THE MOOSE IN INDIAN MYTH 265 



Fr. Rasle, who began the compilation of his 

 dictionary of the Abnaki language in 1691, gives 

 a word, ^kass, meaning"/^ pie gauche de derriere 

 de I'orignal.'"''^ He gives no specific words for the 

 other feet of the moose. This then was probably 

 a term well understood in the Abnaki pharmaco- 

 poeia, and used when the medicine man was 

 treating an epileptic patient. The presence of this 

 word in Fr. Rasle's dictionary, and the accounts 

 of the epilepsy superstition given by early writers 

 on the American Indians, have seemed to confirm 

 the statement that this was an Indian belief, 

 independent in its origin of the belief prevalent 

 in Europe. 



But Charlevoix, writing in 1721, says, "On 

 pretend que rOrignal est sujet d rEpilepsie,^^ etc. 

 He does not say that it was an Indian belief: his 

 ^'on pretend'*^ is as likely to refer to white men 

 as to red men. Lahontan in 1686 wrote: "The 

 left hind foot of the female cures the falling sick- 

 ness," — but the baron's own skepticism is indi- 

 cated by the added comment, si credere j as est^^^ 

 And Lahontan is as likely to have referred to the 

 belief of the Frenchmen of New France as to that 

 of the Indians. Still earlier, in 1663, Pierre Bou- 



See Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New 

 Series (Cambridge, 1833), vol. i., p. 495. See footnote supra^ p. 237. 

 *s Nouveaux Voyages, under date of July 8, 1686. 



