any one of these or other natural causes or productions, his imagination
will work, until it becomes wholly engrossed by it.

Thus fire and water, the sun or the moon, a star, a buffalo, or a
snake--any one of them, will become the subject of his thoughts, and
when he sleeps, he naturally dreams of that object which he has been
brooding over.

He then returns home, engraves upon a stone, a piece of wood, or a skin,
the form of this "spirit" which his dream has selected for him, wears it
constantly on his person, and addresses it, not as a god, but as an
intercessor, through which his vows must pass before they can reach the
fearful Lord of all things.

Some men among the Indians acquire, by their virtues and the regularity
of their lives, the privilege of addressing the Creator without any
intervention, and are admitted into the band, headed by the masters of
ceremonies and the presidents of the sacred lodges, who receive
neophytes and confer dignities. Their rites are secret; none but a
member can be admitted. These divines, as of old the priest of Isis and
Osiris, are deeply learned; and truly their knowledge of natural history
is astonishing. They are well acquainted with astronomy and botany, and
keep the records and great transactions of the tribes, employing certain
hieroglyphics, which they paint in the sacred lodges, and which none but
their caste or order can decipher.

Those few who, in their journey in the wilderness, have "dreamt" of a
snake and made it their "spirit," become invariably "Medecines." This
reptile, though always harmless in the western countries (except in some
parts of the mountains on the Columbia, where the rattlesnake abounds),