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medicine plant; and he makes this offering not to the soul and shadow of 
the plant, but to its owner. His doctrine could not be fully elucidated, but 
in his own words was as follows: 
“ When I gather the minishinowack (wild pea?) for medicine I place tobacco in 
the fire for the rattlesnake, for this plant belongs to the rattlesnake. All plants have 
their owners. The strawberry and all the plants that grow along the shores of the 
lakes, belong to the frog. It was from Nenibush that they received medicinal quali- 
ties. When he distributed the qualities the plants danced around inside a large 
wigwam, and at their first circuit their hair turned white, indicating that they now 
possessed the power to make man reach old age.” 
Just as the wabeno’s blessing received in his boyhood vision gave an 
added vitality to his herbal remedies, so the mede could bless or vitalize 
his medicines by the aid of the four sacred images. He borrowed these 
images from their keeper and set them up in line inside his wigwam. Then 
he laid out his medicines and a little tobacco in front of them and chanted 
a prayer to Nenibush. 
The two ex-members of the society affirmed that the patronage of Neni- 
bush, or Mede Manido , as they preferred to call him, gave the medes extra- 
ordinary powers, which they usually employed for the public benefit. Every 
spring, for example, they held a feast and called down a blessing on the 
gardens that were being planted. These same powers, however, they could 
employ also for evil, if they wished. Some could lay sticks on the ground, 
spit medicine on them, and transform them into rattlesnakes. Others could 
clap their medicines between their hands and produce fire; or they could 
place their hands, steeped in medicine, to their mouths and breathe out 
fire. Occasionally four or five sat inside a wigwam, smoked, chanted 
medicine songs, and pointed their medicine-bags in the direction of an 
enemy they wished to kill; then unseen magic, accompanied perhaps by fire, 
shot from the bags as though from rifles and struck their victim down. At 
times a mede employed the sacred images themselves for witchcraft. He 
set them up in line, placed medicine in front of one of them, talked to it, 
told it where to go, and walked four times around it. The image left the 
wigwam to accomplish its mission and returned within the hour; but its 
victim, although living perhaps 100 miles away, immediately became ill 
and shortly died. The Mede Manido , they said, was not evil himself, nor 
was he responsible for this abuse of the power his votaries derived from 
him. The penalty came after death, when their souls were debarred from 
reaching the land in the west over which he ruled. They might be punished 
in this life also, for somewhere far away there dwelt a class of super- 
medes who used the earth as a drum. By merely placing their drumsticks 
to the ground they could hear, as through a telephone, the plots of evil 
medes and sorcerers, and make their plots recoil on their own heads. For 
this reason the Parry Island Indians have always been taught not to 
speak ill of other bands or tribes lest some super-mede far away should 
overhear their words. 
Whatever the colour of his skin, white, red, or black, man is always 
prone to misuse any extraordinary power that may be committed into his 
hands; and even where he does not misuse it, but acts with a single eye 
for the public benefit, he cannot escape being a ready target for suspicion 
4294 — 6 $ 
