270 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 279. 



" At one side of the bottom wrapping a flap was left for the en- 

 trance of the Jossakeed or Shaman. 



" A committee of twelve was selected to see that no communi- 

 cation was possible between the Jossakeed and confederates. These 

 twelve men were reliable people, one of them being the Episcopal 

 clergyman of the reservation. The spectators were several hun- 

 dreds in number, but stood off, not being allowed to approach. 



" The Jossakeed then removed his clothing, until nothing re- 

 mained upon his person but the breech-cloth. Beaulieu then took a 

 rope (of his own selection for the purpose), and first tied and knot- 

 ted one end about the ankles ; the knees were then securely tied 

 together^ next the wrists ; after which the arms were passed over 

 the knees, and a billet of wood passed under the knees, thus se- 

 curing and keeping the arms down motionless. The rope was 

 then passed around the neck again and again, each time tied and 

 knotted, so as to bring the face down upon the knees. 



"A flat river-stone of black color — which was the Jossakeed 

 Manedo or amulet — was left lying upon his thighs. The Jossa- 

 keed was then carried to the lodge, placed inside upon a mat on 

 the ground, and the flap covering restored so as completely to hide 

 him from view. 



" Immediately loud thumping noises were heard, and the frame- 

 work began to sway from side to side with great violence ; where- 

 upon the clergyman remarked that this was the work of the Evil 

 One, and it was no place for him : so he left, and did not see the 

 end. After a few minutes of violent movements and swaying of 

 the lodge, accompanied by loud inarticulate noises, the motions 

 gradually ceased, when the voice of the juggler was heard telling 

 Beaulieu to go to the house of a friend near by, and get the rope. 

 Now, Beaulieu, suspecting some joke was to be played upon him, 

 directed the committee to be very careful not to permit any one to 

 approach while he went for the rope, which he found at the place 

 indicated, still tied exactly as he had placed it about the neck and 

 extremities of the Jossakeed. He immediately returned, laid it 

 down before the spectators, and requested of the Jossakeed to be 

 allowed to look at him, which was granted, but with the under- 

 standing that Beaulieu was not to touch him. 



" When the covering was pulled aside, the Jossakeed sat within 

 the lodge, contentedly smoking his pipe, with no other object in 

 sight than the black stone Manedo. 



" Beaulieu paid his wager of one hundred dollars. An exhibition 

 of similar pretended powers, also for a wager, was announced a 

 short time later at Yellow-Medicine, Minn., to be given in the pres- 

 ence of a number of army people ; but at the threat of the grand 

 medicine-man of Leech Lake bands, who probably objected to in- 

 terference with his lucrative monopoly, the event did not take 

 place, and bets were declared off. 



" At Odanah, on the Bad River Reservation, and at Bayfield, 

 both in Wisconsin, I obtained some variants of the above perform- 

 ance as seen at different times and places and by several witnesses. 

 For instance : the Shaman at one time was tied up much as before 

 mentioned, but with all of his clothes on ; a fish-net, however, be- 

 ing tied above his clothes, enveloping the whole person ; and horse- 

 bells were attached to his body, so as to indicate any motion. 

 When examined afterwards, the clothing had been entirely stripped 

 from his person, the nets and ropes and bells placed in a separate 

 pile in the lodge, and the clothing itself was found by direction un- 

 der a designated tree a mile off; the Indians of the committee, one 

 of whom was my informant, running from the lodge at their 

 highest speed to the tree, and there finding the clothing, and 

 stating the impossibility of its being transported by any human 

 agency in advance of their arrival. In another case, occurring at 

 night, two lodges were built about twenty feet apart. About a 

 hundred Indians surrounded the space occupied by the two lodges 

 with lighted torches giving the brightness of day, and a line of 

 bonfires was built and kept in flame over the space intervening be- 

 tween the two lodges. The levitation in this case was by the 

 bound Shaman in one lodge being found unbound in the other. 



