356 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
The
various adjuncts of the sorcerer's trade are carefully preserved by
the Midê or Jessakid in his medicine bag. A good specimen of this was
made out of the skin of a mink, Putorius vison, G-app., and adorned at one end with two fluffy white feathers.10
Often a flat, black, water-worn pebble will be one of the great
treasures in this sack. The virtues of a stone of this type are said to
have been put to a curious test on the person of a Jessakid at Leech
Lake, Minn., in 1858. The man offered to wager $100 that if he were
securely tied up, hand and foot, with stout rope, but having his stone
resting on his thigh, he could remove the bonds without assistance. The
wager was taken up and the test duly applied; the Jessakid being left
alone in his tent tightly and firmly bound. Before long he called out
to those on the watch outside the tent that search should be made for
the rope at a certain spot nearby. This was done and the rope was found
with the knots undisturbed, while the Jessakid was to be seen calmly
seated on the ground, smoking a pipe and still bearing his magic black
stone on his thigh.11
French
missionaries of the early part of the eighteenth century reported that
the Indian wizards of some of the northwestern tribes would take a
pebble the size of a pigeon's egg, and mutter over it certain
conjurations. This, they assert, caused the formation of a like stone
within the body of the person who was to be bewitched.12 The
medicine-men of certain Canadian tribes of this time were not content
with muttered conjurations in treating their patients, but would not
infrequently resort to the charm supposed to be exerted
"* Loc. cit., PI. XI, fig. 7, opp. 220.
11W. J. Hoffman, " The Midêwiwin, or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibway "; 7th Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885-86, Washington, 1891, p. 277.
a L'Abbé
Banier and l'Abbê Maecrier, " Histoire générale des cérémonies, mœurs,
et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde," Paris, 1741, p. 101.
