72 MYTHS OF THE IROQUOIS. 



to sing, keeping time with his hand. After a while he returned to her 

 and said : " You are bewitched. You refused to give milk to a poor 

 woman who came to beg of you, and she has bewitched you. I hnve 

 had her house revealed to me, and I saw her, but she was combing her 

 hair over her face, so I could not see her features. I would not recognize 

 her again." 



Next day he tried again; then he said: "Now I know who she is." 

 So they sent for a chief and told him all about it, and he brought the 

 woman before them. She was a Chippewa and a witch. The chief had 

 her brought to the old woman's cabin. She owned that she had be- 

 witched her, and said, " Fetch me the thigh-bone of a beaver from a 

 man who is the child of Molly Brant, the child of Governor W. Johnson." 

 The bone was brought, and by the time it arrived she had scoured a brass 

 kettle, and had clean water poured into it. As soon as she received 

 the bone, wliich was hollow, she placed it against the eye that was not 

 painful and spat through it. After a while she ceased spitting, and 

 looked iu the water. A spider was running around in the kettle. She 

 covered it over with her handkerchief, then removed it, and a feather 

 lay there instead of the spider. The pain left the old woman but the 

 sight was not restored. 



A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT. 



The victim in this case was a Mary Jemison, who, having severe pains 

 in her chest, concluded that she was bewitched, and consulted the witch- 

 doctors, who applied their extractive bandages, which greatly relieved 

 her. She saw a dog as an apparition coming toward her, and directed 

 her friends to shoot it, but they did not succeed iu killing it. In like 

 manner a cat, which was invisible to other people, was seen by her. 

 She finally recovered, but Andrew John, who was pronounced her be- 

 witcher, and who was oiitwitched, is now dying from consumption. 



AN INCANTATION TO BRING RAIN. 



In a dry season, the horizon being filled with distant thunder heads, 

 it was customary to burn what is called by the Indians real tobacco as 

 an offering to bring rain. 



On occasions of this nature the people were notified by swift-footed 

 heralds that the children, or sons, of Thunder were in the horizon, and 

 that tobacco must be burned in order to get some rain. Every family 

 was supposed to have a private altar upon which its offerings were 

 secretly made; after which said family must repair, bearing its tithe, 



