Philosophers among the Dene Hareskins in the extreme north of
America recognise four classes of 'Shadow' or magic. Their
categories apply sufficiently closely to all savage sorcery
(excluding sympathetic magic), as far as it has been observed. We
have, among the Hareskins:--

1. Beneficent magic, used for the healing of the sick.

2. Malevolent magic: the black art of witchcraft

3. Conjuring, or the working of merely sportive miracles.

4. Magic for ascertaining the truth about the future or the distant
present--clairvoyance. This is called 'The Young Man Bound and
Bounding,' from the widely-spread habit of tying-up the limbs of the
medium, and from his customary convulsions.

To all of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and
aid of 'spirits' is believed to be necessary, with, perhaps, the
exception of the sportive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to
cure and helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvoyant in
bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. Anthropologists,
taking it for granted that 'spirits' are a mere 'animistic
hypothesis'--their appearances being counterfeited by imposture--
have paid little attention to the practical magic of savages, as far
as it is not merely sympathetic, and based on the doctrine that
'like cures like'.

Thus Mr. Sproat, in his excellent work, Scenes and Studies of Savage