He Says It Was A Perfectly Good Charm When He Sold It You
And He Never Had Any Complaints Before,
But he will investigate the
affair; when he has done so, he either says the spirit has been
lured away
From the home he prepared for it by incantations and
presents from other people, or that he finds the spirit is dead; it
has been killed by a more powerful spirit of its class, which is in
the pay of some enemy of yours. In all cases the little thing you
kept the spirit in is no use now, and only fit to sell to a white
man as "a big curio!" and the sooner you let him have sufficient
money to procure you a fresh and still more powerful spirit -
necessarily more expensive - the safer it will be for you,
particularly as your misfortunes distinctly point to some one being
desirous of your death. You of course grumble, but seeing the thing
in his light you pay up, and the medicine man goes busily to work
with incantations, dances, looking into mirrors or basins of still
water, and concoctions of messes to make you a new protecting charm.
Human eye-balls, particularly of white men, I have already said are
a great charm. Dr. Nassau says he has known graves rifled for them.
This, I fancy, is to secure the "man that lives in your eyes" for
the service of the village, and naturally the white man, being
regarded as a superior being, would be of high value if enlisted
into its service.
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