For thousands of years ago it was known to the sorcerers of
ancient India, Babylon, and Egypt, as well as of Greece and Rome,
and at this day it is still resorted to by cunning and malignant
savages in Australia, Africa, and Scotland. Thus the North American
Indians, we are told, believe that by drawing the figure of a person
in sand, ashes, or clay, or by considering any object as his body,
and then pricking it with a sharp stick or doing it any other
injury, they inflict a corresponding injury on the person
represented. For example, when an Ojebway Indian desires to work
evil on any one, he makes a little wooden image of his enemy and
runs a needle into its head or heart, or he shoots an arrow into it,
believing that wherever the needle pierces or the arrow strikes the
image, his foe will the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in
the corresponding part of his body; but if he intends to kill the
person outright, he burns or buries the puppet, uttering certain
magic words as he does so. The Peruvian Indians moulded images of
fat mixed with grain to imitate the persons whom they disliked or
feared, and then burned the effigy on the road where the intended
victim was to pass.
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