So the religious life of the people was formalized in groups that separately represented neither the whole town nor a single clan but drew symmetrically upon the population until all were included, empowered in the same terms, and actors of the same myths. Religion was not a thing apart from daily life. It was daily life, a formalization, an imitation of nature, an imagined control of the elements, and of what was obscure in the spirit of men and women.
In addition to the major divisions of the kiva groups, which cut boldly through the whole company of the town for organized religious acts, there were smaller groups with specialized missions whose members were not chosen along the lines of kiva organization. These were the secret societies. Each had its unique purpose. There was one in charge of war. Another appointed all holders of major nonreligious offices. Another comprised the koshare, the clowns of the dances who served also as the disciplinarians, through censure or ridicule, of individuals who offended against the unspoken but powerful sense of restraint and decorum that governed behavior. Several others were curing societies, and together constituted the medicine cult. And another embraced the hunters of the town. All selected and initiated their own members throughout the generations.
Of the secret societies those which did battle on behalf of the people against illnesses of body and spirit had the largest number of members. Their work was highly specialized and in much demand. Almost everywhere there was reason to call upon them, for even a suspicion of illness was enough to invoke the powers of the curing societies. It all related to what the people said was behind illness—any illness but the little commonplace ones that came and went in a day. No, there were other kinds that came from nowhere, lasted a long time, and had strange effects. They were not accounted for in ordinary ways. Something was at work, something wicked, something unseen, and clever, and dangerous because it might be right here, anywhere, abiding for the while in a bird, or an animal, or a person, or a rock, none of whom knew it. Possibly an ant, or a toad, or a buzzing insect contained the responsible thing. One day well, the next day sick—the invalid, they said, must have received the sickness in his sleep when nobody was watching, and the awful thing had its chance to happen. Once again they had struck, those powers of evil and illness, of whom everybody knew, and sooner or later encountered. They were witches, male and female, who were invisible, who put themselves into innocent creatures and objects, and who did their worst work in all success because people could not recognize them and prevent them from creating harm and havoc. All witches worked upon the same purpose—to make people sicken and die. Sometimes they put spells also upon useful animals to make them die. The danger was so real and so prevalent that everyone kept a sharp watch for suspicious behavior on the part of persons, animals and things. And yet much else had to be done, daily, and so the people gave to the curing societies the special responsibility of keeping vigil against witches, and of taking proper action when the blow fell.
It was they said most fortunate that the doctors of the medicine societies were able to receive extraordinary powers from the real medicine men of the spirit world—the ones who were animal-gods and heroes, whose benign influence reached to all the quarters of the world, and to the zenith and the nadir too: the mountain lion, the bear, the badger, the eagle, the wolf, and the shrew. Thanks to these powers, the doctors were able to recognize witches where no other person could possibly do so. Once identified, the witches could be unmasked and worked against. It was hard work, calling for exactly learned methods, and sadly enough there was always the possibility of failure. Still, everything possible had to be done, and if in the end the doctors lost their patient, the people did not hold it against them, but realized that in this case the opposing powers were the stronger, and could not but prevail. Witches were powerful, that was just the point of being so careful about them, and working so energetically against them. Witches especially tried to destroy the young men. It was particularly evil of them thus to strike against the strength of the present and the seed of the future.
When a person was bewitched into sickness, great forces went to work to save him. His people sent for the doctor of a medicine society who came to the house. Family and friends were there. The prevalence of witches was of much concern to everyone. The doctor followed a procedure known to all, for it was established long ago. He removed his clothes, returning to his animal estate naked. He went to the patient whom he examined with thorough care, feeling him all over his naked body to determine the location of the malevolence which had invaded him. He prayed. If there was a fracture he made splints and set the bone. If there was lameness he massaged. If there was an eruption he lanced it with a flint knife. If no visible ailment showed he administered medicines brewed of herbs and water. He anointed the sick body with his curative saliva. He was disembodied from his daily self. The patient and the people knew him as a power in tune with greater powers, and as he worked, they felt in themselves the energy he brought and the conviction of recovery he carried. Hope arrived with him. Witches might be strong, but here was strength too, in every curative gesture, word and thought. At the end of the treatment, the doctor resumed his clothes and left, with instructions to summon him again if the patient did not improve rapidly.
If he was needed again, he then assembled all the other members of his own medicine society and unless the patient was critically ill, the doctor worked with them for four days in ritualistic preparation for the major cure which they were to undertake. If the patient seemed to be dying, they went to him in the first evening. Otherwise on the evening of the fourth day (the people said great virtue resided in the number four) they went to the house of sickness. The doctors undressed. To frighten the witches they painted their faces black. Over their heads from ear to ear they each fastened a band of white eagle-down, and around their necks hung necklaces of bear claws. Each doctor held two eagle wing feathers and a gourd rattle. The medicine society was ready to go to work.
The doctors in turn came to the patient and felt over his body to determine the seat of illness. When they found it they would know into what member the witches had shot their evil, and what was its nature. The whole cure led to the extraction of the evil object from the patient’s body.
Meantime there were prayers and chants. Paintings of colored meal were laid upon the swept floor by a medicine priest. He sprinkled grains of color through his fingers, drawing lines with delicacy. He aimed the dropping meal with his thumb that sifted it, to compose in flax yellow, turquoise blue, berry red, skin brown, black, and white, a design full of magic power against sickness and witches. Before he changed from one color to another, he cleaned his fingers by twiddling them in a little pile of clean sand, like the sand that was spread down as the general background of the painting. It was almost hypnotic, to see the curative design come to being out of the little pouring streams of colored motes. Where nothing was, now power dwelt. How fortunate to know that it came manifest on the side of good, against evil! And then medicines were mixed and administered. The doctors partook of them along with the patient.
The proceedings were dangerous, they said, because such a gathering of virtue and opposition would in itself attract witches who would do their utmost to defeat the forces of good. Therefore, the war priests attended also, Masewi and Oyoyewi, to defend the doctors at their hopeful work. They stationed their assistants outside the house of illness with bows and arrows with which to shoot the witches if they came close. Nobody was in any doubt—the witches were there, and the last act of the curing drama was soon to come, after everything proper had been done in the sickroom. It was sober and urgent in feeling—so many personalities, so much gesture, such powerful singing, all the medicines—and the patient alone and bare in the midst of it felt these forces pulling at him and empowering him to recover. The doctors labored mightily. Feeling the flesh of the patient, one of them found what they had all searched for—the place of illness, and the physical cause of it: turning to the assembled powers, he indicated the place, and then he bent to it and sucked upon the skin, or he operated with his hands, until he was able to come away from the sufferer and show everyone the cause of the trouble which had been stricken into the sick man by the witches. It was sometimes a thorn; again, a little snake, or a lizard, or piece of rag, or a pebble; any small foreign substance might turn out to be the seat of trouble. Only a trained doctor, they agreed, could ever find it,