The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888...

Exactly what origin to ascribe to the drinking reed is now an impossibility, neither is it probable that the explanations which the medicine-men might choose to make would have the slightest value in dispelling the gloom which surrounds the subject. That the earliest conditions of the Apache tribe found them without many of the comforts which have for generations been necessaries, and obliged to resort to all sorts of expedients in cooking, carrying, or serving their food is the most plausible presumption, but it is submitted merely as a presumption and in no sense as a fact. It can readily be shown that in a not very remote past the Apache and other tribes were compelled to use bladders and reeds for carrying water, or for conveying water, broth, and other liquid food to the lips. The conservative nature of man in all that involves his religion would supply whatever might be needed to make the use of such reeds obligatory in ceremonial observances wherein there might be the slightest suggestion of religious impulse. We can readily imagine that among a people not well provided with forks and spoons, which are known to have been of a much later introduction than knives, there would be a very decided danger of burning the lips with broth, or of taking into the mouth much earthy and vegetable matter or ice from springs and streams at which men or women might wish to drink, so the use of the drinking reed would obviate no small amount of danger and discomfort.

Water was carried in reeds by the Dyaks of Borneo, according to Bock.[215] The manner in which the natives of the New Hebrides and other islands of the South Pacific Ocean carry water in bamboo joints recalls the Zuñi method of preserving the sacred water of the ocean in hollow reeds.[216]

Mr. F. H. Cushing shows that "so far as language indicates the character of the earliest water vessels which to any extent met the requirements of the Zuñi ancestry, they were tubes of wood or sections of canes."[217] Long after these reeds had disappeared from common use, the priests still persisted in their use for carrying the water for the sacred ceremonies. The mother of the king of Uganda gave to Speke "a beautifully-worked pombé sucking-pipe."[218] For ordinary purposes these people have "drinking gourds." In Ujiji, Cameron saw an old chief sucking pombé, the native beer, through a reed;[219] and, later on in his narrative, we learn that the reed is generally used for the purposes of drinking. "The Malabars reckoned it insolent to touch the vessel with their lips when drinking."[220] They made use of vessels with a spout, which were no more and no less than the small hollow-handled soup ladles of the Zuñi and Tusayan, through which they sipped their hot broth.

In an ancient grave excavated not far from Salem, Massachusetts, in 1873, were found five skeletons, one of which was supposed to be that of the chief Nanephasemet, who was killed in 1605 or 1606. He was the king of Namkeak. On the breast of this skeleton were discovered "several small copper tubes ... from 4 to 8 inches in length, and from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch in diameter, made of copper rolled up, with the edges lapped."[221]

The natives of the Friendly Islands carried in their ears little cylinders of reed, although we learn that these were "filled with a red solid substance."[223] Among the Narrinyeri of Australia, when young men are to be initiated into the rank of warriors, during the ceremonies "they are allowed to drink water, but only by sucking it up through a reed."[224] Admiral von Wrangel says of the Tchuktchi of Siberia: "They suck their broth through a small tube of reindeer bone," which "each individual carries about with him."[225] Padre Sahagun says that the human victim whom the Aztecs offered up in sacrifice was not allowed to touch water with his lips, but had to "suck it through a reed."[226]

"The Mexicans had a forty-days' fast in memory of one of their sacred persons who was tempted forty days on a mountain. He drinks through a reed. He is called the Morning Star."[227] The Mexicans, according to Fray Diego Duran, placed before the statues of their dead bowls of "vino," with "rosas," tobacco (this seems to be the proper translation of the word "humazos," smokes), and a reed called the "drinker of the sun," through which the spirit could imbibe.[228]

Mrs. Ellen Russell Emerson speaks of the custom the warriors of the northern tribes had which suggests that she had heard of the drinking reed without exactly understanding what it meant. She says that warriors carry bowls of birch bark "from one side of which the warrior drinks in going to battle—from the other, on his return. These bowls are not carried home, but left on the prairie, or suspended from trees within a day's journey of his village."[231]

The fundamental reason upon which the use of the drinking reed is based is that the warrior or devotee shall not let water touch his lips. It is strange to find among the regulations with regard to taking water by the warrior caste: "He shall not sip water while walking, standing, lying down, or bending forward."[233]

