I saw this. The _m'teoulin_ asked them not to abuse the
deaf and dumb Indian. They turned on the _m'teoulin_. Then he
screamed so horribly, so awfully, and looked so like a devil that the
men were frightened. They fell on their knees, and could not move. They
let the man go."
This is precisely what is narrated by many writers of the Shaman
screaming and distorting of the features. Very few people know of what
the human, voice is capable. It can not only be trained to divine song,
but to such demoniacal howling as to deafen and appall even the
guardians of a lunatic asylum. In Lapland, Central Asia, or on Nootka
Sound the initiated are trained in remote solitudes to these
utterances, to which no one can listen without terror. My informant
continued:--
"Two or three weeks after I was in another place. We spoke of the
_m'teoulin_. The white folks ridiculed them. I said there was one
in Fredericton, and I said I would bet ten dollars that he would get
the better of them. And they bet that no Indian could do more than they
could. So the _m'teoulin_ came. And first of all he screamed so
that no one could move. It was dreadful. Then he took seven steps
through the ground up to his ankles, _just as if it had been light
snow_. When I asked for the ten dollars, the white men paid. I gave
it to the _m'teoulin_."
Among the Greenland Eskimo the sorcerer, writes Rink, "after meeting
with _tomassuk_, or guardian spirits, sometimes manifests it by
his feet sinking into the rocky ground _just as if in snow_.
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