wives. Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in America.[1] Hearne[2] found that the Indians believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man.
Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their abodes.
When we begin to examine the gods of mythology, savage or civilised, We shall find that, with the general, though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark, or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. There are examples in which the name of a god, Brewin, in Australia, has been conferred on a successful medicine-man, while[3] the names of distinguished warriors and sorcerers have been transferred to gods. Among the Greeks Zeus enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Paul le Jeune, the old Jesuit missionary, observed,[4] the medicine-
- ↑ Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington, 1880–81.
- ↑ A Journey, &c., p. 342.
- ↑ Moffat, Missionary Labours, p. 258; Appleyard's Kaffir Grammar, p. 13.
- ↑ Relations (1636), p. 114.
