medicine-feast

Updated: May 12, 2025

Then came a grand medicine-feast, followed by a medicine-dance of women. Le Mercier says that a Huron who had been to Quebec once asked him the use of the vase of water at the door of the chapel. Feasts were held for him, at which, to do him honor, each guest gorged himself like a vulture.

Francis Parkman - The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

To the question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine, and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival.

Sir William Francis Butler - The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

Then came a grand "medicine-feast"; and the disappointed Jesuits saw plainly that the objects of their spiritual care, unwilling to throw away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid from God and the Devil at once. The hump-backed sorcerer became a thorn in the side of the Fathers, who more than half believed his own account of his origin.

Francis Parkman - The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

This cure failing, a "medicine-feast" was tried; then several dances in succession. As the patient remained as crazy as before, preparations were begun for a grand dance, more potent than all the rest. Brebeuf says, that, except the masquerades of the Carnival among Christians, he never saw a folly equal to it. "Some," he adds, "had sacks over their heads, with two holes for the eyes.

Francis Parkman - The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century