over."
This is the same story as the preceding; but I give it to show now
differently a tale may be told by neighbors. In one it is the _spretae
injuria formae_, the wrath of rejected love, which inspires the witch
to revenge; in the other it is jealousy. In one she inflicts madness; in
the other she turns him into a cannibal demon, as Loki, when only half
bad, was made utterly so by getting the "thought-stone" or heart of a
witch. This legend was sent to me by Louis Mitchell. It is written not
by him, but by some other Passamaquoddy, in Indian-English.
TALES OF MAGIC.
_M'teoulin, or Indian Magic_.
The study of magic as it is believed in or understood by the Indians of
America is extremely interesting, for it involves that of all
supernaturalism or of all religion whatever. But if we, declining all
question as to the origin of monotheism, limit ourselves definitely to
what is known of Shamanism alone, we shall still have before us an
immense field for investigation. Shamanism is the belief that
_all_ the events and accidents of life are caused or influenced by
spirits, and as fear of suffering is in all men, but particularly the
savage, the strongest moral emotion, the natural consequence is a
greater fear of _evil_ invisible beings. The result of it is a
faith that everything which is obscure or invisible is supposed to be
the work of mysterious agents, generally evil. Thus all disease
whatever, all suffering, pain, loss, or disaster, or bad weather, is at
once attributed either to a spirit or to some enemy who practices
witchcraft. The Shaman is the priest or doctor, who professes to be
able, by his counter-charms, to counteract or neutralize this devil's
work.
It will be long ere the scholar definitely determines whether Shamanism
as it now exists originated spontaneously in different countries where
the same causes were to be found, or whether it is _historical_;
that is, derived from a single source. I believe that while darkness,
hunger, fear, and similar causes could not fail to create a rude
religion anywhere, as Moncure Conway has shown, yet that the derivation
from one beginning, or at least later modifications from it, has been
very great indeed. Investigation indicates that it was in Assyria, at a
very remote age, that Shamanism had, if not its origin, at least its
fullest development. The reader who will consult Lenormant's work on
Chaldean magic will learn from it that the fear of devils and the art
of neutralizing their power were never carried to such an extent
elsewhere as in the Land of Bel. Now as Shamanism has at the present
day its stronghold among the Turanian races of Central Asia, it may
greatly strengthen the theory, somewhat doubted of late, of the early
Accadian predecessors of the Chaldeans and their Turanian origin, if we
can only prove that their magical religion was the same as that of the
Tartars. So far as my reading has aided me, I am inclined to believe
that they are identical. "Magic" went so far among the former that,
while they discovered natural remedies for natural ills, they never
doubted that one was as much the result of sorcery as the other. This
theory spread everywhere.
Shamanism, or a vague fear of invisible evils and the sorcerer, may
indeed have sprung up independently in Tartary, Central Africa,
Finland, and North America. But it is almost incredible that the use of
a drum inscribed with magical figures, the spirit flight of the angakok
or Shaman, and twenty other characteristics of the art should have
become, without transmission, common to all these countries. Shamanism
has probably been at the root of all religions; there was a great deal
of it in all those of the Semitic races, and, admitting this, it is not
difficult to see how from Chaldea and Babylon it may have found its way
into Africa, where black savages, who would have rejected a higher
religion, would grasp greedily at what they sympathized with. The only
real difference between the Voodoo and Pow-wow practices is that the
former is, so to speak, the _blacker_ and more revolting. This is
because a low state of culture has induced the believers in it to
retain more of the coarse witchcraft on which Shamanism was based, or
out of which it grew.
For wherever Shamanism exists, there is to be found, in company with
it, an older sorcery, or witchcraft, which it professes to despise, and
against which it does battle. As the Catholic priest, by Bible
incantations or scriptural magic, exorcises devils and charms cattle or
sore throats, disowning the darker magic of older days, so the Shaman
acts against the real _wizard_. Rink tells us that among the
heathen Eskimo the Shaman is sacred, and witchcraft a deadly crime, but
that the latter is the secret survival of a more ancient religion.
