Then one of them heated a stick and thrust it right through his cheek, and then applied some of the medicine to prove to him how quickly it could heal the wound. Then they did the same to his leg. All the time they sang a tune; they called it the "medicine song," and taught it to him.
Then he turned to go home, and all at once he perceived that they were not human beings, as he had thought, but animals, bears, beavers, and foxes, which all flew off as he looked. They had given him directions to take one stalk of corn and dry the cob and pound it very fine, and to take one squash, cut it up and pound that, and they then showed him how much for a dose. He was to take water from a running spring, and always from up the stream, never down.
He made up the prescription and used it with very great success, and made enough before he died to last over one hundred years.
This was the origin of the great medicine of the Senecas. The people sing over its preparation every time the deer changes his coat, and when it is administered to a patient they sing the medicine song, while they rattle a gourd-shell as accompaniment, and burn tobacco. Burning tobacco is the same as praying. In times of trouble or fear, after a bad dream, or any event which frightens them, they say, "My mother went out and burned tobacco."
The medicine is prepared now with the addition of meat.
A "TRUE" WITCH STORY.
Among the Senecas dwelt an old woman who was very stingy. All at once she began to suffer great pain in her eye. She consulted a conjurer, who went out to a bush and covered it with a tent and then began to sing, keeping time with his hand. After a while he returned to her and said: "You are bewitched. You refused to give milk to a poor woman who came to beg of you, and she has bewitched you. I have had her house revealed to me, and I saw her, but she was combing her hair over her face, so I could not see her features. I would not recognize her again."
Next day he tried again; then he said: "Now I know who she is." So they sent for a chief and told him all about it, and he brought the woman before them. She was a Chippewa and a witch. The chief had her brought to the old woman's cabin. She owned that she had bewitched her, and said, "Fetch me the thigh-bone of a beaver from a man who is the child of Molly Brant, the child of Governor W. Johnson." The bone was brought, and by the time it arrived she had scoured a brass kettle, and had clean water poured into it. As soon as she received the bone, which was hollow, she placed it against the eye that was not painful and spat through it. After a while she ceased spitting, and looked in the water. A spider was running around in the kettle. She covered it over with her handkerchief, then removed it, and a feather lay there instead of the spider. The pain left the old woman but the sight was not restored.
A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT.
The victim in this case was a Mary Jemison, who, having severe pains in her chest, concluded that she was bewitched, and consulted the witch-doctors, who applied their extractive bandages, which greatly relieved her. She saw a dog as an apparition coming toward her, and directed her friends to shoot it, but they did not succeed in killing it. In like manner a cat, which was invisible to other people, was seen by her. She finally recovered, but Andrew John, who was pronounced her bewitcher, and who was outwitched, is now dying from consumption.