Nine Years a Captive/Chapter 5

The Indians are very often surprised with the appearance of ghosts and demons. Sometimes they are encouraged by the devil, for they go to him for success in hunting, &c. I was once hunting with Indians who were not brought over to the Romish Faith, and after several days they proposed to inquire, according to their custom, what success they should have. They accordingly prepared many hot stones, and laying them in a heap, made a small hut covered with skins and mats; then in a dark night two of the powwows went into this hot house with a large vessel of water, which at times they poared on those hot rocks, which raised a thick steam, so that a third Indian was obliged to stand without, and lift up a mat, to give it vent when they were almost suffocated. There was an old squaw who was kind to captives, and never joined with them in their powwowing, to whom I manifested an earnest desire to see their management. She told me that if they knew of my being there they would kill me, and that when she was a girl she had known young persons to be taken away by a hairy man, and therefore she would not advise me to go, lest the hairy man should carry me away, I told her I was not afraid of the hairy man, nor could he hurt me if she would not discover me to the powwows. At length she promised me she would not, but charged me to be careful of myself. I went within three or four feet of the hot house, for it was very dark, and heard strange noises and yellings, such as I never heard before. At times the Indian who tended without would lift up the mat, and a steam would issue which looked like fire. I lay there two or three hours, but saw none of their hairy men, or demons.^[1] And when I found they had finished their ceremony, I went to the wigwam, and told the squaw what had passed. She was glad I had escaped without hurt, and never discovered what I had done. After some time inquiry was made of the powwows what success we were likely to have in our hunting. They said they had very likely signs of success, but no real ones as at other times. A few days after we moved up the river, and had pretty good luck.

One afternoon as I was in a canoe with one of the powwows the dog barked, and presently a moose passed by within a few rods of us, so that the waves he made by wading rolled our canoe. The Indian shot at him, but the moose took very little notice of it, and went into the woods to the southward. The fellow said. "I will try if I can't fetch you back for all your haste." The evening following, we built our two wigwams on a sandy point on the upper end of an island in the river, north-west of the place where the moose went into the woods; and here the Indian powwowed the greatest part of the night following. In the morning we had a fair track of a moose round our wigwams, though we did not see or taste of it. I am of opinion that the devil was permitted to humor those unhappy wretches sometimes, in some things.^[2]

That it may appear how much they were deluded, or under the influences of Satan, read the two stories which were related and believed by the Indians. The first, of a boy who was carried away by a large bird called a ​Gullona, who buildeth her nest on a high rock or mountain. A boy was hunting with his bow and arrow at the foot of a rocky mountain, when the gulloua came diving through the air, grasped the boy in her talons. and although he was eight or ten years of age, she soared aloft and laid him in her nest, food for her young. The boy lay still on his face, but observed two of the young birds in the nest with him, having much fish and flesh to feed upon. The old one seeing they would not eat the boy, took him up in her claws and returned him to the place from whence she took him. I have passed near the mountain in a canoe, and the Indians have said. "There is the nest of the great bird that carried away the boy." Indeed there seemed to be a great number of sticks put together like a nest on the top of the mountain. At another time they said, "There is the bird, but he is now as a boy to a giant to what he was in former days." The bird which we saw was a large and speckled one, like an eagle, though somewhat larger.^[3]

The other notion is, that a young Indian in his hunting was belated, and losing his way, was on a sudden introduced to a large wigwam full of dried eels, which proved to be a beaver's house, in which he lived till the spring of the year, when he was turned out of the house, and being set upon a beaver's dam, went home and related the affair to his friends at large.