Horrible instance of Indian Superstition.
--The British Colonist, published in
British Columbia, relates that a Hydah Indian boy, who had been employed as a scullion for several months at a hotel, was recently missed, but after a while was discovered in close confinement in a lodge of the
Stickeen Indians.
He was bound hand and foot, and was reduced to a mere skeleton, for want of food and water.
The boy's version of the affair is, that he was clandestinely seized by a number of the
Stickeen Indians, and taken to the lodge in which he was discovered by the police, where he was shown a sick Hydah, and told that until that man recovered, he would be kept in close confinement, without food; if the man died, he would be killed; if he lived, he would be set at liberty.
The captive was then bound with ropes and gagged, so as to prevent him from calling for assistance, and placed in a corner of the room, where he remained without food or water for nine days.
During this time the Indians occasionally tantalized him by removing the gag, placing food to his lips, and then jerking it away, and by offering him salt and water to drink.
If he sought to sleep, he was tortured till he a woke.
The excuse given for this barbarous treatment was that the boy had bewitched one of their tribe by burying a quantity of herbs near his house, that the
Indian was taken sick, and the only means through which he could ultimately recover, was by treating the boy as they had done.
They also add that he some time ago bewitched a child that afterwards died, and that the whole tribe stood in dread of the spells he was enabled to throw around them by his incarnations.
It was their intention to have burned him on the tenth day, and use his ashes in the preparation of a cordial that should heal the sick man, and the pyre was nearly ready for his reception when the police fortunately discovered his locality.
