beings, also, appear for the most part in the shape of animals.
Sometimes, however, they assume human proportions; but more frequently
they take the form of stones, which, being broken, are found full of
living blood and flesh.

Each primitive Indian has his guardian manitou, to whom he looks for
counsel, guidance, and protection. These spiritual allies are gained by
the following process. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, the Indian boy
blackens his face, retires to some solitary place, and remains for days
without food. Superstitious expectancy and the exhaustion of abstinence
rarely fail of their results. His sleep is haunted by visions, and the
form which first or most often appears is that of his guardian manitou,--
a beast, a bird, a fish, a serpent, or some other object, animate or
inanimate. An eagle or a bear is the vision of a destined warrior; a
wolf, of a successful hunter; while a serpent foreshadows the future
medicine-man, or, according to others, portends disaster. [ 1 ] The
young Indian thenceforth wears about his person the object revealed in
his dream, or some portion of it,--as a bone, a feather, a snake-skin,
or a tuft of hair. This, in the modern language of the forest and
prairie, is known as his "medicine." The Indian yields to it a sort of
worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco, thanks it in
prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster. [ 2 ] If his medicine fails to
bring the desired success, he will sometimes discard it and adopt
another. The superstition now becomes mere fetich-worship, since the
Indian regards the mysterious object which he carries about him rather as
an embodiment than as a representative of a supernatural power.

[ 1 Compare Cass, in North-American Review, Second Series, XIII. 100.
A turkey-buzzard, according to him, is the vision of a medicine-man.
I once knew an old Dahcotah chief, who was greatly respected, but had