Being extended on his back, the chief draws the figure he intends to make with a pointed stick, dipped in water in which gunpowder has been dissolved; after which, with ten needles dipped in vermilion, and fixed in a small wooden frame, he pricks the delineated parts, and where the bolder outlines occur, he incises the flesh with a gun flint; the vacant spaces, or those not marked with vermilion, are rubbed in with gunpowder, which produces the variety of red and blue; the wounds are then seared with punk wood, to prevent them from festering.
This operation, which is performed at intervals, lasts two or three days. Every morning the parts are washed with cold water, in which is infused an herb called Pockqueesegan, which resembles English box, and is mixed by the Indians with the tobacco they smoke, to take off the strength. During the process, the war songs are sung, accompanied by a rattle hung round with hawk bells, called chessaquoy,[49] which is kept shaking, to stifle the groans such pains must naturally occasion.[1] Upon the ceremony being completed, they give the party a name; that which they allotted to me, was Amik, or Beaver.
In return for the presents given me by Matchee Quewish,
which I had only acknowledged by some trinkets,
and to shew how much I was pleased with the honour
they had conferred on me, I resolved to add to my former
gifts; I accordingly took the chiefs to a spot where I had
directed my men to place the goods intended for them,
and gave them scalping knives, tomahawks, vermilion,
tobacco, beads, &c. and lastly rum, the unum necessarium,
without which (whatever else had been bestowed
————
- ↑ For a description of the rattle called "sysyquoy," see Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, p. 367; and Masson, Bourgeois, ii, p. 333—Ed.
