Ethnic Studies 110
Ross Frank

Excerpt from letter written in 1710 by Antoine Denis Raudot, a Canadian official, to the Jesuits:

Then they make known to the public, by a harangue, that they will dance the medecine (sic) in the hut of such and such a person and that the jugglers will show the amazing effects of their knowledge and powers. Long before the time and to the sound of the drums and with invocations to demons, they prepare the remedies or magic arts of which they avail themselves.

Then, on the appointed night, they get ready their paraphernalia, consisting of a number of small bags or packets made of bark, in which there are powders and the bones of animals, and in the skin of an otter, which they cause to move or jump in accordance with the movements of their bodies and their chichigoues [gourd rattles].

When all the people are assembled, one of the jugglers begins a speech in their praise, boasting of their knowledge and their power over the life and death of men. The others applaud him; and to begin to prove what he had said they cast some of their powder on the persons who are devoted to their interests, who immediately fall and are plagued like men possessed, foaming at the mouth and uttering terrible cries. The jugglers, for their part, augment their own cries and cast some more powder on them and the dying man becomes dead. They carry him, they turn him over, but he seems unconscious and motionless.

Then it is that the jugglers, triumphing in the surprise that they see on the faces of everybody, shout that this is nothing; that life and death lie in their hands; that although they have taken his life, they are about to give it back to him with their remedies. During this time, a dead silence is observed by all, and they watch intently.

To effect this, they blow upon him with another medicine, and, invoking their Manito, they call upon the dead man, who is only dead because he is willing to be, and who, to finish the performance, gradually revives as well as he was before all this trickery. He raises himself and then sits down and tells the assembly tales and fables about the other world, which he says he has seen.