7. To Cure a Sick Man.

Sacred-Texts Asia
  

7. To Cure a Sick Man.²

 When a man (suffering from disease) is about to die, and has become quite weak, he is carried (out of the house), though with great effort, and (his body) is rubbed all over with something; (for instance,) with a little snow. Then (another man) calls to the Upper Regions, to the Pebble River,³ and he speaks thus: "O Pebbly River! come down! I wish to use you for my assistant." Besides this, he calls also the East Wind.

 Then comes a great (fall of) rain. The river is greatly swollen. The patient becomes the rapids (of the stream). Everything is swept away, nothing remains [quite nothing]. They throw something into the water (as a sacrifice), and the stream sweeps away p. 133 all (the rubbish). Then the (suffering) man becomes better, and is carried back into the house.

Told by Rịke´wġi, a Maritime Chukchee man, at Mariinsky Post, October, 1900.

Footnotes

p. 132

² Ibid., p. 506, No. 9, c.

³ Milky Way (cf. ibid., p. 309).