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pleasure, grief, and anger. When you meet a man on the road you should 
never address him until you have passed him, for then your soul and his 
soul continue on their way and only your bodies and shadows stay to 
converse; if there should be disagreement between you it will pass away 
quickly, for your souls are unaffected. (Even today the Ojibwa of Parry 
island often pass one another in silence, then turn back to converse.) 
Similarly Indians suffering from apparently incurable diseases, and pray- 
ing to the sun for aid, generally addressed the setting, not the rising, sun; 
for then the sun-deity had to turn back to hear their prayers and his 
soul w T ould take no offence. 
The shadow is slightly more indefinite than the soul, and the Indians 
themselves often confuse them, attributing certain activities or phenomena 
now to one, now to the other. The shadow is located in the brain, but, 
like the soul, often operates apart from the body. In life it is the “ eyes ” 
of the soul, as it were, awakening the latter to perception and knowledge. 
When a man is travelling his shadow goes before or behind him; normally 
it is in front, nearer to his destination. It often causes a twitching of the 
hunter’s eyelids, informing him that it has seen game ahead. There are 
times when a man feels that some one is watching him, or near him, 
although he can see no one; it is his shadow that is warning him, trying 
to awaken his soul to perceive the danger. 
“ In earlier years, when travelling through the woods, I often felt that some one 
was watching me; and I ran away. Now I no longer have this warning sense, for 
people tend to lose it as they grow old” (Jonas King). 
Old legends of the Parry Island Ojibwa reveal the same belief. 
“ Neweshipado was one of the most upright Indians that ever lived; he was 
obedient to his elders both in his boyhood and in his later years. When he was a 
young man great wolves began to wander over the land, bosses or leaders of the 
wolves. Neweshipado killed them every time they approached his camp, until at last 
the supernatural spirits ( manidos ) gathered together to consult about the young man 
and his great power over them. ' He has too much power,’ they said; and they added 
‘ Let us kill him.’ 
One day when the young man was hunting he came upon two lions (giant 
lynxes) sleeping, and coveted their furs. But just as he drew near to them his soul 1 
whistled and the lions fled. Then his shadow 1 said to him ‘It was I who whistled, 
because you were to be killed here where you stand.’ The young man went away 
and met some one he had never seen before, who warned him that he had killed 
too many supernatural beings, that he had exercised too great power, and must now 
rest it and use it no more. So Neweshipado went up on top of mount Pikudenong, 
in the United States, where he sat down and turned into a white stone, known to the 
Indians today as Djingwabe.” 
Throughout a man’s whole lifetime the shadow fulfils this function 
of enlightening the soul (translated somewhat imperfectly into the terms 
of our own psychologists, it is the sensation and perception that precede 
reasoning and knowledge). It is the shadow that warns a boy two or 
three days in advance that a manido or supernatural being will visit him 
and confer on him a blessing. The boy notes the warning, and, if not 
already fasting and sleeping in a separate hut, informs his parents, who 
immediately build him a wigwam. 2 A baby’s shadow is peculiarly sensi- 
1 One of the many instances where shadow and soul are confused. 
1 Such, at least, was the custom up to half a century ago, for fasting at adolescence has now fallen into abeyance. 
