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I Five young women belonging' to a family who had gone up the Laird river to trap were murdered by Indians, and, strange to say. the inquiry into the ease which was instituted by the authorities wan allowed to drop when it appeared that the young women had been done away with bc-cause a jealous Indian woman- had proclaimed them to be witches.As a matter of fact, some of the distant Indian agents appear afraid of taking any judicial action to prevent or punish crime in their respective districts, whenever such action would constitute an interference with the absurd belief and superstitions of the Indians. A recent result of this policy lias been the simple imprisonment of one Indian murderer for two month' and the acquittal of another, because of j the inexorable law of the Wood Treesthe Instant killing of so-called weh-tikos.The story of tin* killing is an interesting example of one of the deep-rooted beliefs and superstitions of these unfortunate people, and better than a whole volume, shows tip the devil worship and sorcery of the Trees. .Napnysoosis, one of the accused, tells the following story of the crime:“Last winter a band of us, thirty-two in number, counting women and children, were living at the Bald hills, some seventy-five miles west of Lesser Slave lake. We lived in two shacks and two tepees. Entomlnahoo, our chief, along with Kunuksoos and myself and our families Jived in one shack, Moostoos and his family with some others lived iri the other shack, and the other Indinrvs in the two tepees. We were all on the best of terms with one another, and Moostoos was especially well liked by all of us.“Some months before be was killed, Moostoos told several of us that ho wasrifrnM —*« ‘ •little after lie got tin* first blow, but he had stopped breathing before I struck him.“All that night we sat around the body till daylight by the light of the lin'. AVe expected him to rise from the d«ad and we wanted to kill him again if he tried to get tip.Being asked what he thought was the matter with Moostoos. Napaysoosis replied: “He was a Wchtiko and I know he had a lump of ice in his body causing the malady. Why, we made strong tea and poured it boiling hot into the axe-hole in the breast to thaw that ice, but first l’ayno and 1 drove a stake into that hold and through tin* body into the ground: then we pulled out the stake and poured in the hot tea.“After that, toward morning, Entom-inahoo’s wife and I tied Ills legs with chains to two pickets driven into the ground, so that if he came to life again he could not get up and run after us. And last of all, next day, 1 cut off his head with an axe, to make sure that he was dead and in order that, even it! he got up. he could not eat us. Then we left him in the shack, tied up the door and left the place.” jBeing requested to say what he meant by a Wehtiko, the prisoner explained that it was a person, man or woman, into whose body enters a most malignant evil spirit which incites him i or her to kill and eat his or her fellow ! men or women. A Wehtiko is possessed of superhuman strength and cunning, and the only thing that saves the Jndi- ! ars ia that it generally warns them j beforehand of its coming state. He added that it has always been the Indi- i an custom tlt; kill these people, that being their only means of protecting I themselves from their violence.—Chicago Record.rpTT IT* CJ * tr * t-.
Newspaper Details
New Haven Daily Morning Journal and Courier
New Haven, Connecticut, US
Mon, Oct 16, 1899
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 31 Jan 2020
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