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CHAPTER VIII 
TABOOS, MEDICINES, AND WITCHCRAFT 
The Indian lived in a spiritual universe. Rocks, trees, and animals 
were but spirits imprisoned in corporeal forms. The bodies, souls, and 
shadows of these objects had attributes and powers different from those of 
man, though he was one of them; and they differed also from one another. 
Other spirits, perhaps equally numerous, were incorporeal, or at least rarely 
manifested themselves to human senses. They, too, had different attributes, 
and possessed different powers, some greater and some less, to interfere 
for good or ill in man’s affairs. Between these corporeal and incorporeal 
worlds there was no sharp dividing line; incorporeal spirits might cloth*, 
themselves in bodily forms, and souls and shadows frequently took flight 
from their prisons and led a separate existence. 
“ Sometimes a little before the dawn you hear a shrill, whistling sound high in 
the air, or perhaps only at the level of the treetops. It is a baggak, the ghost of an 
Indian who died of starvation. Some adolescent boy or girl, seeking a blessing that 
would not come, has been abandoned too long in a lonely hut; or an Indian has 
perished from hunger, vainly looking for the game that a sorcerer has kept from his 
reach. There was no defect in his body, no sickness or conflict that w r ould release 
from their bondage its soul and shadow; but it wasted from inanition, and at last 
became so frail and intangible that it ascended into the air. Now it blows wherever 
the wind carries it, or it may be travels round and round with the sun. Do not be 
afraid, for it will not harm you. But if you happen to be cooking when it passes 
over the treetops, out of charity place some grease on a bough. It will descend and 
feast on the odour, then proceed on its way” (J. King and Pegahmagabow). 
The world was full of mystery, of unseen forces working in unknown 
ways for unknown ends. They held the Indian largely at their mercy. 
The supernatural guardian he obtained at adolescence, and the power and 
knowledge of kindred medicine-men offered him some slight protection; 
but his safest guide in life was the stored-up experience of his ancestors, 
handed down by word of mouth through countless generations. This experi- 
ence took the form of numerous superstitions, and of numerous practices 
and taboos that lost none of their validity because the reasons for their 
observance were often no longer understood. 
The number of taboos ( ginomadem ) was legion, for while some applied 
to all the Parry Islanders, others were incumbent on individuals only. The 
latter often originated from the dreams and visions of adolescence, which 
might cause an Indian to abstain all his life from eating such choice meat 
as the tongue of the moose. Often, too, a medicine-man forbade certain 
foods to his patient until he recovered; or he enjoined an abstinence from 
certain occupations. There were taboos restricted to women, others that 
were incumbent on children alone. No one could be familiar with all of 
them; each man knew the more universal taboos and his own personal 