" It should be noted that these stories relate to a time some forty 

 or fifty years ago, before the tricks similar to those of the Daven- 

 port brothers had become known in the civilized portions of the 

 United States. It is a still more important fact that the French 

 missionaries in Canada, and the early settlers of New England, de- 



scribe substantially the same performances when they met the In- 

 dians, all of whom belonged to the Algonkin stock. So remarkable 

 and frequent were these performances of jugglery, that the French, 

 in 1613, called the whole body of Indians on the Ottawa River, 

 whom they met at a very early period, ' the sorcerers.' They were 

 the tribes afterwards called Nipissing, and were the typical Algon- 

 kins. No suspicion of jugglery in the sense of deception appears 

 to have been entertained by any of the earliest French and English 

 writers. The severe Puritan and the ardent Catholic both consid- 

 ered that the exhibitions were real, and the work of the Devil. It 

 is also worth mentioning that one of the derivations of the name 

 ' Mic-mac ' is connected with the word meaning 'sorcerer;' so 

 that the known practices of this character having an important ef- 

 fect upon the life of the people extended from the Great Lakes to- 

 the extreme east of the continent. It was obvious to me. in cross- 

 examining the various old men, that the performances of jugglery 

 were in each case an exhibition of the pretended miraculous power 

 of an individual, whereby he obtained a reputation above his rivals, 

 and derived subsistence and authority, by the selling of charms- 

 and superhuman information. The charms or fetiches, which still 

 are sold by a few who are yet believed in, are of three kinds, — to 

 bring death or disease on an enemy, to lure an enemy into an am- 

 bush, and to create sexual love." 



The Unusual Prevalence of Fog during May. 



The belt of frequent fogs during the past month, as shown- 

 graphically on the Pilot Chart for June, extended well up into the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, and across the Atlantic from shore to shore. 

 While the amount encountered off the Grand Banks and the coast 

 to the westward is but little in excess of the normal for May. yet 

 such great frequency of dense fog-banks east of the 40th meridian 

 is very unusual. It may be attributed almost entirely to the unu- j 

 sual prevalence in that quarter of the ocean of southerly winds, 

 which lasted for fourteen days during the first two decades of the- 

 month. These winds bring the warm, moist atmosphere from 

 lower latitudes far to the northward, and into contact with the 

 colder air of more northerly regions, this contact resulting in the 

 precipitation of the moisture in the form of fog. Adding to this 

 the fact that most of the depressions noted during the month passed 

 well north of the 50th parallel after reaching the 40th meridian,, 

 thus lessening the clearing effect of their north-westerly winds, it 

 will be seen very readily that the conditions were peculiarly favora- 

 ble to the development of fog along the transatlantic routes. 



Early m the month, small patches of fog were reported, also, to 

 the westward of Bermuda, about the /oih meridian, accompanying 

 north-westerly winds blowing toward a slight depression in about 

 32° north and 63° west, on the 2d and 3d. The dense fog along 

 the coast north of Hatteras on the 6th, which led to the collision 

 between the British steamship ' Benison ' and the American steam- 

 ship ' Eureka,' by which the latter was sunk fifty-six miles east- 

 south-east from Cape Henry, was due to the prevalence of south- 

 erly winds in the western quadrants of an area of high barometer 

 about the Bermudas, which, blowing up the coast from over the Gulf 

 Stream, came into contact with the cold water of the inshore cur- 

 rent, with the usual result. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 



Illustration of the Play-Instinct. 



An article entitled ' The Story of a Sand-Pile ' would not at once 

 suggest any thing of interest to the psychologist ; nevertheless the 

 story as told by Prof. G. Stanley Hall (Scribne>-'s Magazine, June, 

 1888) is full of suggestiveness to one approaching the study of 

 mind with an appreciation of all the various aspects that mental 

 phenomena assume in the world of nature. The story of the 

 ' sand-pile' tells of two boys who had the advantage of playing 

 with a load of sand placed for that purpose in the back-yard. This 

 at once became the centre of all their interests, and by a gradual 

 growth assumed the appearance of a miniature community. Roads 

 were laid out, coal placed in the ground to be afterward discov- 

 ered, and a sort of cave-dwelling erected. The next summer the 

 evolution went on, fortunately undisturbed by parental suggestions. 



