Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/99

 doctor or priest and healed the sick, but I could not learn anything about his methods. He had a book or books which he read and he showed the Indians pictures of a good country up in the heavens. He told them good people would go to this country after death. Another picture was of a place down below where the wicked would go for punishment after death. This priest must have gained considerable influence over the tribe, for he undertook the punishment of those who did not obey his teachings. He had those who took what did not belong to them severely whipped with hazel sprouts. This was a fatal mistake on the part of the priest or doctor, and eventually led to his death. The Indians feared their own native doctors and sometimes put them to death when they failed to restore some patient to health. It seems that a number of Indians came across the hills to the priest's abode intending to kill him, and did kill him. They left his body filled with arrows and fled back across the hills in the direction from whence they had come. When they had reached the hill top they were overtaken by a storm and sought shelter under a large spruce or fir tree whose drooping boughs protected them from the rain. An immense black cloud was seen to hang directly over the tree, and a great flash of lightning was seen to drop from it onto the tree; there was a crash that made the very earth tremble, and a column of white smoke shot up to the very heavens. Then the cloud and smoke passed away and the sky was clear. But the towering tree was gone. When the frightened people came near they saw the broken and shattered tree and all around were the scorched and blackened bodies of the half score of assassins who had sought shelter under the branches and had been punished for their sin by a bolt of fire from the heavens. We children were frequently at this place where a broken and shattered stump still stood. I finally found the grave of the murdered man, doctor or missionary, he must have been. This lonely grave was in the valley, a sunken place six or seven feet long, overgrown with heavy sod, and at one end a slab of wood probably five feet high.

Lolokes-psis was the name of a native doctor of the Yangolers. This name means literally fire nose (Lolokes, fire and psis, nose). This Indian had a nose almost as red as fire.