I have already given, in the Introduction, Ellis's record of the
Polynesian case. A hole being dug in the door of his house, and filled
with water, the priest looks for a vision of the thief who has carried off
stolen goods. The Polynesian theory is that the god carries the spirit of
the thief over the water, in which it is reflected. Lejeune's Red Indians
make their patients gaze into the water, in which they will see the
pictures of the things in the way of food or medicine that will do them
good. In modern language, the instinctive knowledge existing implicitly
in the patient's subconsciousness is thus brought into the range of his
ordinary consciousness.
In 1887 the late Captain J. T. Bourke, of the U.S. Cavalry, an original
and careful observer, visited the Apaches in the interests of the
Ethnological Bureau. He learned that one of the chief duties of the
medicine-men was to find out the whereabouts of lost or stolen property.
Na-a-cha, one of these _jossakeeds_, possessed a magic quartz crystal,
which he greatly valued. Captain Bourke presented him with a still finer
crystal. 'He could not give me an explanation of its magical use, except
that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see,'
Captain Bourke appears never to have heard of the modern experiments in
crystal-gazing. Captain Bourke also discovered that the Apaches, like the
Greeks, Australians, Africans, Maoris, and many other, races, use the
bull-roarer, turndun, or _rhombos_--a piece of wood which, being whirled
round, causes a strange windy roar--in their mystic ceremonies. The wide
use of the rhombos was known to Captain Bourke; that of the crystal was
not.
For the Iroquois, Mrs. Erminie Smith supplies information about the
crystal. 'Placed in a gourd of water, it could render visible the
apparition of a person who has bewitched another.' She gives a case in
European times of a medicine-man who found the witch's habitat, but
got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was
successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che
'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black
stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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