The Wampanoag practice of sweat bathing was thought to have both therapeutic and preventive benefits. First the sweat house was heated by putting a great number of hot stones inside. Then the naked bathers entered and the door was stopped up. The bathers sat inside, smoking their pipes for as long as they could bear the heat—perhaps an hour or so. The sweat bath was then terminated by a dash outside and a plunge into the cold water of a nearby lake or stream. Sweat bathing was said to cleanse and refresh the body and thus be good for general health. It was also used to cure diseases, sometimes in combination with other types of remedies.[493]
Herbal remedies were used for their therapeutic effect on both diseases and wounds.[494]The Wampanoags are said to have had great skill in the use of such remedies.[495]The Wampanoag theory of herbal remedies was that each symptom had a specific herbal cure.[496]For example, the cure for toothache was “... a certaine root dried, not much unlike our ginger”.[497]A different herb would be used to relieve stomach aches, and so on.
Wounds and diseases were also cured by magical means. Curing by magic seems to have been used in cases where the suspected cause of the illness was also magical. This malevolent magic was usually manifest in the form of an “evil spirit” put into the ailing person’s body to cause him pain. Healing by magic was the special province of thepowow.[498]
When a person was quite ill, all his friends and relatives would crowd into his wigwam and gather around him. If someone could not be there in person, he sent a representative.[499]This audience joined in the powow’s chanting at certain points during the ritual.[500]Wood gives the following description of magical curing procedure:
... after violent expressions of many a hideous bellowing and growning, he makes a stop, and then all the auditors with one voice utter a short Canto; which done, the Pow-wow still proceeds in his invocations sometimes roaring like a Beare, other times groaning like a dying horse, foaming at the mouth like a chased boar, smiting on his naked brest and thighs with such violence, as if he were madde. Thus will hee continue sometimes halfe a day, spending his lungs, sweating out his fat, and tormenting his body in this diabolicall worship....[501]
... after violent expressions of many a hideous bellowing and growning, he makes a stop, and then all the auditors with one voice utter a short Canto; which done, the Pow-wow still proceeds in his invocations sometimes roaring like a Beare, other times groaning like a dying horse, foaming at the mouth like a chased boar, smiting on his naked brest and thighs with such violence, as if he were madde. Thus will hee continue sometimes halfe a day, spending his lungs, sweating out his fat, and tormenting his body in this diabolicall worship....[501]
Next the powow would suck on the afflicted part of the patient’s body and, being an expert at sleight of hand, pretend to remove an object—a small stone, or twig or the like—from the body and display it for all to see. This object, it was claimed, was the “evil spirit” that was the cause of the trouble. Sometimes it was thought that the powow from some other group had brought on the illness in the first place.[502]
Both men and women engaged in curing activities.[503]It may have been that there was a division between the use of herbal and magical cures, with magically caused illness and magical cures being the province of male powows, and functional illness being cured by specific herbal formulas which were non-magical in their effect and which were the province of women skilled in this art. This was true of some other Northeastern Algonquian groups. Where such a division occurred, there was little or no infringement of one group on the methods that were the property of the other. When symptoms did not respond to the normal herbal treatment, or when they were recognized to be supernatural in origin from the start, magical cures were resorted to.[504]Curers were paid well for their efforts, and those who were successful became wealthy and influential members of the community.[505]
If a patient recovered, his friends and relatives would send corn and other sorts of gifts to him, and at a certain time a feast (calledcommoco) would be held in honor of the recovery.[506]Sometimes in asking the supernatural to remove a sickness it was necessary to provide gifts as a sacrifice.[507]This seems to have been a practice resorted to in particularly grave situations. In one instance, when several people had died in an epidemic, the entire village gathered to perform a curing ritual to drive out the sickness. The wealthier people danced and gave away great quantities of wealth to the poor; ultimately a messenger was sent to intercede in person with the supernatural.[508]Epidemics were greatly feared, and in the case of a known contagious disease, the usual practice of friends and relatives coming to visit the sick was not carried out. In such instances often the entire village would be abandoned.[509]