The medicine-man, or witch-doctor, that demon among heathen peoples, held sway among the An-ko-me-nums when I first went to the Coast. The shaman, or medicine-man, is the representative of the grossest features of paganism. He has wielded, and still wields to some extent, a marvellous influence over the people, because of the supernatural powers which they believe him to possess. He professes to have acquired his power by long months of retirement in the mountains or beside some lonely lake, where he fasted and prayed and held converse with the spirits and with nature. Returning, he practises certain magical rites, and by this means is able, so he claims, to heal the sick and raise the dead and look into the future, and even cause the death of many who may oppose his magical powers. The tyranny of this wretched despot and the awful absurdity of his miserable pretensions, together with his fiendishly bitter opposition to everything that is good, leads him to be feared and hated. Their method of treating disease was not by means of medicine. It was left to the old women of the tribe really to administer such simple remedies as they might be acquainted with--poultices, lotions, emetics, purgatives, and such-like. The witch-doctor preyed upon the superstitions of the people, and by his conjurer’s rites deceived and beguiled them. When called in, in case of sickness, he would shake his rattle and work himself up to a frenzy, scream and howl, and if it was a case of fever he would rattle away for hours. If there was some fixed pain, he would grab hold of the chest or forehead or place where the pain was said to be, and then get down and suck and squeeze and suck away until the blood came through the skin. Then repeatedly spitting the blood into his hands, he would shout for his attendants to rattle harder and sing louder, “It was coming.” Finally he would jump and scream or cheer and say he had got it out, and then proceed to show a piece of shell, glass, pebble, or a nail, which he claimed he had taken from the body, and which was the cause of the trouble.