The following few stories or tales will give a better notion or idea of the religion of these people than every other description I am able to pen. And as their history is read with interest, I am persuaded these few pages will be found equally deserving attention. I give them the same as I received them and leave every one to make his own remarks and to draw his own conclusions.
[Conjuring: The Interpreter's Account]
My interpreter, a young half breed, passed the winter of 1819-20 with the Indians and gives this account. One day shortly before Christmas, he was out with an elderly man, a chief of this place, a hunting. Suddenly he stopped as to listen, apparently with great eagerness and anxiety, upon which, after allowing a sufficient time, the interpreter asked what was the matter.
"Listen and you'll hear."
"I have listened," says the interpreter, "but hear nothing, and it is surprising that you who are deaf should hear and I not."
"Ah! A white man is thy father, and thou are just as skeptical, doubting and ridiculing every thing we say or do 'till when it is then too late. Then ye lament, but in vain."
After this the Indian became much downcast and very thoughtful for several days. And as if to increase his anxiety, or rather to corroborate the husband's assertions, his wife said that one day she also heard, though the other women that were with her heard nothing, and an altercation ensued.
His uneasiness increasing too much, he was forced to have recourse to their only alternative in such cases, une Jonglerie as the French term it, that is conjuring.
One of their party, another half-breed abandoned many years since by his father and leading an Indian life, was applied to. He is reputed a true man: [he] never lies. Out of respect to the other, he was induced to consent, but much against his will. "For I am much afraid that [one] of these times they will carry me off."
He was prepared, and entered with his rattler, shortly after which the box and the rattler began to move in the usual brisk and violent manner. Many [spirits] entered, and one asked what was wanted that they had been called upon.