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was his medicine animal. When he went to take it, the body of the beaver 
turned into that of his own child. Later, in similar dreams, the beaver 
turned into the body of a white trader’s children. These dreams meant 
bad luck and he lost five children. When he dreams again and the beaver 
does not change, he will kill beaver once more. 
Petitot in discussing this medicine animal relationship among the 
tribes of Mackenzie River valley (Petitot, 1876, page 36) notes three char- 
acteristics: first, a relic of the animal which has been revealed in a dream, 
is carried on the person; secondly, the man performs some secret practice 
that is meant to please the medicine animal which has shown in a dream 
that it wishes to possess the individual; thirdly, there is a taboo against 
injuring, killing, and, particularly eating, the medicine animal. 
Out of these general individual relationships develop the medicine 
men proper, who to the Satudene are no more than men, and sometimes 
women, whose power is obviously greater than ordinary. The best 
shamans are those who have acquired their power before birth, and this 
they can transfer to none but their sons. One old doctor said that before 
he was born he saw in a star all the medicines that have power over man. 
These were falling to earth like rain. Thus he found the medicines which 
if burned attract moose and marten. He concluded by saying that later 
in life he had a dream in which an angel (sic) appeared and asked him, 
“What have you there?” When the angel saw the medicines, it told him 
to leave them entirely alone lest he use them to bad ends. So he threw 
them all away. 
The shamans have the ability to work all manner of conjuring, may 
swallow knives, transport themselves and their companions invisibly in 
the shape of their medicine animals, and are invulnerable before weapons. 
A band of Indians seeking caribou in a place where they expected to find 
them, were told by one medicine man that another had raised an invisible 
wall which kept the game out of the country. Cases are cited in which 
a whole band was carried secretly underground to a trading post in star- 
vation times by a great medicine man. Another shaman, it is said, shows 
the scars on his breast and back where a bullet passed through his body 
without harming him. Some medicine men are extraordinary seers and 
prophets, foretelling all types of things, from death to the arrival of a boat. 
Sometimes medicine is conceived of as an object that can be handled and 
thrown through space. One medicine man at Great Bear lake threw his 
medicine at a Dogrib chief near Rae with the intention of killing him, but 
fortunately the chief was being visited by another shaman of Bear lake, 
who saw the danger coming as a white ball of fire, and was able to catch 
the medicine and hurl it back at the owner. Without a doubt, such things 
are accepted in good faith, for it taxes even a stranger living intimately 
among them, not to be caught in the snare of necromancy. 
Some medicine men perform cures, certain of them specializing on 
children, some on old people. Their methods of cure are of a widespread 
type, consisting of sucking and blowing on the affected part until the 
disease is extracted in the form of some object that is represented as caus- 
ing the trouble. Keith (1890, II, page 118) mentions the sucking out 
of small fish, frogs, and hair. Simpson (1843, page 327) comments on a 
cave near the end of McTavish bay which was used for shamanistic prac- 
tices. 
