HUNTING MEDICINE 



155 



The wa'beno'ak sometimes profess the ability to furnish medicine to 

 aid the hunter in finding and securing game, though such pretensions 

 are made equally by the tshi'saqka. To be able to furnish the desired 

 information, for which a fee as well as part of the game secured are 

 necessary; the wa'beno familiarizes himself with the topography and 

 characteristics of a wide area, in order to ascertain tlie best feeding 

 grounds of the various animals and their haunts at various seasons. 

 He keeps himself informed 

 also by careful inquiry of 

 returning hun ters, and thus 

 becomes possessed of abody 

 of valuable information re- 

 specting the natural his- 

 tory of the surrounding 

 country, by which means he 

 can with a tolerable amount 

 of certainty direct a hunter 

 to the best localities for such 

 varieties of game as may be 

 particularly desired by him. 



It is claimed that in 

 former times the wa'beno 

 was much more highly re- 

 garded than at present, but 

 that now the number of 

 these individuals has been 

 reduced to two or three 

 within the entire tribe, in 

 consequence of which grad- 

 ual reduction, faith in their 

 pretensions has become 

 weakened, and with apparent good reason. The tshi'saqka is more 

 respected, and consequently more feared, than the wa'beno, although 

 themita'wok greatly outrank in numbers these classes of shamans. 



The reason that the wa'beno'ak in former times were admitted to 

 be more powerful than the mita'wok is explained in the following 

 myth, related to me by Shu'nieu, and entitled "The contest between the 

 mitii' T and the wa'beno": 



There was a mita' v who considered himself the chief of all the mit- 

 a'wok, and was therefore the most powerful man on earth. But the 

 leader of the wa'beno'ak claimed that he himself was the more pow- 

 erful of the two; so, after an angry altercation, the mita' T challenged 

 the wa'beno — morning or daylight — to meet him, in order to see which 

 could destroy the other. So the two agreed to meet in the spring, and 

 dining the whole winter each was engaged in preparing for the coming 

 encounter. 



Fig. 22— Thimble charm containing love powder. 



