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The medicine dance is carried on chiefly to celebrate the skill of the "Medicine-man" in curing diseases. This functionary belongs to a fraternity who are supposed to add to their other powers some skill in interpreting the will of the Great Spirit in regard to the conduct of his people. He occasionally makes offerings and sacrifices which are regarded as propitiatory.
For you and you alone I have just subjected myself to his terrible gaze. Had you seen his burning eyes, your courage would have failed you. He is angry because some of you do not hate enough those who serve the foreign God, his deadly enemy; yet he answered your questions, because many of you have heretofore brought to him your offerings.
There should have been several of these offerings already, for October is almost ended now, and it is the month during which the first cool nights come on in Kentucky and the first fires are lighted. A few twilights ago I stood at my yard gate watching the red domes of the forest fade into shadow and listening to the cawing of crows under the low gray of the sky as they hurried home.
By far the largest number of specimens of smooth decorated pottery from Sikyatki graves are food bowls or basins, evidently the dishes in which food was placed on the floor before the members of a family at their meals. As the mortuary offerings were intended as food for the deceased it is quite natural that this form of pottery should far outnumber any and all the others.
They have a bass, produced by blowing into a kind of tube, widened below, and which gives an uninterrupted sound. Part of the musicians sing hymns in honor of their gods. The expenses of the temples are borne by the voluntary offerings of the people, consisting of money, jewels, cattle, provisions, and other articles.
But beyond this, one finds that the great black stands for candles that burn beside the altars are generally streaked with the wax that has guttered from a dozen flames, and that even the floor is covered with lumps of wax the countless stains of only partially scraped-up gutterings of past offerings.
He causes people to have sore feet, and only relieves them, when offerings are made to him in the saloko or bawi. He lives in the wooded hill, but quickly learns of a death, and appears at the open grave. Unless he is bought off with an offering, the blood of a small pig, he is almost certain to make away with the body, or cause a great sickness to visit the village.
Then, appearing fiendishly hideous, ghastlier than words can fitly picture, these revolting figures began with wild chanting to make offerings to their gods, dancing and capering before the flame to an accompaniment of dismal music, burning some incense which polluted the air.
A rich native has been known to offer eighty thousand pounds of sweetmeats, eighty thousand pounds of sugar, a thousand suits of cloth garments, a thousand suits of silk, a thousand offerings of rice, plantains, and other fruits. Bloody sacrifices are offered up on such occasions.
To offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. As to spiritual offerings, it is not necessary that we should present them to the Pope; neither is sacrifice such as it was in the Old Testament, when men were required to sacrifice the tenth of all they had. Such outward sacrifices and priesthood have all now ceased, and all has become new and spiritual.
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