When the covering was pulled aside, the Jĕs´sakkīd´ sat within the lodge, contentedly smoking his pipe, with no other object in sight than the black stone mánidō. Beaulieu paid his wager of $100.
An exhibition of similar pretended powers, also for a wager, was announced a short time after, at Yellow Medicine, Minnesota, to be given in the presence of a number of Army people, but at the threat of the Grand Medicine Man of the Leech Lake bands, who probably objected to interference with his lucrative monopoly, the event did not take place and bets were declared off.
Col. Mallery obtained further information, of a similar kind from various persons on the Bad River Reservation, and at Bayfield, Wisconsin. All of these he considered to be mere variants of a class of performances which were reported by the colonists of New England and the first French missionaries in Canada as early as 1613, where the general designation of “The Sorcerers” was applied to the whole body of Indians on the Ottawa River. These reports, it must be
remembered, however, applied only to the numerous tribes of the Algonkian linguistic family among which the alleged practices existed; though neighboring tribes of other linguistic groups were no doubt familiar with them, just as the Winnebago, Omaha, and other allied tribes, profess to have “Medicine Societies,” the secrets of which they claim to have obtained from tribes located east of their own habitat, that practiced the peculiar ceremony of “shooting small shells” (i.e., the mī´gis of the Ojibwa) into the candidate.
In [Pl. XVIII] is shown a Jĕs´sakkīd´ extracting sickness by sucking through bone tubes.
Plate XVIII. Jĕs´akkīd´ Removing Disease.
[ DZHIBAI´ MIDĒ´WIGÂN, OR “GHOST LODGE.”]
A structure erected by Indians for any purpose whatever, is now generally designated a lodge, in which sense the term is applied in connection with the word dzhibai´—ghost, or more appropriately shadow—in the above caption. This lodge is constructed in a form similar to that of the Midē´wigân, but its greatest diameter extends north and south instead of east and west. Further reference will be made to this in describing another method of conferring the initiation of the first degree of the Midē´wiwin. This distinction is attained by first becoming a member of the so-called “Ghost Society,” in the manner and for the reason following: