84 
The left foot of a rabbit, or the seeds of certain plants (species not ascertained), 
bring good luck if carried on the person. 
There is a medicine made from gold-dust mingled with other things which makes 
people give you presents, or buy whatever you offer them. 
A certain stone, obtainable only by a djiskiu, gives prosperity. It occurs in a 
spring, and everything around it flourishes. If you keep it in your house you will 
become rich, and no sorceror or evil spirit will be able to harm you. 
Marvellous power attaches to the tail of the “ lion ” ( mishibizhi : a mythical 
giant lynx), and even to a hair of its tail. It softens the hearts of enemies, excites 
goodwill, and brings good fortune and prosperity. Mixed with gold-dust it is an 
excellent fishing medicine. Some of the Parry Islanders attribute the relative pros- 
perity of the King family, who are Potawatomi immigrants, to their possession of 
a hair from the “ lion’s " tail. 
The last example well illustrates the anti-social factor in the employ- 
ment of medicines. Any Indian who through industry and good judgment 
is more successful than his neighbours rouses their suspicion that he 
possesses an unfair advantage; that his prosperity is due not to his natural 
talents and diligence, but to his acquisition of some powerful medicine 
which he carefully secrets from his fellowmen. If three Indians go 
fishing, and one catches far more than the others, the less successful fish- 
ermen feel aggrieved, never doubting that their companion is surrepti- 
tiously using medicine. Every summer a local hotel employs a few Parry 
Islanders to guide visiting tourists to the best fishing grounds; and the 
two Indians most frequently engaged are openly charged with doctoring 
their hooks with medicine to ensure that their employers will feel quite 
satisfied with their services. 
Furthermore, medicines have, it is believed, a power of infection. 
Should a man who possesses a powerful hunting medicine cross your trail 
when you are hunting your legs will become so weary and sore that you 
will perforce give up the chase and return home. In such a contingency 
Jonas King rubs his legs vigorously with cedar twigs; and other Indians 
have their own special remedies. 
This “ contagion ” of a medicine is scarcely distinguishable from 
witchcraft (or “playing with the dead,” as the Indians term it), which 
so obsessed their minds in pre-European times that it still holds them in 
bondage today. They ascribe to this cause nearly all cases of accident, 
sickness, ill-success in hunting, in fact misfortune of every character. 
For they believe that the medicine-power of a sorcerer, or mede, may be 
employed for either good or evil; but if he refrains altogether from its use 
it will turn and kill either himself or his children . 1 Many sorcerers are 
cripples or suffer from some other infirmity because their medicine-power 
has turned against them . 2 Witchcraft is, therefore, a very dangerous 
profession, quite apart from the penalties attached to it by the Indians 
themselves, who in former times might club a convicted sorcerer with 
impunity even in the bosom of his family, merely leaving the club beside 
the corpse to be buried by relatives with the body. 
1 The blessing or power acquired by other medicine-men, e g., the djiskiu, is equally dynamic and dangerous to 
its possessor if not used . He may poasibly escape the penalty Himself, but it will surely fall on his children, all of 
whom will die young. The Indians assert that this has been the fate of most medicine-men who embraced 
Christianity and abandoned their old practices; and that a similar fate has befallen those who have foresworn 
their adolescent “blessings” by accepting Christianity, because they have angered the manidos who visited them 
during their fasting. 
a This explains why cripples and other unfortunates were particularly exposed to charges of sorcery, and suffered 
accordingly. 
