Although in many tribes the medicine man (or shaman) acted as ceremonial priest or seer, in others his major duty was to be on call to treat any Indian who got sick. In his role as healer the medicine man carried a bag of secret conjures and talismans to drive away the evil spirits and rid the patient's body of bad medicine. Among the tools of his medical trade, used to the accompaniment of chants, were dried fingers, deer tails, drums, rattles and a tiny sack of curative herbs.
There was often a genuine physical cure in the herbs. The Dakota's actually relieved asthma with the powdered roots of skunk cabbage, and the Kiowa's stopped dandruff with a plant called soaproot. When nauseated, Cheyenne's drank a tonic of boiled wild mint, while the Cree's chewed the tiny cones of spruce trees to soothe a sore throat.
Some of the Indian's herbal cures were of dubious value; the Hopi's, for example, believed that the milky juice of the bedstraw milkweed promoted the secretion of milk in nursing mothers. Yet many a white frontiersman, like the Indians themselves, owed his life to a medicine man's cure. A Cheyenne saved William Bent from choking to death of a throat inflammation by snagging and removing the infected membrane with a hunk of sinew strung with sandburs and buffalo tallow. And in 1834, Prince Maximilian, who was dying of scurvy at Fort Clark, was cured by the Indian remedy - eating the raw bulbs of wild garlic. In recognition of such effective medicine, eventually the U.S. Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary officially accepted 170 Indian drugs (including skunk cabbage, mint, yarrow, and Indian turnip) for their medicinal value.
In some Southwestern tribes, when special help was needed from the spirits, medicine men prepared beds of sand decorated with mystical designs. Crowds of tribesmen came to watch the ritual and to feast on corn meal, soup, and roast mutton - all supplied by the patient. The rite began with the medicine man spreading a light layer of sand across the floor of the patient's lodge. Then, from a traditional repertory of symbols varying in size from one foot to 20 feet in diameter, he decided on the suitable motif. Using pigments ground from rocks, charcoal, root bark, rushed flowers and pollen, the shaman created his design by trickling the colored powders between his thumb and forefinger. When the picture (called a sand painting) was done, the medicine man and his assistants put the patient in the middle of it, while they chanted exhortations to drive evil spirits from the body. Spectators picked up handfuls of sand to keep as talismans. When the ceremony was over, the medicine man erased the last traces of the design with a long wand.
