Page:Myths of the Iroquois.djvu/38

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MYTHS OF THE IROQUOIS.

to sing, keeping time with his hand. After a while he returned to her and said: "You are bewitched. You refused to give milk to a poor woman who came to beg of you, and she has bewitched you. I have had her house revealed to rme, and I saw her, but she was combing her hair over her face, so I could not see her features. I would not recognize her again."

Next day he tried again; then he said: "Now I know who she is." So they sent for a chief and told him all about it, and he brought the woman before them. She was a Chippewa and a witch. The chief had her brought to the old woman's cabin. She owned that she had bewitched her, and said, "Fetch me the thigh-bone of a beaver from a man who is the child of Molly Brant, the child of Governor W. Johnson." The bone was brought, and by the time it arrived she had scoured a brass kettle, and had clean water poured into it. As soon as she received the bone, which was hollow, she placed it against the eye that was not painful and spat through it. After a while she ceased spitting, and looked in the water. A spider was running around in the kettle. She covered it over with her handkerchief, then removed it, and a feather lay there instead of the spider. The pain left the old woman but the sight was not restored.


A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT.

The victim in this case was a Mary Jemison, who, having severe pains in her chest, concluded that she was bewitched, and consulted the witch-doctors, who applied their extractive bandages, which greatly relieved her. She saw a dog as an apparition coming toward her, and directed her friends to shoot it, but they did not succeed in killing it. In like manner a cat, which was invisible to other people, was seen by her. She finally recovered, but Andrew John, who was pronounced her bewitcher, and who was outwitched, is now dying from consumption.


AN INCANTATION TO BRING RAIN.

In a dry season, the horizon being filled with distant thunder heads, it was customary to burn what is called by the Indians real tobacco as an offering to bring rain.

On occasions of this nature the people were notified by swift-footed heralds that the children, or sons, of Thunder were in the horizon, and that tobacco must be burned in order to get some rain. Every family was supposed to have a private altar upon which its offerings were secretly made; after which said family must repair, bearing its tithe,