There can be little doubt that the initiation-complex of the Medicine Dance was borrowed from the Central Algonkin Midewiwin. We may consequently conclude that, notwithstanding the present interpretation of the initiation as an initiation into the Medicine Dance, it is historically really an initiation ritual of one ceremony that has become secondarily associated with another. In support of this, it can be pointed out that no initiation bearing the slightest resemblance to this one, occurs in any other of the numerous Winnebago societies, and that the Medicine Dance really possesses two initiations,—the one being the purchase of membership; and the other, that mentioned above. It might also be added that non-members never speak of the shooting as an initiation. To them the shooting always appears as a shamanistic practice associated with the “strengthening” of power. The esoteric interpretation, however, regards this “secondary” initiation as primary. Summing up briefly the results of the analysis of the three initiations discussed, we must emphasize again the fact that we are dealing with initiations essentially different in nature. In the Ojibwa-Menominee it is evidently a formal transfer of shamanistic powers from one individual to another, which has subsequently become synonymous with admission into the social status of a mide and then with admission into a society. In the Shell Society the transfer of powers is analogous to the purchase of specific powers by one individual from another; and as these have become associated with a society, the individual buying them purchased at the same time admission into the society. In the Pebble Society, initiation is synonymous with the acquisition of power through supernatural communication from some animal. There is no transfer at all, except in so far as the spirit animal transfers something to the person fasting. Initiation is connected simply with the individual. No initiation into the society exists. In the Winnebago Medicine Dance, whatever may have been the primary method of initiation, we have to-day a definite initiation like that found in the Midewiwin. This, however, has been borrowed from another ceremony, and secondarily associated. Even now it is not in its proper organic position in the general ceremony, despite the fact that an esoteric re-interpretation has transformed it into a specific initiation into the Medicine Dance.