Page:Myths of the Iroquois.djvu/35

Rh another. By applying this crystal to one bewitched, hairs, straws, leaves, pebbles, &c., could be drawn forth.

Rhuⁿñ-ta-yä: A medicine man who by the use of a small kettle boiled roots or herbs, and by covering the head with a blanket and holding it over the kettle could see the image of an enemy who had bewitched either some one else or himself.

Yä-tyuⁿñ-yûⁿñ: One who performed miraculous feats by drawing out with alder tubes, hairs, pieces of skin, leaves, &c., from people who had been bewitched with these things.

Ră-n'ûⁿ-kwă-terha-yuⁿ-nä-rhi: Superior medicine man.

Us-kuⁿ-rhă-rhih: A carnivorous ghost bodied forth in a skeleton.

U-hnä″-wăk: A departing ghost who will revisit its dead body.

U-t-kuⁿ-tcrhă″-ksⁿñ: An evil spirit, from whom all witches received their power.

U-ht-kûⁿ-sü-rhûⁿ: One who could assume a partly animal shape.

Yä-skûⁿ-nûⁿ-nä: The ghost of a living person.

Yä tcuⁿñ-hu-h-kwă-kwä: An apparition which could emit flames of light.

U-h-t-kûⁿ: A natural-born witch or ghost.

Nä-yûⁿ-h-nă-nyä-rhûⁿñ-nyäⁿ-a: A witch under the influence or power of a superior witch.

Stories abound in which these personages or spirits are introduced.

The belief in Yä-skuⁿñ-nuⁿ-nä or that the spirit of a person could be in one locality and its body exist at the same time in another, explains much of the phenomena of witchcraft, and accounts for the strange confessions oftentimes made by those who were known to have been unjustly accused.

Many customs still existing show that spirits are supposed to continue to experience the wants of humanity after leaving the body. For some time after the death of an adult his accustomed portion of food is often dealt out for the supposed hungry spirit, and on the death of a nursing child two pieces of cloth are saturated with the mother's milk and placed in the hands of the dead child so that its spirit may not return to haunt the bereaved mother.

When a living nursing child is taken out at night the mother takes a pinch of white ashes and rubs it on the face of the child so that the spirits will not trouble it, because they say that a child still continues to hold intercourse with the spirit world whence it so recently came.

A great many years ago boys were instructed to go out and hunt birds and other game for the support of their respective families and to learn from practice how to hunt. A certain boy while out hunting