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and ill-will. This was the position of the mede, the very secrecy of whose 
rites engendered suspicion, especially in a district like Parry island where 
the society to which he owed his rank was of alien origin and failed to gain 
a foothold. Even today, when it has been extinct for fifty years, the 
Indians look askance at its two ex-members, Jonas and Tom King, and 
regard the latter in particular as an avowed sorcerer. Only two or three 
years ago, they assert, when some one stole a few of his cucumbers, he 
spat some medicine on a stick and placed it in his garden to turn into a 
dangerous copperhead snake and attack intruders. Hence we can readily 
understand why it is that now, when the Grand Medicine Society is but 
a faint legend to most of the islanders, the term mede is synonymous with 
sorcerer, and has no reference at all to membership in any secret organi- 
zation. 
