History of medicine in the province of Quebec / by Maude E. Abbott.

  • Maude Abbott
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: History of medicine in the province of Quebec / by Maude E. Abbott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/128 (page 11)
    secret desires. These were commonly their Physicians or Charlatans, who when called to see a person, commonly used no other remedy except that or driving out the occult desire of the soul which was tormenting the patient's body. They said they had this vision from an Oki, a powerful genie dwell¬ ing in them, which had appeared to them in the form of an Eagle or Raven, etc., and they discovered the desires of the sick man by looking into a basin of water, or by acting as though in a fury, or by hiding in a secret place where they saw the images of these. All persons then applied themselves to procuring the things desired by him, sparing neither time nor expense, to obtain what it would have been accounted sacrilege to refuse.” In sharp contrast to the village orgies that so offended the sensibilities of the devoted Jesuit Missionaries in their Huron-Iroquois charge, are the evidences, scattered through the early contemporary records, of “Medicine Societies” which demanded of their members a definite self-dedication, and a preparation and initiative that placed them above the ordinary Juggler on the higher spiritual plane of the Priest or Shahman, as the true Medicine-Man of the tribe. Such Societies are known to have existed among almost all the Algonquin tribes, and there is some evidence of them among the Hurons also (see The Relations, xxx, p. 33), but in the latter case we have little exact information for recent in¬ vestigations are lacking, and details of the Medicine ceremonial of such secret organizations were naturally hidden from the first observers, especially the Fathers, who preached the Faith in heroic opposition to what their missionary fervour characterized as the abhorrent deviltry of the pagan rituals. On the other hand, later studies such as that made by W. J. Hoffman (10) under the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, on the pictographic records and traditions of the Ojibways and Menomini, Algonquin tribes that had migrated Westward and now occupy the U.S. Reservations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, have unearthed a mass of interesting facts regarding the ceremonial usages of these people, who were akin to, if not identical with the Algonquin Indians that inhabited this part of Canada in an earlier age.(11) Among these tribes there appear to have been two sorts of so-called Medicine¬ men ; those who practised their art or magic without any preparation or author¬ ization, merely by virtue of some occult faculty they were thought to possess, or from ambition or avarice; these were rightly called charlatans and were the- “Sorcerers” or “Ju&glers”> and also with them may be included the “Herbalists” a class who made it their business to study the uses and preparation of plant remedies and disposed of this knowledge for payment in kind. The true Medicine¬ men and women on the other hand, (for both sexes were admitted to this office), worked, at least among the Ojibways, under the definite organization of the Grand Medicine Society of the tribe, and only performed their ritual at seasonal times, being actually the priests of the people, whose function it was to mediate between them and the Great Spirit and to officiate at the installation of chiefs and other momentous issues, as well as in the combatting of disease. Their sacred calling was protected from the invasion of unworthy aspirants by exacting from these a prolonged stage of preparation, during which, in return for the payment of large “presents”, the candidate underwent a strenuous pre¬ liminary training (usually extending over years) from a member of the local priesthood, who instructed him in plant and forest lore and the preparation of botanical medicines, the tradition of the origin of the race and of the conferring upon mankind of the grace of medicine by means of a solemn ceremonial revealed in past ages by the Great Rabbit through their sacred animal the Otter, as also the symbolic meaning of the Shahman’s paraphernalia of office and the chanting of Mide songs. The ritual of initiation itself to the four successive degrees of the Midewiwin was a complicated performance involving the preliminary pur¬ ification of the neophyte for several successive days in a small specially erected sweathouse outside the medicine lodge where he passed hours in solitary medi¬ tation, and his subsequent admission to a large Midewigiwam, newly constructed for the occasion, where in the presence of the assembled Mide, the sacred migis-