658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dispersed, while the friends of the unfortunate merely lifted and car- 

 ried him to his lodge, and there left him alone, to recover or die as the 

 case might be. Justice compels me to add, however, that this appar- 

 ent stoicism was not so much the result of indifference as of the fact 

 that the man was esteemed " medicine," and hence should not be med- 

 dled with ; any interference might not only be fatal to the spell that 

 had been worked, but would jeopard the welfare of the individual, 

 bringing the wrath of the spirits upon his own head ! * 



I visited the subject of conjuration the day following, and found 

 him up, "clothed and in his right mind." Accepting an invitation to 

 a seat beside him, conversation soon turned on the events of the night 

 before, when he assured me, and I presume truthfully, that he had no 

 remembrance of what had occurred subsequent to the moment he 

 announced the partial restoration of sensation, until in the gray of the 

 morning, when he awoke to find himself reclining on the skins in his 

 own lodge. I also availed myself of the opportunity offered for inves- 

 tigation, when I found, much to my amazement, that, save for a slightly 

 atrophied condition of the diseased side, the two halves of the body 

 were coequal in sensation and control. He was confident that perma- 

 nent relief had been obtained, which I was by no means willing to 

 concede, though I kept my opinions strictly to myself. Subsequently 

 my diagnosis and prognosis were confirmed by a return of the malady, 

 which became even more assertive than before : for now the leg, which 

 before had been in a degree amenable to the will, became perfectly un- 

 manageable, and even the muscles of the face were rigidly set. When 

 I left the neighborhood, a second powwow was proposed, to be con- 

 ducted on a still grander scale ; but I have no means of knowing more 

 of the case or its subsequent treatment. There were, howerer, reasons 

 convincing to any qualified medical man why there should be no per- 

 manent change save for the worse : the case was simply incurable. 



One conjurer, whom I knew intimately, and whose adopted brother 

 I was, surpassed by far the most able and expert of the civilized expo- 

 nents of necromancy. Wa-ah-poos, or " The Rabbit," as he was mel- 

 lifluously known, would perform the most difficult and astounding feats 

 at an instant's notice, regardless of preparation or surroundings. He 

 would allow himself to be bound hand and foot with rawhide thongs, 

 even the whole body enveloped, pinioning the arms and hands to back 

 and sides, yet the very instant a blanket or robe was cast over him 

 he would bound to his feet free, with the bonds gathered in his hands., 

 with the fastenings thereof intact. Once I bound his naked form with 

 powerful strips of green moose-hide, drawing them so tightly that the 

 blood threatened to burst from the ridges of unimprisoned flesh ; but 

 it made not the least difference so far as I could discover. On another 

 occasion, in the middle of the day, he was even more elaborately pin- 



* Mark the analogy to the demonology of the early Christian era and of the New 

 Testament. 



