A Study of Siouan Cults: Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1861, pages 351-544Dorsey, James Owen
Religion
A Study of Siouan Cults: Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1861, pages 351-544
Dorsey, James Owen
Siouan Indians -- Religion
INVOCATION OF WARMTH AND STREAMS.
§ 23. Ԁaȼiⁿ-naⁿpajĭ said that Macte or Warmth was a good Wakanda. Ni
ȼiⁿ, the flowing Stream, according to him, was thus addressed by a man
who wished to ford it: “You are a person and a Wakanda. I, too, am a
person. I desire to pass through you and reach the other side.” Two
Crows denied this, saying that his people never prayed to a stream; but
George Miller said that it was true, for his father, Little Soldier,
prayed to a stream when he was on the war path, and that such
invocations were made only in time of war.
PRAYER TO WAKANDA.
§ 24. Prayer to Wakanda, said La Flèche and Two Crows, was not made for
small matters, such as going fishing, but only for great and important
undertakings, such as going to war or starting on a journey. When a
man wished to travel he first went alone to a bluff, where he prayed
to Wakanda to help him and his family by protecting them during his
absence and by granting him a successful journey. At a time when the
Ponka were without food, Horse-with-yellow-hair, or Cañge-hiⁿ-zi,
prayed to Wakanda on the hill beyond the Stony Butte. The latter is
a prominent landmark in northern Nebraska (in what was Todd county,
Dakota, in 1871-’73), about 7 miles from the Missouri River and the
Ponka Agency (of 1870-’77)[8]. Several Omaha said that the places
for prayer were rocks, high bluffs, and mountains. “All Omaha went
to such places to pray, but they did not pray to the visible object,
though they called it Grandfather.”--(Frank La Flèche.) They smoked
towards the invoked object and placed gifts of killickinnick, etc.,
upon it. Compare with this the Dakota custom of invoking a bowlder on
the prairie; calling it Tŭñkaⁿcidaⁿ (Tuŋkaŋśidaŋ), or Grandfather,
symbolizing the Earth-being.[9] Though it has been said that a high
bluff was merely a place for praying to Wakanda, and that it was not
itself addressed as Wakanda, the author has learned from members of the
Omaha and Pouka tribes that when they went on the warpath for the first
time, their names were then changed and one of the old men was sent
to the bluffs to tell the news to the various Wakandas, including the
bluffs, trees, birds, insects, reptiles, etc.[10]
ACCESSORIES OF PRAYER.
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