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Updated: August 11, 2024
The clear, keen air revived him. As he sprang out, erect, a shout that nearly stunned him seemed to rise from the earth on all sides. He glanced around him in a helpless agony of fear. A dozen concentric circles of squatting Indians, whose heads were visible above the reeds, encompassed the banks around the sunken base of the sweat-house with successive dusky rings.
A fresh-water lagoon, or lake, was near the present corner of Montgomery and Sacramento, and an Indian temescal, or sweat-house, beside it. The bay came up to Montgomery Street then, with five feet of water at Sansome, and mudflats to the east.
Continuing our voyage, we landed, about nine o'clock, A.M., at an Indian rancheria, situated on the bank of the river. An old Indian, his wife, and two or three children, were all the present occupants of this rancheria. The woman was the most miserable and emaciated object I ever beheld. She was probably a victim of the "sweat-house."
"He is not here," the father of the youth told him. "He is in the sweat-house. He is sick this morning, hieu sick." To the sweat-house went Cecil forthwith. He found it to be a little arched hut, made by sticking the ends of bent willow-wands into the ground and covering them over with skins, leaving only a small opening for entrance.
All these Indians, whether from the continual use of the sweat-house, or from their filthiness, or the little ventilation in their habitations, are weak and unvigorous; spasms and rheumatics, to which they are so much subject, are the consequences of their customs.
As they approached the woman called out to them, "Do not come any nearer. Go and tell my mother and my relations to put up a lodge for us a little way from the camp, and near by it build a sweat-house." When this had been done the man and his wife went in and took a thorough sweat, and then they went into the lodge and burned sweet grass and purified their clothing and the Worm Pipe.
When he awoke, the rising sun, almost level with the low entrance to the sweat-house, was darting its direct rays into the interior, as if searching it with fiery spears. He had slept ten hours. He rose tremblingly to his knees. Everything was quiet without; he might yet escape. He crawled to the opening. The open space before it was empty, but the scaffolding was gone.
If possible, witness one of his dances a religious ceremony and arrange to enter his primitive toholwoh or sweat-house, where he will give you a most effective and powerful Russo-Turkish bath. Swim in Havasu Creek to your heart's content, several times a day.
After the sweat-house had been made, word was sent to them, and they entered the camp and went into the sweat-house and took a sweat, and all the time while they were sweating, sand was falling from their bodies.
Weasel Heart waited for his friend as long as Fisher had waited for him, and when Fisher came out of the water it was at the place where Weasel Heart had come out. Then the two friends went home to the camp. When the two had come to a hill near the camp they met a young man, and by him sent word that the people should make a sweat-house for them.
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