spirits discovered for her, what was the matter with him; what was the relationship of those who had come; and what were their circumstances. She prescribed a remedy, and predicted a complete recovery. The cause of the illness was, according to her, the displeasure of ancestral spirits. A sacrifice was to be offered to them; and the village was to be removed to another place. These things done, she declared that the boy would have no more of the convulsions from which he suffered. If he did, they might take back their money. All turned out as she had said, to the very letter (R. S. A., pt. iii. p. 361-374).
The priests of the North American tribes have a peculiar method of divination. Having received a handful of tobacco as a fee, they will summon a spirit to answer the inquiries of their visitors. This they do by enclosing themselves in lodges, in which they utter incantations. As may be supposed, the spirits who obey the summons of the Indian priest are not much more useful as guides to action than those who figure at the seance of his civilized competitor, the medium. Their replies, "though usually clear and correct, are usually of that profoundly ambiguous purport which leaves the anxious inquirer little wiser than he was before" (M. N. W., p. 268). Brinton, however, having stated this, proceeds to speak of cases, apparently well attested, in which the diviners have foreseen coming events with unaccountable clearness. For instance, when Captain Jonathan Carver, in 1767, was among the Killistenoes, and that tribe was suffering from want of food, the chief priest consulted the divinities, and predicted with perfect accuracy the hour on the following day when a canoe would arrive. Brinton adds, on the authority of John Mason Brown, that when Mr. Brown and two companions were pursuing an "apparently hopeless quest" for a band of Indians, they were met by some warriors of that very band, who declared that the appearance of the white man had been exactly described by the medicine-man who had sent them. And what renders the story remarkable is, that "the description was repeated to Mr. Brown by the warriors before they saw his two companions." The priest was unable to explain what he had done, except by saying that "he saw them coming, and heard them talk on their journey" (M. N. W., pp. 270, 271).
