These men sometimes pretend to the spirit of prophecy. One of them ventured to predict, that two squaws who had recently married white men, would die in the course of a very short time, which he specified. The squaws being much alarmed at the prospect of approaching death, took with them some tobacco and other presents, and went in search of the prophet in order to prevail upon him to intercede for them with the Wahconda, and avert their doom. The husband of one of the squaws, a citizen of the United States, hearing of the occurrence, went to the lodge of the magician. He was surprised to see there the squaws perfectly naked before the magician, who had provided himself with a large kettle of warm water, and was himself engaged in squirting the water from his mouth over their persons. The husband, incensed at what appeared to him to be nonsense and imposition, kicked over the kettle of holy water, and drove the squaws home to their lodges; but the magician, having received the presents, which were the objects of his swindling cunning, pretended that his incantation had had the desired effect with the Wahconda, inducing him to spare their lives. Many are the impostures which these priests practise on the credulity of the people. And although they are frequently defeated in their attempts to deceive, and justly punished for their hypocritical villainy, yet the advantage of experience seems to profit them little, and deception, practised under a new garb, often attains its ends. How can we wonder at this facility, with which a simple people are blinded, through the medium of their superstitious faith, when we know that infinitely more {250} monstrous absurdities obtain the inconsiderate assent, or excite the fears of thousands of civilized men, in the most populous and enlightened cities of Europe and America, and that the horse-shoe, even at this day, is frequently seen attached to the threshold of a door, as a security against the entrance of a witch? One of these magi acquired a high repute in several of the Missouri nations, by impressing them with the belief, that his body was indestructible to human power, and that if cut into a thousand fragments, and scattered to the winds, these portions would all promptly assemble together again, and become revivified, so that he would receive no injury from the operation. Trusting to his fame, on some slight provocation, he killed a squaw in the midst of her own people, and with the most unbounded confidence, surrendered himself to her exasperated relatives, declaring with exultation that they possessed not the power to harm him. Unexpectedly, however, they put his vaunted supernatural constitution to the test, by dividing his body into pieces, and scattering them about the vicinity of the village.