asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain;" the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the east." The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird[1] behind Little Crow's village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an eagle's bill.[2]
The political and social powers which come into the hands of the sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the vengeance of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder by "bar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the power of the chief, and makes the chief and other favoured persons masters of the weather. "The winds and weather are at the command" of Bosman's "great fetisher." Inland from the Gold Coast,[3] the king of Loango, according to the Abbé Proyart, "has credit to make rain fall on earth." Similar beliefs, with like political results, will be found to follow from the superstition of magic a1nong the Red Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix and the
