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to know how long that sick man is going to live,’ The interpreter, turtle, repeated 
the question, and the medewadji debated it, each urging the other to declare the 
answer. At last one of them spoke up, addressing himself directly to the patient 
outside the lodge, ‘ If you follow all the instructions that are given you and do 
exactly what is right you will live to a ripe old age.’ This was certainly a very 
indefinite answer, but then the medewadji never say outright that a man is going to 
die. Now the lodge, which had been shaking ever since the spirits entered, became 
still, and Louis crawled out with all the cloth, tobacco, and whisky, which he carried 
away to his home” (John Manatuwaba). 
Some of the Parry Islanders credit the conjurors, or individual mem- 
bers of the profession, with the most extraordinary powers, exceeding those 
of the kusabindugeyu and wabeno ■ They report that a conjuror has taken 
a man by the ankle and lifted him high in the air with one hand; "has 
loosened himself, unaided, from a network of ropes that bound him; has 
destroyed, with the aid of thunder, evil serpents that preyed on the 
Indians’ camps; and has even sent his helping spirits with a load of furs 
60 miles to a trading post, w T hence they brought back several cases of 
whisky within an hour. 
“ Before there was a settlement at Parry sound, Bill King and two or three 
other Indians exhausted their supply of flour and bacon; but they had four- marten 
skins. One of the Indians was a conjuror, so Bill and his companions erected a 
djiskan for him. They passed the four marten skins inside the lodge, and within a 
few minutes the conjuror produced in exchange for them a 50-pound sack of flour 
which his medewadji had brought from Penetanguishene 100 miles away” (Jonas 
King). 
The Indians on Parry island today live in constant fear of witch- 
craft, to which they attribute many deaths, believing that it has greatly 
increased since conjurors disappeared from their midst. Formerly, they 
say, the conjuror could punish the sorcerer by summoning his soul into the 
djiskan , where one of the helping spirits, at the request of the dead man’s 
relatives, would kill it with a sharpened stick of cedar. “ Get out of 
my way. I’ll kill it,” the spirits would cry as they vied with one another 
to execute their victim. Sorcerers whose souls thus perished immediately 
fell sick and died. Hence many of them wore as amulets ( wadjigan ) small 
stones or pieces of bone resembling a human face, which protected their 
souls from the clutches of the spirits and allowed them to practise their 
witchcraft unpunished. 
“ When I was a young man living at Shawanaga a medewadji tried several nights 
in succession to carry away my soul. I am sure it was a conjuror who was trying to 
harm me, because my father and grandfather had offended some of the Indians on 
lake Huron, and these Indians destroyed by sorcery every member of their families 
except myself” (Pegahmagabow). 
Not every conjuror, one Indian said, had the courage to permit his 
helping spirits to destroy a sorcerer’s soul, even after he held it prisoner 
within his djiskan. The audience outside might feel that there were 
extenuating circumstances, that the man had perhaps acted in self-defence. 
Then the spirits would release the soul, and at some later time a court of 
medes and wabenos would retry the case. They built a fire of sticks and 
stationed the accused man beside it. If he were guilty the sticks changed 
into snakes and killed him. 
Like the ivabeno, the conjuror sometimes entertained his countrymen 
with a feast and dance, but the entertainment was purely secular and the 
dancers employed an ordinary drum. 
