AN INCANTATION TO BRING RAIN.
In a dry season, the horizon being filled with distant thunder-heads, it was customary to burn what is called by the Indians real tobacco as an offering to bring rain.
On occasions of this nature the people were notified by swift-footed heralds that the children, or sons, of Thunder were in the horizon, and that tobacco must be burned in order to get some rain. Every family was supposed to have a private altar upon which its offerings were secretly made; after which said family must repair, bearing its tithe, to the council-house, where the gathered tithes of tobacco were burned in the council-fire. While the tobacco was burning, the agile and athletic danced the rain-dance.
When this was done, Hi-nuⁿ, pleased with the incense of the burning tobacco, called forth huge dark banks of rain clouds and took personal charge of the gathering storm to guide it to wet the dry and parched earth. Hi-nuⁿ was considered a great lover of tobacco, but always in want of it.
A CURE FOR ALL BODILY INJURIES.
This was made from the dried and pulverized flesh of every known bird, beast, and fish. Equal portions of this flesh were mixed into a compound, which was divided among all true medicine-men.
A WITCH IN THE SHAPE OF A DOG.
Witches could and did assume animal shapes.
On the Buffalo Reservation a man saw a "witch-woman" coming, with fire streaming from her mouth. Crossing a creek and obtaining his gun the man returned and saw a dog at no great distance resting its forefeet upon a log, and it had fire streaming from its mouth and nostrils.
The man fired at it and saw it fall, but as it was very dark he dared not go near it; but on the following morning he went to the spot and saw where it had fallen, by the marks of blood from its wound. Tracking it by this means he followed its path until it had reached a bridge, where the woman's tracks took the place of the dog's tracks in the path. He followed the bloody trail to the Tonawanda Reservation, where he found the woman. She had died from the effect of the shot.