_Voodoo_, whether practiced, as it is to-day, in Philadelphia, New
York, Havana, or Senegambia, deals with alleged devils, poisons,
chicken bones, the ivory root, unnatural orgies,--all, in short, that
can startle and astonish ignorant natures; it is the combination of the
oldest faith with its successor. Far higher forms are those of the
magic of the black _Takowri_ whom one meets divining about the
streets of Cairo, or of the Arab proper, which brings us fairly to the
Cabala and the Jew, Cornelius Agrippa and Eliphas Levi.
It is not difficult to understand how Shamanism with its drums and
darkened rooms, its conjuring of evil-doers and extraction of diseases
in tangible forms, should have spread from Central Asia to the
Laplanders and Eskimo, and thence to the red Indians. Very little
attention has been paid to the intercourse actually existing at the
present day between these races. I have met with a Passamaquoddy Indian
who spoke French well, who had been educated at a mission school, and
who had been among the Eskimo. As regards legends and folk-lore, no one
can read the Eskimo tales and those of this volume and not feel that
the Algonquin is to the man of the icy north what the gypsy is to the
Hindoo. As regards the early religion of both races, it is simply
_identical_, and it is far too peculiar in its many similar
details to have simply sprung up, as many might assume, from the common
likeness in customs of all savages. For there is in both a great deal
of "literary" culture, especially in the Algonquin, and it would be
little less than miraculous that this too should have assimilated by
chance. It does not help the "opposition" to point out that Algonquin
legends, declare that their ancestors came from the west. Even so, they
came from the Pacific coast, where Eskimo Shamanism exists in its most
decided forms. But in any case it cannot be denied that in the red
Indian mythology of New England, and of Canada and New Brunswick, we
have a collection of vigorous, icy, powerful legends, like those of a
strong northern race, while those of the middle continent, or Chippewa,
are far feebler and gentler. Hiawatha-Manobozho is to Glooskap as a
flute to a war trumpet.
It is absurd to laugh at or pity the Indian for believing in his magic.
Living as he does in the woods, becoming familiar with animals, and
learning how much more intelligent and allied to man they are than
civilized man supposes, he believes they have souls, and were perhaps
originally human. Balaam's ass spoke once for every Christian; every
animal spoke once for the Indian. If a child can be put to sleep by
singing to it, why cannot insensibility to pain or a cure be caused by
the same process? He is told that the wafer becomes the body of Christ;
this may confirm his belief that the Indian god Manobozho turned bits
of his own flesh or his wife's into raccoons, for food. If it is
difficult for any educated or cultivated man to conceive how, if any
condition or phase of supernaturalism be admitted, any other can be
denied, how can the Indian be logically blamed for believing anything?
But the greatest cause of all for a faith in magic is one which the
white man talks about without feeling, and which the Indian feels
without talking about it. I mean the poetry of nature, with all its
quaint and beautiful superstitions. To every Algonquin a rotten log by
the road, covered with moss, suggests the wild legend of the log-demon;
the Indian corn and sweet flag in the swamp are the descendants of
beautiful spirits who still live in them; Meeko, the squirrel, has the
power of becoming a giant monster; flowers, beasts, trees, have all
loved and talked and sung, and can even now do so, should the magician
only come to speak the spell. And there are such magicians. Why should
he doubt it? If the squirrel once yielded to such a power in man, it
follows that some man may still have the power, or that he himself may
acquire it. And how much of this feeling of the real poetry of nature
does the white man or woman possess, who pities the poor ignorant
Indian? A few second-hand scraps of Byron and Tupper, Tennyson and
Longfellow, the jingle of a few rhymes and a few similes, and a little
second-hand supernaturalism, more "accepted" than felt, and that
derived from far foreign sources, does not give the white man what the
Indian _feels_. Joe, or Noel, or Sabattis may seem to the American
Philistine to be a ragged, miserable, ignorant Indian; but to the
_scholar_ he is by far the Philistine's superior in that which
life is _best_ worth living for.
The magic of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, like the magician himself,
is called _meteowlin_, _m'deoolin_ or _m'teoulin_. It is
the same effectively as _meda_, which is from the same root. It is
a power, but opinions differ as to how it is acquired. It is certain,
as I was told by an old Passamaquoddy Indian, of Sebayk, near Campobello,
that some children are born _m'teoulin_. They manifest it, even
while babes, by being capricious, eccentric, and malicious. Others
acquire the art as they grow older. From all that I have heard I infer
that _m'teoulin_ takes two forms,--one of witchcraft, the other of
magic. The former is innate, or may be acquired; the latter, for aught
I know, may be sometimes inborn, but is generally acquired by fasting,
abstinence of other kinds, and ceremonies. The two are distinctly
different. Rink found in Greenland and Labrador that the Eskimo, as I
have said, made this difference.
