50 
natural world, could not compel the manido to visit and bless his boy; but 
the Ojibwa believed that if the boy was obedient and faithfully strove for 
the visitation he would in all probability obtain it. The lad usually informed 
his father each morning of any dream that had come to him during the 
night, and his father then advised him whether to accept it or strive for one 
more propitious. To avoid any consequences from a rejected dream, he 
often scraped his son’s tongue with a knife of cedar, and handing him the 
knife, bade him throw it into the fire. Thus the lad annulled, as it were, the 
unfavourable dream and remained to fast for a better. 
Occasionally the boy’s wigwam was erected in a tree, or on a platform, 
to protect him from prowling animals. If he were ambitious to become a 
conjurer ( djiskiu ), his father made a “ nest” for him near the top of a tree 
(Tom and Jonas King), or, according to other informants (Pegahmagabow 
and Mary Sugedub) , kept the hut in constant darkness. Guided largely by 
his father’s counsel, he prayed there for what he wanted and awaited the 
expected vision. Some prayed for happiness and long life, others for medi- 
cine-power, and others for success in war. Every boy, the Indians say, 
received a vision and a blessing of some kind or another. One would 
acquire knowledge of a certain medicine-herb, another skill in hunting, and 
a third the ability to become a great medicine-man. None of these blessings 
took effect, however, until the boy reached manhood; and they were never 
transferable to other Indians. Indeed, so strictly individual were they that 
no Ojibwa might even declare his vision until he reached old age, under 
penalty of losing the blessing altogether. Only when death was near, and 
the blessing no longer useful, might he communicate the vision to his 
children, if he wished; although most Indians carried the secret with them to 
their graves. 
“I had' a friend on the Indian reserve at Shawanaga, a splendid fisherman and 
hunter, who told me before he died that be had acquired his skill through a dream 
in boyhood. He had dreamed that the land was partly covered with water, which 
extended to where one may see today a line of boulders; that the country was full 
of islands, but had few inhabitants; that animals were so plentiful, and so tame, that 
they continued grazing even when the Indians approached close up to them ; and 
that he himself .could move with great rapidity from place to place ” (Pegahma- 
gabow) . 
Girls required guidance and help from the supernatural world no less 
than boys; and they, too, frequently fasted and prayed for visions, under 
the supervision of their mothers. In their case, however, the fasting hut 
was erected close to the parent’s wigwam. Unlike boys, they never obtained 
a partial vision, the Ojibwa say; but in every other respect their experience 
closely resembled their brothers’. 
It is clear from this training of boys and girls that the Parry Islanders 
recognized the immense psychological changes that take place in the ado- 
lescent child and sought to give them proper direction. They knew that 
steady concentration on some object or purpose induces dreaming, and that 
when the body is weakened by fasting dreams readily gain the vividness and 
force of direct visions, which they naturally interpreted as visitations from 
the supernatural world, much in the same way as did the mediaeval 
Europeans. They realized, too, that talents vary, that not every child 
