CHAPTER II. HODDENTIN, THE POLLEN OF THE TULE, THE SACRIFICIAL POWDER OF THE APACHE; WITH REMARKS UPON SACRED POWDERS AND BREAD OFFERINGS IN GENERAL.
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Bourke, John Gregory
Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would then tell me all he knew.
The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.
Hoddentin seems to be used to strengthen all solemn compacts and to bind faith. I had great trouble with a very bright medicine-man named Na-a-cha, who obstinately refused to let me look at the contents of a phylactery which he constantly wore until I let him know that I, too, was a medicine-man of eminence. The room in which we had our conversation was the quarters of the post surgeon, at that time absent on scout. The chimney piece was loaded with bottles containing all kinds of drugs and medicines. I remarked carelessly to Na-a-cha that if he doubted my powers I would gladly burn a hole through his tongue with a drop of fluid from the vial marked "Acid, nitric," but he concluded that my word was sufficient, and after the door was locked to secure us from intrusion he consented to let me open and examine the phylactery and make a sketch of its contents. To guard against all possible trouble, he put a pinch of hoddentin on each of my shoulders, on the crown of my head, and on my chest and back. The same performance was gone through with in his own case. He explained that hoddentin was good for men to eat, that it was good medicine for the bear, and that the bear liked to eat it. I thought that herein might be one clew to the reason why the Apache used it as a medicine. The bear loves the tule swamp, from which, in days primeval, he sallied out to attack the squaws and children gathering the tule powder or tule bulb.
Poorly armed, as they then were, the Apache must have had great trouble in resisting him; hence they hope to appease him by offering a sacrifice acceptable to his palate. If acceptable to the chief animal god, as the bear seems to have been, as he certainly was the most dangerous, then it would have been also acceptable to the minor deities like the puma, snake, eagle, etc., and, by an easy transition, to the sun, moon, and other celestial powers. This opinion did not last long, as will be shown. From its constant association with all sacrifices and all acts of worship, hoddentin would naturally become itself sanctified and an object of worship, just as rattles, drums, standards, holy grails, etc., in different parts of the world have become fetichistic. I was not in the least surprised when I heard Moses Henderson reciting a prayer, part of which ran thus: "Hoddentin eshkin, bi hoddentin ashi" ("Hoddentin child, you hoddentin I offer"), and to learn that it was a personification of hoddentin.
The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.
So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least, I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood had been shed, and everything they did—the bathing in the sweat lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon their heads by the Apache-Yuma—had a reference to the lustration or purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida, gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me by one of the women who gathered it.
Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.