J 634-35.] CURE OF A MADMAN. 65 



The Fathers' skimbers were brief and broken. 

 Wmter was the season of Huron festivity ; and, as 

 they lay stretched on then' hard couch, suffocating 

 with smoke and tormented by an inevitable multi- 

 tude of fleas, the thumping of the drum resounded 

 all night long from a neighboring house, mingled 

 with the sound of the tortoise-shell rattle, the 

 stamping of moccasined feet, and the cadence of 

 voices keeping time with the dancers. Again, 

 some ambitious villager would give a feast, and 

 invite all the warriors of the neighboring towns ; 

 or some grand wager of gambling, with its attend- 

 ant drumming, singing, and outcries, filled the night 

 with discord. 



But these were light annoyances, compared with 

 the insane rites to cure the sick, prescribed by the 

 " medicine-men," or ordained by the eccentric in- 

 spiration of dreams. In one case, a young sor- 

 cerer, by alternate gorging and fasting, — both in 

 the interest of his profession, — joined with exces- 

 sive exertion in singing to the spirits, contracted 

 a disorder of the brain, which caused him, in 

 mid-A\dnter, to run naked about the village, howling 

 like a wolf. The whole population bestirred itself 

 to effect a cure. The patient had, or pretended to 

 have, a dream, in which the conditions of his re- 



joumee, une ou deux journees, apres son baptesme, particulierement 

 quand c'etoit un petit enfant ! " — Lettre du Pere Gamier a son Frere, MS. 

 — This form of benevolence is beyond heretic appreciation. 



"La joye qu'on a quand on a baptise un Sauvage qui se meurt peu 

 apres, & qui s'enrole droit au Ciel, pour devenir un Ange, certainement 

 c'est un joye qui surpasse tout ce qu'on se pent imaginer." — Le Jeune, 

 Relation, 1635, 221 (Cramoisy). 



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