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Otherwise the maseua is really a superior functionary, for he stands in direct relation to the religious powers of which we shall hereafter speak, and these in reality guide and command through oracles and prophetic utterances. In war the maseua has supreme command, and the civil chief and the diviners, or medicine-men, must obey him implicitly as soon as any campaign is started.
I always felt instinctively that any attempt at missionary enterprise on my part would be dangerous, and might besides afford jealous medicine-men and other possible enemies an excellent opportunity of undermining my influence.
All could see that it was Wylo's blood. It could be none other, for none but Wylo had been deprived of any. Ostentatiously the medicine-men washed the death-bone clean, restored it to its unholy nook, and returned solemnly to the camp.
He built the church with native labour, furnishing it beautifully inside, mostly at his own expense. He learned the local languages, he started a school, he combated the witch-doctors and medicine-men. Finally he met with his reward in the conversion of the young chief Jaga, which was followed by that of a considerable portion of his people. But here came the trouble.
Some of the most lurid of Alaskan legends deal with the thaumaturgic contests of rival medicine-men, and one judges that sleight of hand and even hypnotic suggestion were cultivated to a fine point. To such minds the Christian teaching comes with glad and one may say instantaneous acceptance. Their attitude is entirely childlike.
He was surrounded by his medicine-men, his young chiefs and his squaws. And by the gathering in the smoke-begrimed hut they knew that their approach had been made known. Perfect silence reigned as the white men entered. An Indian silence; such silence as it would be hard to find anywhere but in the primitive dwelling. The atmosphere of the place was heavy with the pungent odours of Killi-ka-nik.
We have no reason to suppose that the early magicians and medicine-men were peculiarly wicked or bent on mere self-aggrandizement any more than we have to think the same of the average country vicar or country doctor of to-day. They were merely men a trifle wiser or more instructed than their flocks.
A charge of heresy, of course, could not well be made, for in the infancy of our race there were neither Courts of Arches nor General Assemblies. But it was always possible to accuse Why-Why of malevolent witchcraft. The medicine-men had not long to wait for an opportunity. An old woman died, as old women will, and every one was asking "Who sent the evil spirit that destroyed poor old Dada?"
"Oh! he is one of your wise men, is he?" returned Rooney, with an involuntary shrug of his shoulders, for he had heard and seen enough during his residence at the settlements to convince him that the angekoks, or sorcerers, or wise men of the Eskimos, were mostly a set of clever charlatans, like the medicine-men of the North American Indians, who practised on the credulity and superstition of their fellow-men in order to gain their own ends.
Somehow you think of that Navajo legend of the coyote spilling the stars on the face of the sky, and you wonder what marvel-maker among the gods of medicine-men spilled his huge bag of precious stone all over the gravel in this fashion.
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