He falls into trances and lies rigid for considerable periods. Unbelievers have experimented by sticking needles through his flesh, cutting him with knives, and otherwise testing his sensibility to pain, without provoking any responsive action. It was asserted that he was surely dead, because blood did not flow from the wounds. These trances always excite great interest and often alarm, as he threatens to abandon his earthly body altogether because of the disobedience of his people, and on each occasion they are in a state of suspense as to whether the Saghalee Tyee will send his soul back to earth to reoccupy his body, or will, on the contrary, abandon and leave them without his guidance. It is this going into long trances, out of which he comes as from heavy sleep and almost immediately relates his experiences in the spirit land, that gave rise to the title of “Dreamers,” or believers in dreams, commonly given to his followers by the neighboring whites. His actions are similar to those of a trance medium, and if self-hypnotization be practicable that would seem to explain it. I questioned him as to his trances and hoped to have him explain them to me, but he avoided the subject and was angered when I pressed him. He manifestly believes all he says of what occurs to him in this trance state. As we have hundreds of thousands of educated white people who believe in similar fallacies, this is not more unlikely in an Indian subjected to such influence. In studying Smohalla we have to deal with the same curious mixture of honest conviction and cunning deception that runs through the history of priestcraft in all the ages. Like some other prophets before him, he seeks to convey the idea that he is in control of the elements and the heavenly bodies, and he has added greatly to his reputation by predicting several eclipses. This he was enabled to do by the help of an almanac and some little explanation from a party of surveyors. In this matter, however, he was soon made to realize that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He could not get another almanac, and his astronomic prophecies came to an abrupt termination at the end of the first year. Concerning this, Major MacMurray says: He showed me an almanac of a preceding year and asked me to readjust it for eclipses, as it did not work as it had formerly done. I explained that Washington (the Naval Observatory) made new ones every year, and that old ones could not be fixed up to date. He had probably obtained this one from the station agent at the railroad, now superseded by a new one, who had cut off Smohalla’s supply of astronomical data. My inability to repair the 1882 almanac for use in prognosticating in 1884 cost me much of his respect as a wise man from the east. (_MacMurray MS._)