The Dharma-sûtra, traditionally connected with the Rishi-Vasishtha, of the Seventh Mandala of the Rig-Veda, is a relic of a Vedic school of the highest antiquity. Its seat was in the present northwestern provinces of India, and, like the Dharmasâstra of Gautama, it is the sole surviving record from this source.[234]

There was another service performed by reeds or tubes in the domestic economy of nations around the north pole. As the Apache are derived from an Arctic ancestry it does not seem amiss to allude to it. Lord Lonsdale, in describing the capture of a whale which he witnessed, says that the Eskimo women "first of all gathered up the harpoons and then pulled out all the spears. As each spear was withdrawn a blow-pipe was pushed into the wound and the men blew into it, after which the opening was tied up. When every wound had been treated in this manner the whale resembled a great windbag and floated high in the water."

In the National Museum at Washington, D. C., there are many pipes made of the bones of birds, which were used by the Inuit as drinking tubes when water had to be taken into the mouth from holes cut in the ice. These drinking tubes seem to be directly related to our subject, although they may also have been used as Lonsdale describes the pipes for blowing the dead whale full of air. Another point to be mentioned is that the eagle pipe kept in the mouth of the young warrior undergoing the torture of the sun dance among the Sioux and other tribes on the plains is apparently connected with the "bebedero del Sol" of the peoples to the south.[235]

The use of this drinking reed, shown to have been once so intimately associated with human sacrifice, may have disappeared upon the introduction of labrets, which seem, in certain cases at least, to be associated with the memory of enemies killed in battle, which would be only another form of human sacrifice. This suggestion is advanced with some misgivings, and only as a hypothesis to assist in determining for what purpose labrets and drinking tubes have been employed. The Apache have discontinued the use of the labret, which still is to be found among their congeners along the Lower Yukon, but not among those living along the lower river.[236] According to Dall the custom was probably adopted from the Inuit; he also shows that whenever labrets are worn in a tribe they are worn by both sexes, and that the women assume them at the first appearance of the catamenia.

"This is to be noted, that how many men these Savages [Brazilians] doe kill, so many holes they will have in their visage, beginning first in their nether lippe, then in their cheekes, thirdly, in both their eye-browes, and lastly in their eares."[237]

Cabeza de Vaca speaks of the Indians near Malhado Island, "They likewise have the nether lippe bored, and within the same they carrie a piece of thin Cane about halfe a finger thicke."[238] Herrera relates very nearly the same of the men of "Florida": "Traìan una tetilla oradada, metido por el agujero un pedaço de Caña, i el labio baxero tambien agujereado, con otra caña en èl."[239] But Herrera probably obtained his data from the narrative of Vaca.

In looking into this matter of labrets as connected or suspected as being in some way connected with the drinking reed, we should not expect to find the labret adhering very closely to the primitive form, because the labret, coming to be regarded more and more as an ornament, would allow greater and greater play to the fancy of the wearer or manufacturer, much the same as the crosses now worn by ladies, purely as matter of decoration, have become so thoroughly examples of dexterity in filagree work as to have lost the original form and significance as a declaration of faith. But it is a subject of surprise to find that the earlier writers persistently allude to the labrets in the lips of the Mexican deities, which probably were most tenacious of primitive forms, as being shaped like little reeds—"cañutillos."

Herrera says of Tescatlipoca: "Que era el Dios de la Penitencia, i de los Jubileos ... Tenia Çarcillo de Oro, i Plata en el labio baxo, con un cañutillo cristalino, de un geme de largo."[240] The high priest, he says, was called topilçin, and in sacrificing human victims he wore "debaxo del labio, junto al medio de la barba, una pieça como cañutillo, de una piedra açul."[241]

Speaking of Quetzalcoatl Clavigero says: "From the under lip hung a crystal tube."[243] From Diego Duran's account of this "bezote" or labret it must have been hollow, as he says it contained a feather: "En el labio bajo tenia un bezote de un veril cristalino y en el estaba metida una pluma verde y otras veces azul."[244]

In the Popul Vuh is to be found a myth which gives an account of the origin of labrets. It relates that two night watchers over the flowers in the garden of Xibalba had in some manner proved derelict in duty, and had their lips split as a punishment.[245]