I will now give, word for word, the remarks of certain Indians on this
subject, beginning with those of an intelligent and prosperous old man,
who is certainly enlightened and Christianized very much beyond the
average, of his race. I had asked him if there were any
_m'teoulin_, or magicians, living. He replied:--
"There are. Many at St. John and Sebayk are still _m'teoulin_. I
saw this myself thirty-five years ago at St. John's. There was a deaf
Indian there. The white men were abusing him. They spat on him. By and
by a _m'teoulin_ from St. John's came, a man of thirty-five or
forty. I saw this. The _m'teoulin_ asked them not to abuse the
deaf and dumb Indian. They turned on the _m'teoulin_. Then he
screamed so horribly, so awfully, and looked so like a devil that the
men were frightened. They fell on their knees, and could not move. They
let the man go."
This is precisely what is narrated by many writers of the Shaman
screaming and distorting of the features. Very few people know of what
the human, voice is capable. It can not only be trained to divine song,
but to such demoniacal howling as to deafen and appall even the
guardians of a lunatic asylum. In Lapland, Central Asia, or on Nootka
Sound the initiated are trained in remote solitudes to these
utterances, to which no one can listen without terror. My informant
continued:--
"Two or three weeks after I was in another place. We spoke of the
_m'teoulin_. The white folks ridiculed them. I said there was one
in Fredericton, and I said I would bet ten dollars that he would get
the better of them. And they bet that no Indian could do more than they
could. So the _m'teoulin_ came. And first of all he screamed so
that no one could move. It was dreadful. Then he took seven steps
through the ground up to his ankles, _just as if it had been light
snow_. When I asked for the ten dollars, the white men paid. I gave
it to the _m'teoulin_."
Among the Greenland Eskimo the sorcerer, writes Rink, "after meeting
with _tomassuk_, or guardian spirits, sometimes manifests it by
his feet sinking into the rocky ground _just as if in snow_." He
uses the very words of the Indian who described the same thing to me.
And very recently in Philadelphia, in fact while I was writing the
preceding remarks, a spiritualist named Gordon performed the very same
trick. Having been detected, a full account of the manner of action
appeared in the Press of that city. It was done by a peculiar method of
stooping, and of concealing the stoop behind a skirt. It was a very odd
coincidence that the explanation should thus present itself while I was
seeking it.
This Shaman Eskimo trick was known to the Norsemen. In the Saga of
Thorstein it is said that Ogantun, a noted sorcerer, when stabbed at,
"thrust himself down into the ground, so that only the soles of his
feet could be seen;" and of Kol it was said that "he could pass through
the earth as well as walk upon it."
"Women are sometimes _m'teoulin_. There is one at Psesuk (Bar
Harbor) now, this summer. You have met her. She is ---'s wife.
[Footnote: I am acquainted with all the parties, but for obvious
reasons suppress their names.] If you offend her she can hurt you in
strange ways.
"She is a good doctor. Once she cured a man. When he got well he could
not pay her for the medicine. His name is Louis ---. She asked for her
money; she asked many times; she could not get it. He was going to the
woods, far away, to trap; he said he would pay her when he returned,
but she wanted it then. She said, 'I will never forget this; I will be
revenged.' He went far up the St. John River with his traps; he set
them in the stream for beaver. All that he caught that winter was
sticks, and sometimes an eel. Then at the end of the day he would say
to his man, 'It is of no use.' And then they could hear the witch
laughing behind the bushes, and tittering when he came home. So it went
on long. Then he was sorry, and said, 'I wish I had paid that woman
what I owed her.' And at once they heard a voice from the bushes, or
rocks, say, 'Louis, that will do. It is enough.' And the next day they
caught two beaver, and every day two, and so on, till the season was
over.
"This happened in 1872, in Miramichi Waters."
