A most curious and interesting account of the Omaha Magical Societies is given by Miss Alice Fletcher, in her essay, already cited, on ‘The Import of the Totem.’ To obtain the ‘personal totem’ (manitu) a youth must first listen to his elders. They tell him ‘to go forth to cry to Wa-kon-da. You shall not ask for any particular thing, whatever is good, that may Wa-kon-da give.’ _Fiat voluntas tua!_ ‘Four days and nights upon the hills the youth shall pray, crying, and, when he stops, shall wipe his tears with the palms of his hands, lift his wet hands to heaven, then lay them on the earth.’ To the ordinary mind, this describes such prayers as are the petitions of the Saints. But, in accordance with the views of the official school of American anthropology, it is averred that nothing of the kind is intended by the Omaha. ‘There is no evidence that they did regard the power represented by that word (Wa-kon-da) as a supreme being, nor is there any intimation that they had ever conceived of a single great ruling spirit,’ says Miss Fletcher (1897). The prayer is evidence enough. Prayer is directed to a person, and whether he is envisaged as ‘a spirit,’ or not, is a mere detail of metaphysical terminology. If Miss Fletcher is right, Wa-kon-da is a pantheistic conception, but as He, (or It) also listens to prayer, He (or It) is personal. We see rather an anthropomorphic conception of deity, passing towards pantheism, or to divinity no longer anthropomorphic, than a notion of impersonal force immanent in the universe, passing towards anthropomorphism--as in Miss Fletcher’s theory. The idea of such a force, or cosmic _rapport_ (the Maori _mana_), is, indeed, familiar to us in the speculations of the lower barbaric races. It does credit to their metaphysics, but, _prima facie_, seems likely to be later in evolution than the idea of an anthropomorphic Maker, like the Australian Baiame. At all events, the Omaha appears to live, in prayer, on a high religious level, and it is open to the friends of religious borrowing, to say that he took his creed from Europeans. I am not certain that Miss Fletcher is indisposed to agree with me on this point of Red Indian unborrowed theism. In her _Indian Song and Story_,[30] she gives Pawnee songs, ‘hitherto sealed from the knowledge of the white race.’ Here is one: Lift thine eyes! ’Tis the gods who come near, Bringing thee joy, release from all pain. Sending sorrow and sighing Far from the child, Ti-ra-wa makes fain. Ah, you look, you know who comes, Claiming you his, and bidding you rise, Blithely smiling and happy, Child of Ti-ra-wa, Lord of the Skies! Ti-ra-wa is Hau-ars, ‘a contraction of the word meaning father.’ The song is used to still children who cry at a religious ceremony.