The Thunder also appears to them, in the shape and form of a most beautiful bird (The Pea-Cock).
[Roots and Herbs (Medicines)]
Roots and herbs also (this also ought to have come in afterwards), such as are medicinal, appear, and teach their votaries their respective songs, how they must do, what ceremonies they must perform in taking them out of the ground, their different applications. But these roots [and] herbs (medicines), though they appear in their dreams, they do not shew themselves in the conjuring hut, box, or frame, that I learn. They are sent, as appears, by Wee-suck-ā-jāāk, to teach Indians their use and virtue without which they would be very ill off, whether to heal or cure themselves, or expell the charms by which other Indians may have bewitched them. And though they are acquainted with many of these roots, the use and virtue of some of which I can no more doubt than those used by the faculty in the civilized world, yet they tell me there are several which they use to different, and some to diametrically opposite, purposes.
[The Manner of Conjuring]
[Building the Lodge]
Their manner of conjuring is this: In the first place a number [of] straight poles of two, or two and a half inches diameter and about eight or nine feet long are prepared, cut, branched and pointed at the lower end. They seldom require so few as four, commonly six or eight. These are planted in the ground from twelve to twenty or twenty-four inches deep in an hexagon or octagon form, enclosing a space of three feet diameter, more or less. These poles are secured by hoops, three or four in number, and well tied to each pole, so that none be able to move without the rest. This hut, square, box, or frame, whatever it may be termed, is covered with skins, an oil cloth, or some such sort of thing.
[Preparing the Conjurer]
The conjurer is bound hand and foot, not as if he were a man going to pry into futurity, but as a criminal, [a] mere, pure devil, and one whom they intend never to loosen, so barricaded and cross-corded is the creature, sometimes all crumpled into a heap. He is tied only with his cloute on him, and thus thrust into the hut underneath by raising the lower covering, his "she-she-quay" or rattler with him.
[Spirits who Enter the Lodge and Interactions with Them]
Some of them sing on entering, others make a speech. Here they remain, some several hours, others not five minutes, before fluttering is heard. The rattler is shaked at a merry rate, and all of a sudden, either from the top, or below, away flies the cords by which the Indian was tied, into the lap of he who tied him. It is then that the Devil is at work. Every instant some one or other enters, which is known to those outside by either the fluttering, the rubbing against the skins of the hut in descending (inside) or the shaking of the rattler, and sometimes all together. When any enter, the hut moves in a most violent manner. I have frequently thought that it would be knocked down, or torn out of the ground.