a dream
tells you that you have to be all alone in your house. I don't
know what happens in there but some of them doctors, I think, go
over to visit the dead for a little while.

"After you been dreaming for a long time maybe you try to cure
somebody but you don't ask for nothing. You never tell them dreams
or what your spirit is but other doctors, they know. If your
dreams are right you can cure people and then you can ask for
something [payment]. The real Indian way was to doctor for four
nights. Then he'd lay out all his stuff and give it a drink by
sprinkling water on it. Then he'd shake his rattle and sing and
touch the patient with his hands. He'd talk to the sickness, like
he knew it ... like maybe he was friends to it ... he'd say 'now
you behave and don't bother this person no more. If you don't
behave I'm gonna take you out and show you to everybody and then
you'll be embarrassed!' Then he'd suck at the patient (some of
these young doctors suck on a stick with a feather on it that they
pointed at the sick person, but the old ones didn't do that), and
get out the sickness, it would be a feather or a stone. Sometime
that sickness come out and go into the doctor so hard they can't
get it out and have to get another doctor to help him. Sometimes
it hit them so hard that they defecate. I seen them doctors just
fill their pants. If it's real tough they get all stiff and fall
over. Sometimes fall right in the fire and their clothes all burn
off but it don't burn them none. You can't touch them then or it
will kill them. But when they begin to shake a little and that
rattle begins to go then you can pick them up. If he can, the
doctor will vomit out the sickness. When it's out he puts it in
his hand and rubs it with dirt and throws it away toward the
north; that kills it."

This recital of the process of becoming a doctor shows clearly the ideal
situation, the receiving of powers, unsought, from supernatural sources,
the guardian spirit watching over its protege's career, providing him with
the wherewithal in the form of songs, spells, and paraphernalia. In fact,
however, it would appear that the process of becoming a shaman was far
more a conscious and voluntary act on the part of an individual than would
be supposed from the foregoing story.

Doctoring power clearly seems to have remained within