This terminated the "medicine" ceremonies of the evening, the glad shouts of the Apache testifying that the incantations of their spiritual leaders or their necromancy, whichever it was, promised a successful campaign. These dancers were, I believe, dressed up to represent their gods or kan, but not content with representing them aspired to be mistaken for them.
[Illustration: APACHE MEDICINE HAT USED IN GHOST DANCE. Plate V.]
The Apache, both men and women, wear amulets, called tzi-daltai, made of lightning-riven wood, generally pine or cedar or fir from the mountain tops, which are highly valued and are not to be sold. These are shaved very thin and rudely cut in the semblance of the human form. They are in fact the duplicates, on a small scale, of the rhombus, already described. Like the rhombus, they are decorated with incised lines representing the lightning. Very often these are to be found attached to the necks of children or to their cradles. Generally these amulets are of small size. Below will be found figures of those which I was permitted to examine and depict in their actual size. They are all unpainted. The amulet represented was obtained from a Chiricahua Apache captive. Deguele, an Apache of the Klukaydakaydn clan, consented to exhibit a kan, or god, which he carried about his person. He said I could have it for three ponies. It was made of a flat piece of lath, unpainted, of the size here given, having drawn upon it this figure in yellow, with a narrow black band, excepting the three snake heads, _a_, _b_, and _c_, which were black with white eyes; _a_ was a yellow line and _c_ a black line; flat pearl buttons were fastened at _m_ and _k_ respectively and small eagle-down feathers at _k_ on each side of the idol. The rear of the tablet, amulet, or idol, as one may be pleased to call it, was almost an exact reproduction of the front.
[Illustration: FIG. 443.--Tzi-daltai amulet (Apache).]
The owner of this inestimable treasure assured me that he prayed to it at all times when in trouble, that he could learn from it where his ponies were when stolen and which was the right direction to travel when lost, and that when drought had parched his crops this would never fail to bring rain in abundance to revive and strengthen them. The symbolism is the rain cloud and the serpent lightning, the rainbow, rain drops, and the cross of the four winds.