posts, are copies of those in use among the Indians which Lawson described in 1701." And Parker (p. 36) adds: "Corn-cribs are an Indian invention, and, for general construction, have been little improved upon by white men." From the Indians, too, came the hominy-mortar. From them, likewise, the device of preserving dried corn on the cob by braiding the ears together by means of the husk and hanging them up in the house, etc., something mentioned by Champlain, Sagard, Lafiteau, and other early chroniclers.

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Medicine, Materia Medica, Etc. One of the most interesting aspects of the contact of peoples in a new environment is the borrowings of the higher " from the "lower" race in the field of medicine and the healing art in general. That these should often be numerous and significant is but natural, since the question involved is a primal one of the survival of the individual, and, as is even now the case among civilized nations, both real and fake medicines and doctors are appealed to, the known and the unknown alike. The debt of European races in America, and through them of the whole world, to the Indians, directly or indirectly, for materia medica, etc., is very great, especially if we take into account Central and South America with their numerous and valuable febrifuges, purgatives, and astringents, balsams, stimulants, etc. And it must be remembered here

that a small proportion only of the "medicines" actually used by the millions of individuals of European and African descent in the New World, which are of Indian origin, have been catalogued or recorded; the "folk-medicine " has to be added to the recognized physic and therapeutics before the sum is at all reached. But, even if we consider this subject only in so far as the Indian tribes of the United States and Canada are concerned, their influence upon the whites in times past and at the present day is by no means small.

In the early history of the European colonies, the "Indian doctor" (man and woman) was frequently of great service in stanching the wounds and alleviating the pains and aches of the settlers; and the experience was repeated during the period of the acquisition of the West. Many men and women, doubtless, whose descendants have since been ranked among our great ones, had their lives saved by such means. New England, e. g., had its Joe Pye (after whom the "Joe Pye weed" was named), its Sabbatus, its Molly Orcutt, and others, who knew the secret uses of herbs and simples, barks and leaves, roots, berries, and juices, and cured or taught the newcomers to heal themselves. From them the Europeans learned the virtues of cohosh, dockmackie, puccoon, pipsissewa, and many other native remedies. The recognized pharmacopeias of the United States have admitted a large

serves:

"Many of the medicinal roots of eastern and southern United States were adopted by the whites from the Indian pharmacopeia; some of these are still known by their Indian names, and about 40 are quoted in current price lists of crude drugs. Indians formerly gathered medicinal roots to supply the trade that arose after the coming of the whites. Many roots were exported, especially ginseng, in which there was an extensive commerce with China; and, curiously enough, the Iroquois name for the plant has the same meaning as the Chinese name. Ginseng was discovered in America by Lafitau in 1716, and under the French régime in Canada many thousands of dollars' worth were sent yearly to the Orient. In Alaska ginseng was used by sorcerers to give them power."

The medicinal value of witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), whose bark is now used for extracts well-known in the pharmacopeia of the whites, was recognized by the Indians, who also employed for medicinal purposes the may-apple (Podophyllum peltatum), or "wild lemon," known also as furnishing an extract catalogued in the remedies of the whites. The culver's root (Veronica virginica) likewise belongs in this list. As a medicine for scrofula," pipsissewa beer," a modified decoction of Chimaphila umbellata, a plant of the heath family, has been in use among the white population. The so-called "Indian tobacco" (Lobelia inflata) furnished a" quack-medicine" of considerable vogue; and in the northeastern United States lobelia "was once the watchword of a local medical school and

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* Handbook of American Indians, pt. ii., p. 396.

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famous as an emetic, cure for asthma, etc. The Indians of California were credited by Dr. Bard in 1894 with furnishing "three of the most valuable additions which have been made to the pharmacopeia during the last twenty years. twenty years." One of these is the

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yerba santa" (or "holy plant ") of the Spaniards - its scientific name is Eriodyction glutinosum- used for affections of the respiratory tract; another is Rhamnus purshiana, whose Spanish name is cascara sagrada ("holy bark"), from which a good laxative is obtained. "Cascara " medicines of several sorts are now to be had at all drug stores.

It was from Mr. James Mooney's investigations of the so-called "mescal cult" of the Kiowa Indians of Oklahoma in 1891, that the extent of the ritual use of the "buttons" of the plant (Anhalonium Lewinii) among the North American Indians of the southwestern United States "it was formerly and still much used for ceremonial and medicinal purposes by all the tribes between the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico, from Arkansas River southward almost to the city of Mexico "

indicate that it possesses varied and valuable medicinal properties, tending to confirm the idea of the Indians, who regard it almost as a panacea. The psychic influence of the drug was recognized by some of these Indians in their saying that "mescal is the food of the soul, just as maize is the food of the body." An account of this drug and its effects, based upon original experiments, will be found in a recent article by Havelock Ellis in the Popular Science Monthly (vol. lxi, pp. 52-71) who finds it superior in some ways and less harmful (there are no evil after-effects upon the intellect) than the famous hashish for the creation of "artificial paradises," and concludes that "even in civilization there remains some place for the rites of mescal."

Many other plants and herbs might be mentioned here, did the space permit it, information concerning which may be sought in the work of Dr. B. S. Barton, Collections towards a Materia Medica of the United States (1798), and the more recent literature of the subject.

