So the shaman practiced sorcery, medicine and was a priest. Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 594:—The Indian doctor relied far more on magic than on natural remedies. Dreams, beating of the drum, songs, magic feasts and dances, and howling were his ordinary methods of cure. Grinnell, Story of the indian, p. 210 fol.:—They have “firm confidence in dreams.” “Their belief in a future life is in part founded on dreams,” etc.
(8) Finally dreams[68] and exaggerated reports gave rise to fabulous stories.[69]
[69] An example of fabulous invention for pure personal gain occurs Andree, p. 77: If the Greenlanders catch too many seal at one place, the latter will take a terrible revenge. Assuming human form, they attack their enemy in the _night_ at his home. This is the transformation of an animal into a man, but the inventor of the story was no doubt looking towards his own gain. It is the same old fight for seal protection which in another form is still going on to-day. Andree, p. 72. In Siam stories are told of people who by magic formulae become tigers and roam about at _night_ in search of booty. One of the man-tigers was actually a priest.
We have discussed (1), (2), and (3);[70] for an example under (4) we have cited the practices of American Indians.[71] It is probable that about now (at the stage indicated in (4) above), what is known as the real werewolf superstition (that of a frenzied, rabid manwolf) began to fully develop. The man in wolf-skin was already a lurking thief or enemy, or a destroyer of human life. To advance from this stage to the werewolf frenzy, our primitive man must have seen about him some exhibition of such a frenzy, and some reason for connecting this frenzy particularly with, say the wolf. He did see insane persons, and the connecting link would be the crazy or mad wolf (or dog, as the transformation was usually into a wolf or dog,[72]) for persons bitten by it usually went mad too.[73] The ensuing frenzy, with the consternation it occasioned, soon appealed to certain primitive minds as a good means of terrorizing others. Of these mad ones some no doubt actually had the malady; others honestly believed they had it and got into a frenzy accordingly; others purposely worked themselves up into a frenzy in order to impose on the uninitiated.[74] Later, in the Middle Ages, when the nature of the real disease came to be better understood, the werewolf superstition had become too firmly fixed to be easily uprooted.