ugly grimace. Sometimes, by prescription, half the village would throng
into the house where the patient lay, led by old women disguised with the
heads and skins of bears, and beating with sticks on sheets of dry bark.
Here the assembly danced and whooped for hours together, with a din to
which a civilized patient would promptly have succumbed. Sometimes the
doctor wrought himself into a prophetic fury, raving through the length
and breadth of the dwelling, snatching firebrands and flinging them about
him, to the terror of the squaws, with whom, in their combustible
tenements, fire was a constant bugbear.

[ 1 The Hurons believed that the chief cause of disease and death was a
monstrous serpent, that lived under the earth. By touching a tuft of
hair, a feather, or a fragment of bone, with a portion of his flesh or
fat, the sorcerer imparted power to it of entering the body of his victim,
and gradually killing him. It was an important part of the doctor's
function to extract these charms from the vitals of his patient.--
Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 75. ]

Among the Hurons and kindred tribes, disease was frequently ascribed to
some hidden wish ungratified. Hence the patient was overwhelmed with
gifts, in the hope, that, in their multiplicity, the desideratum might be
supplied. Kettles, skins, awls, pipes, wampum, fish-hooks, weapons,
objects of every conceivable variety, were piled before him by a host of
charitable contributors and if, as often happened, a dream, the Indian
oracle, had revealed to the sick man the secret of his cure, his demands
were never refused, however extravagant, idle, nauseous, or abominable.
[ 1 ] Hence it is no matter of wonder that sudden illness and sudden
cures were frequent among the Hurons. The patient reaped profit,
and the doctor both profit and honor.