This medicine-man was a person of great importance, combining in himself the functions of physician and magician, as is generally the case among savage tribes, who look upon disease as the result of a hostile incantation or the anger of a malignant or offended spirit. They were usually initiated into their profession by a long period of preparation, including protracted fasting, solitude, severe penances, and frequently the administration of narcotic drugs. This regimen produced hallucinations, in which medicines or charms were revealed to them by spirits, and a hysterical or epileptic tendency superinduced, which, under nervous excitement, readily gave rise to paroxysms.
Their modes of powwowing were various, but usually began with drum-beating, shaking of rattles, and chanting by the assistants, and furious dancing and gesticulation on the part of the conjuror, until he was seized with convulsions, real or simulated, and rolled upon the ground with face distorted and mouth foaming. Sometimes he howled forth his oracle in this condition, and then it was understood to be a spirit that possessed him speaking with his voice; at other times he fell prostrate and apparently lifeless, and did not deliver his oracle until he recovered his senses, when he announced that his soul had quitted his body and journeyed to the world of spirits, whence it brought the desired answer. In their medical practice they combined these conjurations with treatment of a more orthodox sort, administering drugs, using scarification, cauterization, and other remedies; and in both capacities they were regarded with great veneration. These medicine-men also took a prominent part in the religious ceremonies, solemn fasts, and other rites. These had mostly reference to the change of seasons and other events, the chief feast being at the maize-harvest, while others signalized the return of certain sorts of migratory game, the ripening of certain fruits, etc. Their festivals were celebrated with various ceremonies of a symbolical character, with singing, dancing, and a grand banquet.
Neither at these festivals nor in their ordinary life did these Indians use any beverage but water, sometimes sweetened with the sap of the sugar-maple, until after they had learned the use of spirituous liquors from the whites; and to these, Father White tells us, the Maryland Indians had at first a great repugnance, though afterwards drunkenness became a prevalent vice with them. The custom of smoking tobacco was universal among the tribes at the time of the first arrival of the whites. It was regarded, however, in a far different light from the same practice among ourselves. Tobacco was a sacred herb, a precious gift of the Great Spirit to his children, and the act of smoking had always something of a ceremonial or even religious character. In some tribes the chief, standing at the entrance of his cabin at sunrise, saluted the first appearance of the solar disk with solemn wafts of smoke from his pipe. In councils and other ceremonies the calumet played an important part. It was solemnly lighted by the chief, who gave a few whiffs, sometimes directing these to the four cardinal points, and then opened the matter for consideration; the pipe was next handed to the second in rank, who in turn took two or three whiffs, and then delivered his opinion, and thus the pipe made the circuit of the assembly. A large and ornamental pipe was kept in each village for the ceremonious reception of strangers, whose peaceful or hostile intentions were known by their reception of it. The chief of the village filled and lighted the peace-pipe in the presence of the visitors, and after smoking a little handed it to their principal men. If he refused to smoke, it meant that their intentions were hostile, but if he received and smoked it, it was a sign of peace, and it was passed alternately according to rank between hosts and guests. These pipes were adorned with feathers and wings of birds, and whatever other ornament their fancy could devise, and served also as credentials to traveling ambassadors, and, like the herald's tabard of feudal times, was a safe-conduct even among foes.
At the time of the arrival of the first colonists the Maryland Indians clothed themselves in skin, mostly of the deer, which the women had the art of dressing extremely soft and pliant. Some, according to Smith, used ingeniously-woven mantles of turkey-feathers. Their weapons were bows and arrows, pointed with pieces of deer-horn, the spurs of the wild turkey, or flints skillfully chipped to the requisite shape and keenness; hatchets of hard grit-stone ground to an edge and grooved for the attachment of a handle, and Warclubs of hard wood, sometimes edged with flints. As defensive armor they had shields of bark, and Smith mentions a kind of light target used by the Massawomekes, made of small sticks woven between strings of hemp and silk grass, and proof against arrow-shots. The introduction of firearms, however, rendering these simple contrivances useless, they were gradually abandoned. They soon learned to buy improved arms. Implements, and clothing from the Europeans, giving in exchange furs and peltries, and getting coarse, heavy cloths, hatchets and knives of steel, guns and ammunition, and pieces of iron out of which they cut lighter and better heads for their arrows. Though iron ore was abundant, none of the Indians had the art of melting it, their skill in metallurgy being limited to the manufacture of rude articles out of native copper, and occasionally gold. Penn's description of Indian manners and customs is as graphic as it is accurate.
"Of their manners and customs," he says, "there is much to be said. I will begin with children. So soon as they are born they wash them in water, and while very young, and in cold weather to choose, they plunge them in the river to harden and embolden them. Having wrapped them in a cloth, they lay them on a straight thin board, a little more than the length and breadth of the child, and swaddle it first upon the board to make it straight, — wherefore all Indians have fiat heads, — and thus they carry them at their backs.
" The children will go very young, at nine months old commonly. They use only a small cloth round their waist till they are large. If boys, they go a-fishing till ripe for the woods, which is about fifteen; then they hunt, and after giving some proofs of their manhood, by a good return of skins, they may marry, else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls stay with their mothers and help to hoe the ground, plant corn, and carry burthens; and they do well to use them young, which they must do when they are old, for the wives are the true servants of their husbands. Otherwise the men are very affectionate to them.
" When the young women are fit for marriage they wear something on their heads for an advertisement, but so as their faces are hardly to be seen but when they please. The age they marry at, if women, is about thirteen or fourteen; if boys, seventeen or eighteen; they are seldom older.
" They are great concealers of their own resentments, brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been practiced among them; in either of these they are not exceeded by the Italians. In sickness they are impatient to be cured, and for it give everything, especially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural. They drink at those times a teran, or concoction of roots in spring water; and if they eat any flesh, it must be the female of any creature. If they die, they bury them with their apparel, be they men or women, and the nearest of kin fling in something precious with them as a token of true love; their mourning is blacking of their faces, which they continue for a year. They are choice of the graves of their dead, lest they should be lost by time and fall to common use. They pick off the grass that grows upon them, and heap up the fallen earth with great care and exactness. These poor people are under a dark night in things relating to religion; to be sure the traditions of it they have only, yet they believe in a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics; for, say they, there is a great king that made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither, where they shall live again. Their worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and cantico; their sacrifice is their first fruits, the first and fattest buck they kill goeth to the fire, where he is all burnt, with a mournful ditty of him that performeth the ceremony, but with such marvelous fervency and labor of the body that they will even sweat to a foam. The other part is their cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes words, sometimes songs, then shouts; two being in the middle tent begin, and by singing and drumming on a board direct the chorus.
" Their postures in the dance are very antique and differing, but all keep measure. This is done with equal earnestness and labor, but great appearances of joy. In the fall, when the corn Cometh in, they begin to feast one another. There have been two great festivals already, to which all come that would. I was at one myself. Their entertainment was a great seat by a spring, under some shady trees, and twenty fat bucks with hot cakes of new corn, both wheat and