The Pima Indians/Sophiology/Legerdemain
SOPHIOLOGY
Legerdemain
The Makai were intrusted with the important duty of securing supernatural aid to insure good crops. One method of procedure was to gather the people in the large lodge and have some one bring in an olla filled with earth. This the Makai stirred with a willow stick and placed before a clear fire, where it stood all night while rain songs were being sung. At dawn the olla was emptied and was found to contain wheat instead of earth. Four grains were given to each one present, to be buried at the corners of the fields or the four grains together at the center.
For a consideration the Makai would go to a wheat field and perform rites which he assured the owner would result in a heavy yield of wheat. After rolling and smoking a cigarette at each corner of the field, he would go to the center of it and bury a stick (âʼmĭna) 3 or 4 inches long.
To cause an abundance of melons and squashes, the Makai entered the field and took from his mouth—or, as his followers supposed, from the store of magic power in his body—a small melon or squash. The object was partially covered with hardened mud, symbolic of the productive earth. The rite was performed at a time when no melons or squashes had yet appeared, and it is supposed that he obtained the "magic" melon by stripping the outer leaves from the growing end of young vines. This was buried at the root of a growing plant to insure a prolific yield.
Again, the germination and growth of wheat were sometimes imitated by concealing several grains of wheat in the hair and shaking them down upon the soil. Then by a dextrous manipulation of a previously prepared series of young wheat shoots the growth was represented up to the point where a stalk 2 feet in length was slipped from the long coils of hair at the operator's shoulders and shown to the awe-stricken spectators as a fully developed plant.
A favorite trick was to have young men chew mesquite leaves, which on being ejected from the mouth were seen to be wheat or corn.
During the rain ceremonies, when the Makai were at the height of their glory, one of their most impressive acts was to pour dry earth out of a reed until it was half empty and then it would be seen that the remainder was filled with water. "Then it rained right away." If the Makai put one of the magic slates in a cup of water at the time the rain songs were being sung and also dug a shallow trench to show the rivulets how they should cut their way, it would rain in four days.
Another device of the Makai was to conceal reeds filled with water and then while standing on a house top to direct the singers to stand in a close circle around below him. Exhibiting a handful of eagle down or eagle tail feathers and throwing dust on them to show how dry they were, he would then sweep his hand about and scatter water over the spectators and singers, apparently from feathers but in reality from the reeds.
During the season when rain is especially needed any one may petition for it by means of the small gray fly that has a large head. Rubbing soot from the roof or chimney in the fly's eyes the person must say, "Go quickly, little fly, tell your grandmother to send the rain."
Some Siʼatcokam arouse the wonder and admiration of their fellows by placing hot coals in their mouths (where they hold them between the teeth), or by holding them in their hands (taking care to have a thin layer of ash or mud beneath them).
When the exigencies of the case demand it, the Siʼatcokam sink small pointed pieces of wood, an inch in length and flat at the larger end, into the flesh of their patients. The bits of wood are "twisted back and forth between the thumb and forefinger as one would twist a thread until the wood disappears." The great grandmother of Jacob L. Roberts, a young man of Apache-Maricopa and Pima-Kwahadkʼ lineage, thus treated him during a temporary attack of sickness in his infancy. She sank two pieces of creosote bush into his breast and predicted that he would not be ill as would other children. She also said that she would die within the year—and she did. Strange to say, Jacob also escaped the epidemic diseases that afflicted his playmates.
The Siʼatcokam prize certain crystals very highly and claim to obtain them in the following manner: The person possessing the necessary power may be going along in some quiet place when all of a sudden a man will be seen approaching. The stranger never reaches him but will be seen to disappear; then if the Siʼatcokam searches about the spot where the man was last seen, he will find a transparent crystal, haʼtai tânʼtam, stone white, which contains a spirit that will aid him in all his subsequent undertakings and which will desert the stone at the death of the holder.[1]
The Siʼatcokam treats a wounded man by sucking the evil from the wound. He shows a strand of green that resembles a roll of water plants about 8 inches long. The wounded men sucks this crosswise four times and the Siʼatcokam pretends to swallow it. "This insures complete recovery."
- ↑ "Small rock crystals, supposed to he produced by the shamans, are thought to be dead or even living—a kind of astral bodies of the Theosophists. Such a rock crystal is called tevali (plural tevaliʼr) or 'grandfather'—the same name as is given to the majority of the gods. But it may, however, represent any person or relative, in accordance with the directions of the shaman." Lumholtz, Symbolism of the Huichol Indians, 63.