Note 85 — THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS.
Margaret R. Thomson translation
[Note 85] p. 444.—Shamans.
Some interesting details as to these in Hofgaard’s Nordenskïold’s Voyage. He speaks of the preparatory asceticism: “solitude, watching, fasting, exciting and narcotic remedies work upon his imagination; he soon sees the spirits and the apparitions he heard about in his youth, and believes firmly in them”.... “He is no cool, calculating deceiver, no common conjuror.” “Sometimes they have been thrashed in order that they might change a particular prophecy, but Wrangel relates a case in 1814, when their orders to kill a beloved chief, in order to stay a plague, were at length obeyed. Though Christianity has been introduced for more than a century, the Shamans have still (1882) much power.”
A scholarly account of the Shamans, which includes much interesting material in regard to the customs which Brehm describes in this chapter, will be found in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv., August and September, 1894. “Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia”, being the second part of “Shamantsvo,” by Professor V. M. Mikhailovskii, translated by O. Wardrop.