There does not appear to be any single approved method of acquiring
_m'teoulin_. Some, as I have said, are born to it, but they appear
to be wizards or witches. Others are formally trained from boyhood by
the experienced magicians. Others acquire certain gifts by certain
ceremonies or penances. Of this kind was the power obtained in the
manner narrated in the following story, which I heard from an old
Passamaquoddy:--
"There was once a young man who wished to become a very wise and brave
warrior, like his father. And his father said to him, 'I get all my
luck of every kind from my dreams. You can have such dreams; any man
can, if he will do a certain thing; but that thing is not easy for a
young man like you. You must sleep seven nights with a virgin, and
never touch her.'
"The young man thought this over for a few days, and then asked his
father how it could be arranged or managed.
"'I will tell you,' replied the old man. 'Find a girl; the more
beautiful she is and the more you want her, the stronger the magic will
be. Go to the parents for their daughter as a wife. Cheat them so.
Before you marry get seven bear-skins, and let no man except one know
anything about it. Make him clean them. One skin should be cleaned
every twenty-four hours. Seven days must pass so.'
"The young man was accepted by the parents; he sent the seven bear-skins
to the young woman; they were married; they went to their wigwam. He lay
on the bear-skins; he directed his wife to make another bed and sleep on
it. They lay apart. The bride thought this was strange; she told her
mother of it. The mother said, 'Never mind. By and by it will be all
right.' The wife thought it was all wrong. When seven nights had passed
the bridegroom disappeared. He was not seen in his village for twenty-five
or thirty years. Then he returned to his father. He could divine all
things by dreams. He had but to take the magic bear-skin and sleep on
it, and dream. He could tell where to find good hunting or fishing. He
_foredreamed_ war with the Mohawks. Can any man do this? They say
so, and I have known many who tried it in vain. They could not pass the
trial successfully."
"There are stones in the forest with names on them. They give great
power to dream. I have seen in my dreams the _m'teoulin_ of
ancient times,--the magicians, my father told me, of long ago. I have
seen them diving under the waters from one island to another. I have
seen them dive ten miles.
"When I was, young, J. N., who was a great _m'teoulin_, offered to
teach me the art. I could have become one, but I would not. I did not
think it was right.
"Once old J. N. and my grandfather hunted in the woods. It was near
Katahdin, the Great Mountain. [Footnote: Katahdin, like the Intervale
near North Conway, is haunted and enchanted ground, abounding in
fairies and other marvelous beings. But there is not a mile square of
New England which has not its legends.] And they wanted everything.
They had got out of everything. One night old N. said, 'I can bear this
no longer. Would you like a nice pipe of tobacco? We have had nothing
but meat for four weeks.' So he went away for a short time; perhaps it
was an hour. He returned with a box. There was in it three pounds of
tobacco; there was cheese, rice, and sugar; there was fifty pounds of
provision in all."
This famous _m'teoulin_ was long a popular governor of the
Passamaquoddies. I have a curious old brass candlestick, said to be one
hundred and fifty years old, which he owned all his life. The following
remarkable reminiscences of this very clever old sagamore were given to
me by Marie Sakis, a Penobscot:
"The old governor was a great _m'teoulin_. He had got it among the
Chippewas. He said that it would come to pass that he would die before
the next snow-storm. No, he did not care himself, but my husband's
mother did, when she heard this, and she cried. Then he said, 'Well, I
will try to live, or else die in a month; but it will be a hard fight.'
So he made him a bow, and strung it with his wife's hair; [Footnote: In
a Chippewa legend a boy confers magic power on a bow by stringing it
with his sister's hair.] and having done this, he shot an arrow through
the smoke-hole of his wigwam. [Footnote: This is also mentioned in a
legend where it is said that every arrow killed a supernatural enemy.]
All this was at Nessaik, near Eastport. Then he said to his wife, 'Take
one of your leggins and put it on my head.' She did so. Then he took
medicine. A rainbow appeared in the sky, and a great horse-fly came out
of his mouth, and then a large grasshopper. He cried to his wife, 'Do
not kill it!' And then came a stone spear-head. [Footnote: This is all
in detail perfectly Shamanic. The smell of the fresh fish after such a
fight is the same in an Eskimo legend. The horse-fly (_gan_) is
Lapp.]
