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of the lodge . 1 A brief period of silence follows, and the faint aroma of 
tobacco smoke floats from the shrine. Then the manidos discuss among 
themselves the cause of the sick man’s condition. They decide that a 
sorcerer has bewitched him, so with a violent rocking of the lodge one of 
them departs to summon the soul of the offender 2 for trial. 
The audience outside the lodge now becomes visibly excited, and the 
employer of the conjuror draws nearer. Again the lodge rocks as the 
manido brings in the sorcerer’s soul. “ Is it you who have caused my son’s 
sickness?” shouts the employer. “ Is it you?” The soul cannot avoid 
confessing if the sorcerer is guilty. “ Shall we kill him? Shall we kill 
him?” shout the medewadji in their squeaky voices, while thunder closely 
guards the top of the lodge to prevent the soul’s escape. “ No, not yet,” 
replies the man, who is generally afraid of being held responsible for the 
sorcerer’s death. “ Let him restore my son to health and pay us fitting 
compensation. How much will he pay?” So the man outside and the 
soul within bargain with one another until they arrive at an agreement. 
Then the manidos release the soul, which returns to its owner; and the 
lodge rocks for the last time as they themselves depart. The seance has 
ended. The exhausted conjuror crawls out from his shelter and retires 
to his tent. Tomorrow, or the next day perhaps, the relatives of the 
sick man will pay him for his toil. 
The performance just described explains the general character of 
these seances; but no two of them were exactly alike, not only because 
they were held for different needs, but because each conjuror had his 
special methods. On rare occasions he might even remain outside the 
lodge (presumably after concealing a confederate within). Sometimes, it 
is said, his medewadji or helping spirits cured sickness by exchanging the 
soul of the patient with that of a man in perfect health; the latter merely 
felt indisposed for a short time until his new soul regained strength. Or, 
again, when a band of Indians were starving, the helping spirits summoned 
and killed the shadow of a moose or deer; then the next day the hunters 
killed the animal itself, which no longer possessed a shadow to warn it 
of danger. 
“ I once helped to erect a djiskan so that a conjuror might discover why a 
certain child was ill. We heard the manidos say to one another inside the lodge 
'We cannot do anything. The child will have to die.’ The child died” (Jonas King). 
" My brother Louis was a conjuror. A few days before he died he described 
to us the vision from which he had derived his powers, but I remember only that his 
manido had appeared to him in the guise of a man. Whenever he crawled inside a 
djiskan and knelt down, his medewadji would appear without being summoned, each 
one rocking the lodge from side to side as it entered. Turtle was always the last 
to enter. Louis held his last performance one evening, shortly after dark, on behalf 
of a man who was dangerously ill. He crawled inside the djiskan, holding in his hand 
some tobacco which the sick man’s friends were presenting to the spirits. On the 
floor of the lodge they had laid other presents, strips of coloured cloth and some 
whisky. The medewadji entered one by one, each exclaiming as it arrived, ' Ha, 
here is a feast for us’; but its earlier companions reproved it and cautioned it to 
keep quiet. They sat around on the encircling hoop, while turtle, whom we could 
recognize by his hoarse voice, sat above them guarding the entrance. First they 
drank the soul ( udjitcoq ) of the whisky and smoked the soul of the tobacco; we who 
were outside could sniff the odour of the tobacco. Louis then said to them 'I want 
1 “When I was a boy the man for whom the conjuror was performing asked me to hand in the tobacco. Some* 
thing cold and clammy took it from my fingers” (James Walker). 
! Some Indians say that it is the shadow (udjibbom) of the sorcerer the medewadji summon, not his soul. 
