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a tongue and received the power of healing.” The relatives sent for the
best medicine-man in the neighbourhood, who, in co-operation with the
dreamer, sang over the patient, laid his charm upon him, and effected a
cure.

The most powerful medicine came from a rare bird, named mis’kaiya,
a fish-eater, pure white, about the size of a duck. The youth who caught
it and burned its tongue became one of the greatest medicine-men in the
community. Next to this bird ranked medicine from the caribou, because
the caribou, being a swift runner, effects the speediest cure. Below caribou
ranked mountain sheep, and below that again grizzly bear and other
animals.

Women underwent a different training in girlhood and could not qualify
as professional healers. They could, however, become dreamers, A father
might make his daughter a dreamer as he made his son a medicine-man,
by sleeping under the same blanket with her, and inducing the same dream
and song. When a girl was about two years old the mother sometimes
inserted in her ears the two sharp bones that lie under the tongue of the
raven. Gradually the skin grew over them, the girl became keen of hear-
ing, and as she grew to womanhood was very susceptible to dreams. In
her dreams she could understand the raven that visited and spoke to-her.
She could even foretell what would happen in the near future, the death
of a neighbour, or the number of caribou he would kill on his next hunt.

A violent form of hysteria, which’ sometimes developed into total
dementia, was very common among the Sekani and surrounding tribes.
The Indians of Fort McLeod attributed it to the breaking of a food taboo,
especially a taboo imposed when receiving medicine power. But the Sekani
of Fort Grahame, the Long Grass band, and some of the Carrier tribes,
attributed it to the land-otter. The simpler and probably older form of
the belief was found at Fort Grahame. The natives of that place asserted
that the otter assumed the form of a youth or maiden and seduced its
victim, who forthwith became insane. One method of cure was to lash
the man to a tree near the edge of a lake and await the otter’s appearance.
The animal approached at the insane man’s call, and was shot by hunters
concealed in the bushes. Its victim recovered his senses after drinking
some fluid from its body. No cautious man or woman was ever deceived
by the otter, for its teeth always remained those of an animal when the
rest of its form became human, and it hid its mouth when it smiled.

A recent case of otter-sickness, or hysteria, was treated at Fort
Grahame, the natives say, by a Kaska medicine-man from McDame, on
Dease river. Beating a drum, he danced and sang over his patient, and
extracted from the young man’s chest the otter spirit that provoked the
malady. The youth was cured, but the medicine-man warned him to avoid
otters thereafter. Four years later the youth met another otter and died.

The T’lotona or Long Grass Indians, under the influence of the Gitk-
san, reinterpreted the otter belief so that it explained not only hysteria,

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