John G. Bourke > Quotes

“Mickey Free has assured me that he has seen an Apache medicine-man light a pipe without doing anything but hold his hands up toward the sun. This story is credible enough if we could aver that the medicine-man was supplied, as I suspect he was, with a burning glass. That the medicine-man”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“There are many well marked examples of albinism among the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, especially among the Zuñi and Tusayan; but in no case did I learn that the individuals thus distinguished were accredited with power not ascribable to them under ordinary circumstances.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Winters”
― John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook

“This statement seems to me to be overdrawn. Nothing of the kind was learned by me at the sun dance of the Sioux which I noted in 1881, and in any event the remark would scarcely apply to the medicine-men of the Apache, who have nothing clearly identifiable with the sun dance, and who do not cut, gash, or in any manner mutilate themselves, as did the principal participants in the sun dance, or as was done in still earlier ages by the galli (the priests of Cybele) or the priests of Mexico. Herodotus tells us that the priests of Egypt, or rather the doctors, who were at one time identified with them, were separated into classes; some cured the eyes, some the ears, others the head or the belly.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“high places" which were interdicted to the Israelites.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“The Ojibways abbreviate their sentences and employ many elliptical forms of expression, so much so that half-breeds, quite familiar with the colloquial language, fail to comprehend a medicine-man when in the full flow of excited oratory.46”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“To supply a column of this size, in the depth of winter, was a problem demanding most careful consideration. There was a train of one hundred and sixty-eight wagons and seven ambulances, with two hundred and nineteen drivers and attendants; and a pack-train of four hundred mules cared for by sixty-five expert packers, to follow after the cavalry whenever it should cut loose from the main body. No finer, cleaner-cut expedition was ever known in the annals of the Regular Army.”
― John G. Bourke, MacKenzie's Last Fight with the Cheyennes

“but I can say that in the face of the latter, each time that I saw it (at different dates between 1874 and 1881), there was a niche which was filled with votive offerings.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“but claiming no earlier date than the settlement of New England, it will be seen that the white race has been slow to learn or the red man has been skillful in withholding knowledge which, if imparted, would have lessened friction and done much to preserve and assimilate a race that, in spite of some serious defects of character, will for all time to come be looked upon as "the noble savage.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“On the same principle that petulant babies are lulled to slumber by the crooning of their nurses, the sick will frequently be composed to a sound and beneficial slumber, from which they awake refreshed and ameliorated. I can recall, among many other cases, those of Chaundezi ("Long Ear," or "Mule") and Chemihuevi-Sal, both chiefs of the Apache, who recovered under the treatment of their own medicine-men after our surgeons had abandoned the case. This recovery could be attributed only to the sedative effects of the chanting.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“The American Indian's theory of disease is the theory of the Chaldean, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman—all bodily disorders and ailments are attributed to the maleficence of spirits who must be expelled or placated.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Diego Duran14 thought that the priesthood among the Mexicans was to a great extent hereditary, much like the right of primogeniture among the people of Spain. Speaking of the five assistants who held down the human victim at the moment of sacrifice, he says: Los nombres de los cinco eran Chachalmeca, que en nuestra Lengua quiere tanto decir como Levita ó ministro de cosa divina ó sagrada. Era esta dignidad entre ellos muy suprema y en mucha tenida, la cual se heredaba de hijos á padres como cosa de mayorazgo, sucediendo los hijos á los Padres en aquella sangrienta Dignidad endemoniada y cruel.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Picart says of the medicine-men of the tribes along Rio de la Plata: "Pour être Prêtre ou Médecin parmi eux, il faut avoir jeûné longtems & souvent. Il faut avoir combatu plusieurs fois contre les bêtes Sauvages, principalement contre les Tigres, & tout au moins en avoir été mordu ou égratigné. Après cela on peut obtenir l'Ordre, de Prêtrise; car le Tigre est chez eux un animal presque divin."17”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“The castration of the galli, or priests of Cybele, is described by Dupuis.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Diego Duran asserts that the Mexican priests "se endian por medio los miembros viriles y se hacian mil cosas para volverse impotentes por no ofender á sus Dioses.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“In Guiana,12 the candidate for the office of medicine-man must, among other ordeals, "drink fearfully large drafts of tobacco juice, mixed with water." The medicine-men of Guiana are called peaiman.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“It is necessary to convince his friends that he "has the gift," as one of my informants expressed it; that is, he must show that he is a dreamer of dreams, given to long fasts and vigils,”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“It should not be forgotten that the world owes a large debt to the medicine-men of America, who first discovered the virtues of coca, sarsaparilla, jalap, cinchona, and guiacum. They understand the administration of enemata, and have an apparatus made of the paunch of a sheep and the hollow leg bone.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Our hunting songs and war songs may be a survival of the incantations of Celtic or Teutonic medicine-men.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“Neither is there such a thing as settled dogma among these medicine-men.”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“These medicine-women devote their attention principally to obstetrics, and have many peculiar stories to relate concerning pre-natal influences and matters of that sort. Tze-go-juni wore at her neck the stone amulet, shaped like a spear, which is figured in the illustrations of this paper. The material was the silex from the top of a mountain, taken from a ledge at the foot of a tree which had been struck by lightning. The fact that siliceous rock will emit sparks when struck by another hard body appeals to the reasoning powers of the savage as a proof that the fire must have been originally deposited therein by the bolt of lightning. A tiny piece of this arrow or lance was broken off and ground into the finest powder, and then administered in water to women during time of gestation. I have found the same kind of arrows in use among the women of Laguna and other pueblos. This matter will receive more extended treatment in my coming monograph on "Stone Worship." Mendieta is authority for the”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“faculty of transforming himself into a coyote and other animals at pleasure and then resuming the human form is as implicitly believed in by the American Indians as it was by our own forefathers in Europe. This former prevalence of lycanthropy all over Europe can be indicated in no more forcible manner than by stating that until the reign of Louis XIV,”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition

“houses of mercy,”
― John G. Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition