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Didn't the Beaver say that the master's glass was all good medicine? He thought it was a sort of conjuring trick like their medicine-men do when they are making rain come, or are driving out spirits, as they call it. No; we can't help our eyes being queer, my lad, but we can use medicine spy-glasses, and see farther than the Injun. Hold your tongue; he's making signs."
Into camps of wandering prairie tribes, where the lodges stood like a city to-day and were rolled up and strapped on the backs of horses to-morrow; into councils where sinister chiefs were talking low of war against the Willamettes; into wild midnight dances of plotting dreamers and medicine-men, they came with the brief stern summons, and passed on to speak it to the tribes beyond.
"Close to the hot place was a lot of merry devils laughing and shouting, with an old pack of greasy cards it reminded me of them we used to play with at the Rendezvous shuffling them to the time of the Devil's Dream, and Money Musk; then they'd deal in slow time, with the Dead March in Saul, whistling as solemn as medicine-men.
One I was acquainted with, among the Lengua tribe, professed to suck three cats out of a man's stomach. His professional name was thereafter "Father of Kittens." The doctor's position is not one to be envied, however, for if three consecutive patients die, he must follow them down the dark trail! These medicine-men are experts in poisons, and their enemies have a way of dying suddenly.
I have been with them much, and my father long held their confidence ere he died. I have even been adopted into the tribe of the Pottawattomies. None are my enemies among that nation save the medicine-men, and they will scarce venture to molest me even in this hour of their power and crime.
Return, therefore, to your land, O brother, and smoke pipes of peace in your wampums with your squaws and your medicine-men, and dress yourselves in the gayest wigwams, and eat happily of the juicy fresh-caught moccasins." "You've got it all wrong," murmured Cyril angrily. But Golden Eagle only looked inquiringly at her. "Thy customs are other than ours, O Black Panther," he said.
I may say at once that I copy all these quotations from a book written largely to prove that the Druids were savage medicine-men with no philosophy at all: it is, The Religion of the Ancient Celts, by Canon MacCulloch. The argument used by this learned divine is very simple. The Druids were savage medicine-men, and could have known nothing about Pythagoras' teachings or Pythagoras himself.
This action of the Department greatly incensed the savages, and the agent's offer of the annuities without guns and pistols was insolently refused, the Indians sulking back to their camps, the young men giving themselves up to war-dances, and to powwows with "medicine-men," till all hope of control was gone.
Among the Dieri tribe of Central Australia, when a serious illness occurs, the medicine-men expel Cootchie or the devil by beating the ground in and outside of the camp with the stuffed tail of a kangaroo, until they have chased the demon away to some distance from the camp.
It was not a great while ago. Injins are living who have seen Injins, whose own fathers saw the first pale-faces. They were few. They were like little children, then; but now they are grown to be men. Medicine-men are plenty among them, and tell them how to raise children. The Injins do not understand this.
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