Travels in Alaska 



with food. A case illustrating their superstitious be- 

 liefs in this connection occurred at Fort Wrangell 

 while I was there the year before. One of the sub- 

 chiefs of the Stickeens had a little son five or six years 

 old, to whom he was very much attached, always 

 taking him with him in his short canoe-trips, and 

 leading him by the hand while going about town. 

 Last summer the boy was taken sick, and gradually 

 grew weak and thin, whereupon his father became 

 alarmed, and feared, as is usual in such obscure cases, 

 that the boy had been bewitched. He first applied in 

 his trouble to Dr. Carliss, one of the missionaries, 

 who gave medicine, without effecting the imme- 

 diate cure that the fond father demanded. He was, 

 to some extent, a believer in the powers of mission- 1 

 aries, both as to material and spiritual affairs, but in 

 so serious an exigency it was natural that he should 

 go back to the faith of his fathers. Accordingly, he 

 sent for one of the shamans, or medicine-men, of his 

 tribe, and submitted the case to him, who, aftef 

 going through the customary incantations, declared 

 that he had discovered the cause of the difficulty. 



'Your boy," he said, "has lost his soul, and this is 

 the way it happened. He was playing among the 

 stones down on the beach when he saw a crawfish in 

 the water, and made fun of it, pointing his finger at 

 it and saying, 'Oh, you crooked legs! Oh, you crooked 

 legs! You can't walk straight; you go sidewise,' 

 which made the crab so angry that he reached out his 

 long nippers, seized the lad's soul, pulled it out of him 

 and made off with it into deep water. And," con- 



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