I began by
throwing stones in the air, pretending to swallow them and causing them
to disappear otherwise, but finding them again in the heel of my boot
or hidden beneath any object which happened to be near. When the
Indians saw what I was doing, they gathered in a circle. I ate some
fire, and took a small toad out of a woman's ear. Dios! How they
gaped. They had never seen the like. All the tribe was summoned to
watch me."
Then the poor fellow began to cry.
"Holy Mother! Think of me playing the fool before those brutes! I
became their medicine man. I fought and killed my only rival, and,
since then, I have doctored a few of the chief men among them, so they
took me into the tribe, and always managed to procure me such food as I
could eat. They gave me roots and dried meat when they themselves were
living on putrid blubber, or worse, because they kill all the old women
as soon as famine threatens. The women are devoured long before the
dogs; dogs catch otters, but old women cannot. In winter, when a long
storm renders it impossible to obtain shell-fish, any woman who is
feeble will steal off and hide in the mountains.
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