CHAPTER XXXII.
SUPERSTITION.
Great and powerful as the Indian concieves himself to be, firm and undaunted as he really is, braving all seasons and weathers, careless of dangers, patient of hunger, thirst and cold, and fond of displaying the native energy of his character even in the midst of tortures, at the very thought of which our own puny nature revolts and shudders; this Lord of the Creation, whose life is spent in a state of constant warfare against the wild beasts of the forest and the savages of the wilderness, who, proud of his independent existence, strikes his breast with exultation and exclaims “I am a man!”—the American Indian has one weak side, which sinks him down to the level of the most fearful and timid being, a childish apprehension of an occult and unknown power, which, unless he can summon sufficient fortitude to conquer it, changes at once the hero into a coward. It is incredible to what a degree the Indians’ superstitious belief in witchcraft operates upon their minds; the moment that their imagination is struck with the idea that they are bewitched, they are no longer themselves; their fancy is constantly at work in creating the most horrid and distressing images. They see themselves falling a sacrifice to the wicked arts of a vile unknown hand, of one who would not have dared to face them in fair combat; dying a miserable, ignominious death; a death, to which they would a thousand times prefer the stake with all its horrors. No tale, no tradition, no memorial of their courage or heroic fortitude will go down with it to posterity; it will be thought that they were not deserving of a better fate. And, (O! dreadful thought to an Indian mind!) that death is to remain forever unrevenged;—their friends, their relations, the men of their own tribe, will seek the murderer in vain; they will seek him while, perhaps, he is in the midst of them, unnoticed and unknown, smiling at their impotent rage, and calmly selecting some new victim to his infernal art.
Of this extraordinary power of their conjurers, of the causes which produce it, and the manner in which it is acquired, the Indians as may well be supposed, have not a very definite idea. All they can say is that the sorcerer makes use of a “deadening substance,” which he discharges and conveys to the person that he means to “strike,” through the air, by means of the wind or of his own breath, or throws at him in a manner which they can neither understand nor describe. The person thus “stricken,” is immediately seized with an unaccountable terror, his spirits sink, his appetite fails, he is disturbed in his sleep, he pines and wastes away, or a fit of sickness seizes him, and he dies at last a miserable victim to the workings of his own imagination.
Such are their ideas and the melancholy effects of the dread they feel of that supernatural power which they vainly fancy to exist among them. That they can destroy one another by means of poisonous roots and plants, is certainly true, but in this there is no witchcraft. This prejudice that they labour under can be ascribed to no other cause than their excessive ignorance and credulity. I was once acquainted with a white man, a shrewd and correct observer, who had lived long among the Indians, and being himself related to an Indian family, had the best opportunities of obtaining accurate information on this subject. He told me that he had found the means of getting into the confidence of one of their most noted sorcerers, who had frankly confessed to him, that his secret consisted in exciting fear and suspicion, and creating in the multitude a strong belief in his magical powers, “For,” said he, “such is the credulity of many, that if I only pick a little wool from my blanket, and roll it between my fingers into a small round ball, not larger than a bean, I am by that alone believed to be deeply skilled in the magic art, and it is immediately supposed that I am preparing the deadly substance with which I mean to strike some person or other, although I hardly know myself at the time what my fingers are doing; and if, at that moment, I happen to cast my eyes on a particular man, or even throw a side glance at him, it is enough to make him consider himself as the intended victim; he is from that instant effectually struck, and if he is not possessed of great fortitude, so as to be able to repel the thought, and divert his mind from it, or to persuade himself that it is nothing but the work of a disturbed imagination, he will sink under the terror thus created, and at last perish a victim, not indeed, to witchcraft, but to his own credulity and folly.”
But men of such strong minds are not often to be found; so deeply rooted is the belief of the Indians in those fancied supernatural powers. It is vain to endeavour to convince them by argument that they are entirely founded in delusion and have no real existence. The attempt has been frequently made by sensible white men, but always without success. The following anecdote will shew how little hope there is of ever bringing them to a more rational way of thinking.
Sometime about the year 1776, a Quaker trader of the name of John Anderson, who among the Indians was called the honest Quaker trader, after vainly endeavouring to convince those people by argument that there was no such thing as witchcraft, took the bold, and I might say the rash, solution to put their sorcerers to the test, and defy the utmost exertions of their pretended supernatural powers. He desired that two of those magicians might be brought successively before him on different days, who should be at liberty to try their art on his person, and do him all the harm that they could by magical means, in the presence of the chiefs and principal men of the village. The Indians tried at first to dissuade him from so dangerous an experiment; but he persisted, and at last they acceded to his demand; a conjurer was brought to him, who professed himself fully competent to the task for which he was called, but he could not be persuaded to make the attempt. He declared that Anderson was so good and so honest a man, so much his friend and the friend of all the Indians, that he could not think of doing him an injury. He never practised his art but on bad men and on those who had injured him; the great Mannitto forbid that he should use it for such a wicked purpose as that for which he was now called upon.
The Indians found this excuse perfectly good, and retired more convinced than ever of the abilities of their conjurer, whom they now revered for his conscientious scruples.