TRANSFORMATION 221 



man. One was changed at death into a turtle-dove 

 or went to the village of souls. The other remained 

 attached to the body, never to leave it " unless some 

 one gave birth to it again." The striking resemblance 

 which some persons bear to others who are dead was 

 adduced to the Jesuit father who records this belief, 

 in proof of its truth. The Hurons called the bones of 

 the dead Atisken, or the souls. Babes who died 

 under one or two months of age were not placed, like 

 older persons, in sepulchres of bark raised on stakes, 

 but buried in the road, in order that they might enter 

 secretly into the wombs of passing women and be 

 born again. The Jesuit father quaintly adds : " I doubt 

 that the good Nicodemus would have found much 

 difficulty here, although he only objected concerning old 

 men Quomodo potest homo nasci cum sit senex ? " * I 

 shall have to recur to this practice. The Dakota held 

 that a man had four souls. Some Sioux however 

 speak of a fifth " which enters the body of some animal 

 or child after death ; " and they "go so far as to aver 

 that they have distinct recollections of a former state 

 of existence and of the passage into this." But it does 

 not appear that the belief is general. 2 It is said that 

 the medicine-men and women of the Sioux might 

 " be transformed after death into wild beasts," but 

 that the Dakota believed that their medicine-men and 

 women ran their career four times in human shape and 

 then were annihilated. 3 Some Siouan medicine-men 



1 Relations des Jesuites, x. (1636), 286, 272; Rep. Bur. Ethn. v. 

 114, in. 



2 Dorsey, Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 484. 



3 Bourke, Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 470, quoting Schultze, Fetichism 

 (New York, 1888). Some of them begin life as winged seeds, and 

 after preparation and instruction by the divinities go forth and 



