418 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



fort in pursuit of the Kuisteueaus, who were rapidly retreating to tlie bluffs. The 

 Frenchmen in the fort also, at so flagrant and cowardly an insult, seized their guns 

 and ran out, joining the Blackfeet in the pursuit. I at that moment ran to my paint- 

 ing-room in one of the bastions overlooking the plain, where I had a fair view of the 

 affair. Many shots were exchanged back and forward, and a skirmish ensued which 

 lasted half an hour. The parties, however, were so far apart that little effect was 

 produced. The Knisteneaux were driven off over the bluffs, having lost one man and 

 had several others wounded. The Blackfeet and Frenchmen returned into the fort 

 and then I saw what I never before saw in my life — I saw a medicine-man perform- 

 ing his mysteries over a dying man. The man who had been shot was still living, 

 though two bullets had passed through the center of his body, about two inches apart 

 from each other. He was lying on the ground in the agonies of death and no one 

 could indulge the slightest hope of his recovery, yet the medicine-man must needs be 

 called (for such a person they had in their party), and hocus pocus applied to the 

 dying man as the dernier resort when all drugs and all specifics were useless and after 

 all possibility of recovery was extinct. 



I have mentioned that all tribes have their physicians, who are also medicine (or 

 mystery) men. These professional gentlemen are worthies of the highest order in 

 all tribes. They are regularly called and paid as physicians to prescribe for the sick, 

 and many of them acquire great skill in the medicinal world, and gain much celeb- 

 rity in their nation. Their first prescriptions are roots and herbs, of which they have 

 a great variety of species ; and when these have all failed their last resort is to medi- 

 cine or mystery, and for this purpose each one of them has a strange and unaccount- 

 able dress, conjured up and constructed during a lifetime of practice, in the wildest 

 fancy imaginable, in which he arrays himself, and makes his last visit to his dying 

 patient, dancing over him, shaking his frightful rattles, and singing songs of incan- 

 tation, in hopes to cure him by a charm. There are some instances, of course, where 

 the exhausted patient unaccountably recovers under the application of these absurd 

 forms, and in such cases this ingenious son of Indian Esculapius will be seen for sev- 

 eral days after on the top of a wigwam, with his right arm extended and waving 

 over the gaping multitude, to whom he is vaunting forth, without modesty, the sur- 

 prising skill he has acquired in his art, and the undoubted efficacy of his medicine or 

 mystery. But if, on the contrary, the patient dies, he soon changes his dress, and 

 joins in doleful lamentations with the mourners, and easily, with his craft and the 

 ignorance and superstition of his people, protects his reputation and maintains his 

 influence over them by assuring them that it was the will of the Great Spirit that 

 his patient should die, and. when sent for his feeble efforts must cease. 



Such was the case, and such the extraordinary means resorted to in the instance I 

 am now relating. Several hundred spectators, including Indians and traders, were 

 assembled around the dying man, when it was announced that the medicine man was 

 coming. "VVe were required to " form a ring," leaving a space of some 30 or 40 feet in 

 diameter around the dying man, in which the doctor could perform his wonderful 

 operations, and a space was also opened to allow him free room to pass through the 

 crowd without touching any one. This being done, in a few moments his arrival was 

 announced by the death-like "hush — sh— " through the crowd, and nothing was to 

 be heard save the light and casual tinkling of the rattles upon his dress, which was 

 scarcely perceptible to the ear, as he cautiously and slowly moved through the avenue 

 left for him, which at length brought him into the ring, in view of the pitiable ob- 

 ject over whom his mysteries were to be performed. 



Readers, you may have seen or read of the witch of Endor, or you may imagine all 

 the ghosts, and spirits, and furies that ever ranked amongst the " rank and file " of 

 demonology, and yet you must see my painting of this strange scene before you can 

 form a just conceiition of real frightful ugliness and Indian conjuration — yes, and 

 even more; you must see the magic dress of this Indian "big bug" (which I have 

 this day procured in all its parts) placed upon the back of some person who can imi. 

 tate the strides and swells, the grunts, and spring the rattles of an Indian magician. 



