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when it went against their most basic social beliefs of propriety, they tried, by acting out the
sick person's dreams, to fulfill the desires of her soul. Sagard wrote "… for they prefer to suffer
and be in want of anything rather than to fail a sick person at need" (Wrong, p. 118).
During theandacwander , the unmarried people in the village assembled in the sick person's
house and had sexual intercourse while the patient watched and two shamans shook tortoiseshell
rattles and sang. Sometimes, the sick person requested one of the young people to have sex with
her. Based upon dreams, other types of requests were also made. Sagard describes one instance
in which a sick woman asked one of the young men to urinate in her mouth. He wrote: "… a
feature I cannot excuse nor pass over silently—one of those young men was required to make
water in her mouth, and she had to swallow it, which she did with great courage, hoping to be
cured by it; for she herself wished it all to be done in that manner, in order to carry out without any
omission a dream she had had" (Wrong, p. 118).
The more scholarly minded among you will be asking, "Why is a Huron ritual being used to
describe a prehistoric Mississippian mound-builder culture inFlorida ?"
First, linguistically, Huron is closely related to Cherokee, and based upon a comparison of grave
goods, chambered burial pits, earth-covered ceremonial structures, and the striking similarity of
gorget styles, I think a strong argument can be made for a persistent social tradition from the
Mississippian cultural patterns represented in the Pisgah phase in the Appalachian summit region
to the Qualla phase of the Cherokee. Historic Cherokee Middle towns are located within the
Pisgah archaeological sphere and, as Dickens notes (1976, p. 213), there are many "carry-over
traits" between the cultures.
Secondly, at the point of historic contact with European cultures, theandacwander , or
modified versions of it, had spread from Iroquoian to Algonkian tribes, (Hickerson, 1960),
indicating the remarkable power the ritual possessed. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume
that the origins of this particular soul-curing ritual extend into prehistoric times. 
Lastly, I know of no other fictional attempt to see this sacred ritual through the eyes of the
people who practiced it, and I think it's important to make that attempt.
Theandacwander , after all, was a supreme act of generosity.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Davis, Dave D.Perspectives onGulfCoast Prehistory .Gainesville :
University Press of Florida/Florida State Museum, 1984.
Dickens, Roy S. Jr.Cherokee Prehistory. The Pisgah Phase in the AppalachianSummit Region
.Knoxville :UniversityofTennessee Press, 1981. Gilliland, Marion Spjut.The Material Culture of Key
Marco Florida . PortSalerno :Florida Classics
Library, 1989. Hickerson, Harold. "The Feast of the Dead among the Seventeenth-Century
Algonkians of theUpper 
Great lakes ."American Anthropologist 62:81-107. Hudson, Charles.The Southeastern Indians
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