other medicine men made money in that way, 
 he would do so too. One day his little girl 
 caught a bat and as he held it up by the wings 
 he said “ uzza ” (medicine), so giving us to un- 
 derstand that he would use the wings in mak- 
 ing medicine. 
 
 We told him of the Great Physician, of 
 him who is “mighty to save,” and after 
 thinking over the matter and talking about it 
 with his friends, he said that we must be right. 
 
 Shortly before his death, which occurred a 
 few months later, he sent for the missionary to 
 come to see him at his hogan. Who knows but 
 that in his last hours this Navajo medicine 
 man believed in the “ Great Physician ? ” 
 
 Bertha A. Little. 
 
 369 -1st Ed.— 5, 1907. 
 
 Price, 1 cent per copy; 75 cents per 100. 
 
 Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church 
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