Roots and herbs also (this also ought to have come in afterwards),
such as are medicinal, appear, and teach their votaries their
respective songs, how they must do, what ceremonies they must perform
in taking them out of the ground, their different applications. But
these roots [and] herbs (medicines), though they appear in their
dreams, they do not shew themselves in the conjuring hut, box, or
frame, that I learn. They are sent, as appears, by Wee-suck-ā-jāāk, _to
teach Indians their use and virtue_ without which _they would be very
ill off, whether to heal or cure themselves, or expell the charms by
which other Indians may have bewitched them_. And though they are
acquainted with many of these roots, the use and virtue of some of
which I can no more doubt than those used by the faculty in the
civilized world, yet they tell me there are several which they use to
different, and some to diametrically opposite, purposes.
[The Manner of Conjuring]
[Building the Lodge]
Their manner of conjuring is this: In the first place a number [of]
straight poles of two, or two and a half inches diameter and about
eight or nine feet long are prepared, cut, branched and pointed at the
lower end. They seldom require so _few_ as four, commonly six or
eight. These are planted in the ground from twelve to twenty or
twenty-four inches deep in an hexagon or octagon form, enclosing a
space of three feet diameter, more or less. These poles are secured by
hoops, three or four in number, and well tied to each pole, so that
none be able to move without the rest. This hut, square, box, or
frame, whatever it may be termed, is covered with skins, an oil cloth,
or some such sort of thing.
[Preparing the Conjurer]
The conjurer is bound hand and foot, not as if he were a man going to
_pry_ into futurity, but as a criminal, [a] _mere_, pure devil, and one
whom they intend never to loosen, so barricaded and cross-corded is
the creature, sometimes all crumpled into a heap. He is tied only with
his cloute on him, and thus thrust into the hut underneath by raising
the lower covering, his "she-she-quay" or rattler with him.
[Spirits who Enter the Lodge and Interactions with Them]
Some of them sing on entering, others make a speech. Here they remain,
some several hours, others not five minutes, before fluttering is
heard. The rattler is shaked at a merry rate, and all of a sudden,
either from the top, or below, away flies the cords by which the
Indian was tied, _into the lap of he who tied him_. It is then that the
Devil is at work. Every instant some one or other enters, which is
known to those outside by either the fluttering, the rubbing against
the skins of the hut in descending (inside) or the shaking of the
rattler, and sometimes all together. When any enter, the hut moves in
a most violent manner. I have frequently thought that it would be
knocked down, or torn out of the ground.
{9} [Meeh-key-nock (Turtle)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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