t accompanying
them with mysterious ceremonies, to make their effect supernatural. He
therefore prepares his roots and herbs with the most singular
ceremonies, and, in mixing them up, invokes the aid of the Great Spirit.
He also accompanies his directions with various gesticulations and
enigmatical expressions. The ceremonies he uses are various. Sometimes
he creeps into the oven where he sweats, howls, and roars, and now and
then grins horribly at his patient. Altogether I cannot conceive of a
more irrational manner of performing Esculapian duties, than that
adopted by the "faculty" of the Western Wilderness.

(3) _Rum_.

That the Indians were made drunk by Hendrick Hudson, at his first
interview with them, seems well settled. A tradition also prevails among
the Iroquois, that a scene of intoxication occurred with a party of the
natives on the arrival of the first ship in their waters.

The same tradition prevailed among the tribe named in the tale. See also
the tradition of The Coming of Miquon in the second volume.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BISON.

The men of my nation, the Minnitarees, believed that the bones of the
bison, which they had slain and divested of their flesh, rose again,
clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and became fat and
fit for slaughter in the succeeding hot month. To us it appeared
incomprehensible that thousands should be slaughtered every year by the
many tribes of red men that roam over the country of the bisons, yet
that they should increase yearly. When we asked our priests about this,
they replied that they did not die, but rose again from the plains and
the _prairies_, the same in flesh and form as when they were slaughtered
and stripped by us. For a long time, very few of us believed the words
of the priests, they had lied to us so often.

Once upon a time a party of the people of our nation, who were out upon
a hunting-excursion, lost one of their number, a boy, and returned to
the village lamenting his loss. Believing him to have been killed or
taken prisoner by the cruel Sioux, with whom they were then at war, and
who had been seen prowling about their village they assembled a
war-party, and set out to avenge his death. They had marched a weary
way, and were just entering the country of the Sioux, when they espied a
herd of bisons, one of which they succeeded in killing. Guess their
astonishment, when, on opening the belly of the animal, they found the