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of tobacco, although Nanibush himself rescues the little children who slip 
off the logs. A man removes its brains with a knife and sends the indwelling 
shadow back to the grave. Finally the soul enters the village of the dead, 
where its kinsfolk welcome it and celebrate its arrival with a dance. 
To substantiate this doctrine of the afterlife the Indians narrate the 
experiences of their forefathers, and even the experiences that come to 
themselves in dreams. Many a medicine-man, they claim, has pursued the 
soul of some dead man or woman to the home of Nanibush or his brother 
and brought it back to earth. 
“My father, who was a ku sabindugeyu, once followed the soul of a young girl 
to the land of the dead and brought it back in his hands. But it was light as wool, 
and slipped through his fingers as he was inserting it through the girl’s forehead. So 
it returned to Nanib'ush, and the girl did not recover. 
I, too, have travelled to the land of the dead, not once but twice. I followed the 
soul of my daughter when she died, and tried to bring it back. On the road I met 
many people, who wore different clothes from those of the ordinary Indian; and 
although I spoke to them, they seemed not to notice me. I succeeded in crossing 
the river where a big log moves up and down; but then a great spirit, perhaps 
Nanibush himself, sent me back to earth and would not let me see my daughter. 
When my son died I tried to bring his soul also. For half a day my body 
lay unconscious in the house while my soul fared forth to the land of the dead. 
But again I failed in my quest” (Jim Nanibush). 
The Parry Islanders thought that only the souls of Ojibwa Indians 
went to the land of Nanibush; for just as each tribe had its own territory 
here on earth, so it had its own realm in the hereafter. Now that they 
have all become Christians, at least nominally, some of them express the 
change by saying that a new door to the hereafter has been opened up for 
them, a door opening on to a new road that leads to a new land where the 
souls of all other people go, whatever their race or speech. 
It was a little difficult for the Parry Islanders, or their forefathers, to 
harmonize this doctrine of a land of souls in the west with a concurrent 
belief in reincarnation that had its origin, among other sources, in the 
observed inheritance of physical and psychical characteristics. Some of 
them resolved the difficulty by supposing that souls were occasionally sent 
back to earth with the shadows, or that after residing for a short period in 
the spirit land they were able to return. 
“We often heard a sound as of a saucer moving beside my first baby, and it 
seemed to us that some unseen presence was tending the child. Shortly before it 
died we could feel this presence near us trying to take the child away, and I dreamed 
that it was the soul of my wife’s dead mother. So we did not grieve greatly when 
the baby died, knowing that my wife’s mother would take care of it” (Pegahmagabow). 
The Indians did not crave reincarnation, nor did they conceive that it 
could be obtained deliberately. They thought that two kinds of stone 
called meshkosh , one white and one black, had power to grant long life to a 
fasting youth and to assure his rebirth after a lapse of years; but chance 
alone governed the bestowal of the blessing. One indication of reincarna- 
tion was the presumed ability to recall in dreams some of the events of an 
earlier life. So when a young man dreamed a few years ago that a certain 
grave contained something for him, and, going thither, recovered an old 
muzzle-loading gun, his countrymen regarded him as the reincarnation 
of the Indian who had been buried there a century or more before. 
