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

by James Owen Dorsey

ALLEGED BELIEF IN A GREAT SPIRIT.

§ 311. As among the Dakota, so among the Mandan and Hidatsa, we find that some of the earlier writers assert that the religion of the Indians under consideration “consists in the belief in one Great Spirit.”[217]

But such assertions are closely followed by admissions which explain the mistake of the writer: “Great Spirit” is synonymous with “Great Medicine,” a name applied to everything which they do not comprehend. Among the Mandan, “each individual selects for himself the particular object of his devotion, which is termed his medicine, and is either some visible being, or more commonly some animal.”