'Now,' said the governor, 'this is all right so far, but the great
struggle is yet to come. It is a _wee-wilmekq'_ who has done
this.' (You know what that is: the Passamaquoddies call it
_weewilmekq'_. It is a worm an inch long, which can make itself
into a horrid monster as large as a deer; yes, and much larger. It is
_m'teoulin_; yes, it is a great magician.) 'I am going to fight
it. You must come with a small stick to hit it once, and only a mere
tap.' [Footnote: In the legend of Partridge, a mere tap stuns the
water-fairy.] But she would not go. So he went and fought with the
Weewillmekq'. He killed it. It was a frightful battle. When he returned
he smelt like fresh fish. His wife bade him go and wash himself; but
let him bathe as much as he could, the smell remained for days. The
pond where he fought has been muddy, and foul ever since.
The governor could with a gimlet bore a hole in any tree in the woods,
and draw from it as he pleased; any kind of wine or other liquor. Once
he was far in the forest with some white gentlemen; he wished to
entertain them. He did this, to their astonishment. He produced tobacco
in a miraculous manner when it was wanted. Then, returning to Eastport,
he went to Mr. Pearce, who kept a store, and showed him that a certain
amount of wine had disappeared from his barrels, and paid him for it.
He never drank wine or spirits himself.
He once went hunting. He took his wife with him; she was
_enceinte_. It was in midwinter. She had a great yearning for
green corn. He put a dish on the ground, and there fell from above ears
of fresh-boiled green corn into it. 'There,' said he, 'as I promised,
you have it.'
She had a silver cross and beads. One day she lost it, and grieved
very much. He said, 'Put that wooden dish upside down, near the fire.'
It was done, and when she turned it up the cross was under the dish.
And he said the Ketawks, or Spirits, had brought it."
The following legend, told me by Tomah Josephs, sets forth another
manner by which _m'teoulin_ may be acquired.
"There were two Indian families camped away at some distance from the
main village. In one lived a young man, and every night he would go to
the other wigwams to see some girls. His mother warned him that he
would come to harm, for there was danger abroad, but he never minded
her.
Now, one night at the end of winter, when the ground was bare of snow,
as he was walking along he heard something come after. It had a very
heavy, steady tramp. He stopped, and saw a long figure, white, but
without arms or legs. It looked like a corpse rolled up. He was
horribly frightened, but when it attacked him he grew angry. The
object, though it had no arms, fought madly. It twined round him; it
struck itself against him, and thrashed itself, bending like a fish all
about. And he, too, fought as if he was crazy. He was one of those
whose blood and courage go up, but never down; he could die, but never
give in till dead. Before daylight the Ghost suggested a rest, or
peace; the Indian would not hear of it, but fought on. The Ghost began
to implore mercy, but the youth just then saw in the north _Kival lo
kesso_, the break of day. Then he knew that if he could but endure
the battle a little longer he should indeed get a great victory.
Then the Ghost implored him, saying, 'Let me go, and whatever you may want
you shall get, and good luck all your life.' Yet for all this he would not
yield, for he knew that by conquering he would win all the Spirit had to
give. And as the first sun-ray shone on him he became insensible, and when
he awoke it was as from a sleep. But by his side lay a large, old, decayed
log, covered with moss. He remembered that during the fight he had seemed
once to plunge his fist, by a violent blow, completely into the enemy up
to his elbow, and there was a hole in it corresponding to this wound. He
had torn away the other's scalp-lock, stripping the skin down to the
waist; he found a long, hairy-looking piece of moss ripped from the end
of the log to the middle. And all about lay pieces of moss and locks of
his own hair, testifying to the fury of the fight.
He was terribly bruised and torn, but that he did not heed, for now he
was another man, and a terrible one. His mother said, 'I warned you of
danger:' but he had conquered the danger. He had all the strength of
five strong men, and all the might and magic of the Spirit; yes, the
Spirit itself was now in him. After this he could do anything, and find
game where no one else could. To conquer a ghost gives power."
To conquer the dead, or to fight terrible spirits, to thereby absorb
their power, and finally to keep them in a struggle until the day
shines on them, is both Norse and Celtic, if not, indeed, world-wide.
But the grim spirit of this narrative is Norse; it is that of the hero
wresting from a corpse's hold the sword of victory.
"Farewell, daughter!
Fleet give I thee,
Five men's bane,
If thou it believe."