Note 2 — Chapter IX
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The Indians were much given to various forms of divination by which they believed that they ascertained the will of the unseen powers.
Jonathan Carver, who traveled much among the western tribes, about 1766, relates that once when he was with a band of Christinos, or Crees, on the north shore of Lake Superior, anxiously awaiting the coming of certain traders with goods, the chief told him that the medicine-man, or conjurer, or "clairvoyant" as we should say, would try to get some information from the Manitou. Elaborate preparations were made. In a spacious tent, brightly lighted with torches of pitch-pine, the conjurer, wrapped in a large elk-skin, and corded with about forty yards of elk-hide lariat—"bound up like an Egyptian mummy"—was laid down in the midst of the assembly, in full view of all.
Presently he began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of several native tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had worked himself into a frenzy and foamed at the mouth.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, shaking off his bands "as if they were burnt asunder," and announced that the Manitou had revealed to him that, just at noon on the next day, there would arrive a canoe the occupants of which would bring news as to the expected traders.
On the next day Carver and his Indian friends were on the bluff watching. At the appointed hour a canoe (undoubtedly sent by the conjurer) came into view and was hailed by the Indians with shouts of delight. It brought tidings of the early coming of the traders.