was engaged in making a rude press for baling furs,
and had got a heavy lever in position. A large party of Crow Indians who
were near at hand, considering his press a marvel of mechanical
ingenuity, were very inquisitive as to its uses. Meldram, with an
assumption of severity, told them the machine was "snow medicine," and
that it would make snow to fall until it reached the end of a cord that
dangled from the lever and reached within a yard of the ground. The fame
of so potent a medicine spread rapidly through the Crow nation. The
machine was visited by hundreds, and the fall of snow anxiously looked
for by the entire tribe. To the awe of every Indian, and the
astonishment of the few trappers then at the mouth of the Yellowstone,
the snow actually reached the end of the rope, and did not during the
winter attain any greater depth. Meldram found greatness thrust upon
him. He has lived for more than forty years among the Crows, and when I
knew him was much consulted as a medicine-man. His chief charms, or
amulets, were a large bull's-eye silver watch, and a copy of "Ayer's
Family Almanac," in which was displayed the human body encircled by the
signs of the zodiac.

The position and ease attendant upon a reputation for medicine power
cause many unsuccessful pretenders to embrace the profession; and it
would seem strange that their failures should not have brought medicine
into disrepute. In looking closely into this, a well-marked distinction
will always be found between _medicine_ and the _medicine-man_,--quite
as broad as is made with us between religion and the preacher. I have
seen would-be medicine-men laughed at through the camp,--men of
reputation as warriors, and respected in council, but whose _forte_ was
not the reading of dreams or the prediction of events. On the other
hand, I have seen persons of inferior intellect, without courage on the
war-path or wisdom in the council, revered as the channels through
which, in some unexplained manner, the Great Spirit warned or advised
his creatures.

Of course it is no purpose of this paper to uphold or attack these
peculiar ideas. A meagre presentation of a few facts not generally known
is all that is aimed at. Whether the system of Indian medicine be a
variety of Mesmerism, Magnetism, Spiritualism, or what not, others may
inquire and determine. One bred a Calvinist, as was the writer, may be
supposed to have viewed with suspicion the exhibitions of medicine power
t