Case file · Sacred site
Le Jeune records the shaking tent
Wintering with Innu (Montagnais) families south of the St. Lawrence in 1633-34, the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune described a shaking-tent ceremony in which a spiritual specialist spoke with spirits who shook the lodge.
1634 CE · 47.80, -69.55 · status: account
The account
The shaking tent (Innu khusapatshigan, Ojibwe jiisakaan) is practised by Innu, Cree and Anishinaabe peoples to consult spirits about game, the sick or the absent. Le Jeune thought the specialist shook the tent himself; later ethnographers recorded that the tent moved even when practitioners seemed motionless.
The sceptical view
Outsider accounts, from missionaries hostile to the practice; the experience is central to the tradition and not a puzzle to be 'solved'.