Upon the Indian reputation in physic, quacks and impostors have grafted themselves at all times, and there has been a flood of "Indian" remedies for coughs, colds, catarrhs, consumption, rheumatism, and dozens of other human ills. Many patent and proprietary medicines even now rejoice in titles reminiscent, as their ingredients are supposed to be, of the Indian. Newspapers and dead walls

abound in advertisements of such

things as things as "Kickapoo Indian Sagwa,' "Snake Indian Cure for Consumption," and many more.

As mentioned previously, the "medicine-men " of the North American aborigines were often called upon to serve the European settlers and intruders, as is repeatedly recorded in individual accounts, local chronicles, etc. This was particularly the case in those sections of the country where métissage had occurred and the existence of numbers of mixed bloods facilitated the utilization of Indian customs and practices. But instances are not lacking from the very heart of the English settlements. In a letter of the Rev. John Clayton, dated 1687, and cited by Bushnell, in the American Anthropologist for 1900 (p. 41), it is said of the natives of Virginia and their wiochists or shamans:

"They reward their Physicians with certain fees, but according as they bargain for wampum peake, skins or the like; if it be to an Englishman they are sent for they will agree for a match coat or a gallon or two of Rum or so forth according to the nature of the cure."

The use of the "sweat-bath" of the Indians by white men is often mentioned in the early records of Canada and the West, one of the early explorers admitting the great benefit he derived from it. And such methods were much in vogue among the halfbreed population. Kalm, the Swedish traveller (1772) praises, from personal experience, the corn-poultices of the Iroquois..

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Clothing, Furniture, Ornament, Etc. In the beginning the early European settlers, like the pioneers of the West at a later date, owed much to the Indians in the matter of clothing, and buckskin shirts and moccasins (and shoe-packs") have not yet gone out of use altogether. The infant of the Hudson's Bay factor in the far north of Canada sleeps safe in warm moss-bag" of the Athapascans; at the sea-shore the offspring of the New Englander toddles about in moccasins borrowed from the Algonkian and the Iroquois. And there are now "sleeping-bags" for others than Eskimo and Arctic explorers. The French ladies of Louisiana took up the turkey-feather fans of the aborigines, and the Yukon prospector now uses the parfleche of the Plains Indians to transport his few belongings. For storage purposes many baskets, and receptacles of other materials of Indian make or imitations of them, have long been in use among the whites in many regions. In the early days rope and string made from "Indian hemp" (Apocynum cannabinum), the bark of the "leatherwood" (Dirca palustris) were largely used in northeastern North America, and the saying that the Canadian Northwest was made by Scotchmen and "shaganappi," recognizes the debt of the European settlers to the buffalo-skin thongs of the CreeOjibwas. In early French Canada babiche, another variety of raw-hide thong, acquired some reputation. In

In

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Canada, too, the use of watap (roots of pine, spruce, tamarack) has been common among the whites for the purpose of sewing birch-bark, etc. Mats of flags and rushes readily passed from the Indians into the houses of the early colonists of New England, Virginia, etc. Lawson in his History of Carolina (1714) says: "The mats the Indian women make are of rushes, and about five feet high, and two fathom long, and sewed double, that is, two together; whereby they become very commodious to lay under our beds, or to sleep on in the summer season in the day time, and for our slaves in the night. There are other mats made of flags, which the Tuskeruro (i. e., Tuscarora) Indians make and sell to the inhabitants " (p. 307). A number of things manufactured from the maize-plant that have been or are now in use more or less among them, are of Indian origin. Such are corn-husk mats (especially door mats), wrappings and stuffings for various purposes,

etc.

In the realm of ornament and æsthetics the Indian has also made his influence felt. The wives and daughters of the European settlers learned from the squaws many pretty and durable ways of staining and dyeing their willow and their wooden ware with juices of vegetable origin. Today things "made by the Indian " are as common as those "made in Germany," and a pedagogical craze for imitating Indian art is abroad in

Games, Recreations, Etc.

When peoples like the American Indians and the energetic Europeans who began the colonization of the New World met, in the northern hemisphere, it was natural and inevitable that they should influence one another in those activities of physical life, represented by games, recreations, sports, and pastimes. This must be true to a still greater extent when one of the peoples concerned was the vigorous and play-loving AngloSaxon, eager to add to his already somewhat lengthy repertoire new experiences in the joy of feeling alive. But all the European peoples who helped lay the foundations of the United States-English, French, Spanish, Dutch-have shared in this borrowing from the aborigines, who dwelt in the land before them. The abundance and variety of the native games of primitive America have been demonstrated by Culin, in his notable monograph on Games of the

North American Indians, where will be found recorded and described not only those which are of indigenous origin and peculiar to this continent, but those, likewise, which have been taken over by the whites from the Indians and those which the latter have adopted from the former.

the

Of all the games indulged in by the Indians of the region now constituting the United States and parts of the Dominion of Canada, none were more common or more widespread than games of ball, which were played with great zest and skill, both as sports and as performances of a more or less ceremonial character, by numerous tribes belonging to the Algonkian, Iroquoian, Muskhogean, and Siouan stocks. Famous for ball-playing were the Ojibwa (or Chippewa), Choctaws and the Cherokees, the Hurons, Mohawks, Senecas, etc., with all of whom the white came early into close contact. There seems to be no doubt that the game of ball known in Canada, and now generally throughout the English-speaking world, as lacrosse, and in Louisiana as raquette (i. e. racket), was borrowed by the whites from the Indians, the adoption occurring quite separately in the North and in the South. In the South, the game was taken over by the Louisianian French from the Choctaws, or a closely related people; in the North, lacrosse was first adopted from the Algonkian or Iroquoian Indians by the Canadian French, passing from them to the