FETICHISM.
PUBLIC OR TRIBAL FETICHES.
§ 303. Among these may be included the Bear Butte, referred to in § 137; and any white buffalo hide, such as has been described in “The White Buffalo Festival of the Uncpapas.”[210]
Smet gives a description of a gathering of all the Assiniboin, and a religious festival lasting several days:
Offerings are placed on perches that are fastened to the tops of posts supporting certain buffalo skin lodges. A tall pole is erected in the middle of the circle (it is between 30 and 40 feet high), and to it they fasten the medicine bags, containing the idols, their arrows, quivers, trophies won from their enemies, especially scalps. Men, women, and children join in raising and planting the pole, amid the acclamations of the tribe.[211]
PRIVATE OR PERSONAL FETICHES.
§ 304. Smet also tells us that “A Sioux chief has his war wakaŋ, the colored picture of the Russian general, Diebitsch.”[212] In speaking of the Assinniboin, the same author states:
Each savage who considers himself a chief or warrior possesses what he calls his wah-kon, in which he appears to place all his confidence. This consists of a stuffed bird, a weasel’s skin, or some little bone or the tooth of an animal; sometimes it is a little stone or a fantastical figure, represented by little beads or by a coarsely painted picture. These charms or talismans accompany them on all their expeditions for war or hunting—they never lay them aside. In every difficulty or peril they invoke the protection and assistance of their wah-kon, as though these idols could really preserve them from all misfortunes. If any accident befalls an idol or charm, if it is broken or lost, it is enough to arrest the most intrepid chief or warrior in his expedition, and make him abandon the most important enterprise in which he may be engaged.[213]
We may also reckon among the personal fetiches the wohduze of each warrior (see the Armor god, §§ 122-5), and perhaps the use of the initipi or sweat lodge, and the wild sage or Artemisia, by each of which personal purification is supposed to be effected.