Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1883 — Indian Conjurers. [ARTICLE]

Indian Conjurers.

The performances by the Davenport brothers and other spiritualists are clumsy compared"with the arts of the far Northwest Indians. The conjurers are legion that will permit themselves to be bound, not merely hand and foot, but the whole body swathed with thongs, withes, ropes and rawhides, and afterward tied up in a net, and then release themselves almost instantly on being placed in a little “medicine lodge” of skins constructed for the purpose, the bonds being thrown out through an opening in the top, without a knot apparently disturbed. Dr. Archie Stockwell writes that he saw- a medicine man go through with a long series of incantations, drummings, rattlings of gourds, etc., for “the relief of a consumptive, lying in the centre of an ordinary lodge. Suddenly he announced that he had discovered the spirit that affiieted the sufferer, and thereupon, plunging his hands beneath the single blanket with which she was covered, drew forth the carcass of a full-grown wolf, and flung it with great violence against the door, greatly lo the delight, mystification and satisfaction of the beholders. He now assured the friends of the speedy recovery of the sqqaw, but she died the same night, nevertheSilk - hand-purses with monograms are much worn—empty.