Sanapia In The Comanche Tribe

Sanapia was a member of the Comanche tribe. This is a reservation Oklahoma. Her birth was in the spring of 1895. Religion was a personal matter (Kavanagh, 2009). This has resulted in exposure to more than one belief system during her childhood. First, her first influencer is her father, he converted to Christianity. Second, her maternal uncle and parental grandfather, whom practiced peyotism. There are multiple ways and uses for peyote as medicine. Lastly, her mother taught her about the traditional way of healing. These practices are through a vision quest, guardian spirits, and dreams. Her mother was an eagle doctor, and functioned as a midwife. It was her mother and uncle who gave Sanapia the training to be an eagle doctor. They taught

The symptoms are identical to the paralysis with the name Bell’s palsy. Nevertheless, in the case of ghost sickness, the disease affects mostly males, who have similar personality traits, and range in age from twenty-five to forty years. Possibilities are, that these males have lost touch with the traditional Comanche culture due to the relocation of their tribe into a reservation. Specifically, abandoning from land, were the native Americans lived peacefully for a few centuries, could also debit to loosing part of their cultural heritage. All the sudden they went from a hunter-gatherer culture, to purchase canned vegetables at the grocery store. In addition, Native Americans endured a lot of social changes. This might be one explanation for their distorted world

Sanapia doctors her patient for two days; she treats the individual by sunrise, midday and sunset. She resorts to the Bible, and prays to the Holy Ghost. In addition, she uses pulp made from a white root, that gets massaged into the patient affected area. She chews on sweet sage, caresses the patient with the feather on the face, and she uses her mouth to suck out the sickness. When Sanapia is not doctoring, she tells the patient to rest, pray and think of good things. Sometimes she asks the help of the native peyote leader and arranges a meeting. On the last day after the treatment, Sanapia holds a blessing ceremony. She covers the patient arms and legs in red paint, this needs to stay on for two days.
With this in mind, when you walk around with body parts covered in paint, this is presenting a clear signal to everybody in the village. Namely, this individual has recovered from ghost sickness; he must belong to our society.
To conclude, the treatment of Bell’s palsy is comparable as how Sanapia threat ghost sickness; both use cures, and involve a lot of facial stimulation. The performance conducted by an eagle doctor, and portrayed as a remedy for ghost sickness. This action is most likely used as a social display to reestablish the patient’s ancestry. Owing to this treatment, he regains his identity, self-worth, and recognition from the traditional Native American