HIDATSA CULTS.
HIDATSA DIVINITIES.
§ 341. The Hidatsa believe in the Man who Never Dies, or Lord of Life, Ehsicka-Wahaddish,[254] literally, the first man, who dwells in the Rocky Mountains. He made all things. Another being whom they venerate is called the Grandmother. She roams over the earth. She had some share in creation, though an inferior one, for she created the toad and the sand-rat. She gave the Hidatsa two kettles, which they still preserve as a sacred treasure and employ as charms or fetiches on certain occasions. She directed the ancestors of the present Indians to preserve the kettles and to remember the great waters, whence came all the animals dancing. The red-shouldered oriole (Psaracolius phoeniceus) came at that time out of the water, as well as the other birds which still sing along the banks of rivers. The Hidatsa, therefore, look on all these birds as “medicine” for their corn patches, and attend to their songs. When these birds sing the Hidatsa, remembering the direction of the Grandmother, fill the two kettles with water, dance and bathe, in order to commemorate the great flood. When their fields are threatened with a great drought they celebrate a “medicine” feast with the two kettles, as they beg for rain. The shamans are still paid, on such occasions, to sing for four days together in the huts, while the kettles remain full of water.
§ 342. The sun, or as they term it, “the sun of the day,” is a great power. They do not know what it really is, but when they are about to undertake some enterprise they sacrifice to it and also to the moon, which they call “the sun of the night.” The morning star, Venus, they regard as the child of the moon, and they account it as a great power. They affirm that it was originally a Hidatsa, being the grandson of the Old Woman who Never Dies.[255]
§ 343. Matthews[256] found that the object of the greatest reverence among the Hidatsa was, perhaps, the Itsika-mahidiś, the First Made, or First in Existence. They assert that he made all things, the stars, sun, the earth, the first representatives of each species of animals and plants, but that no one made him. He also, they say, instructed the forefathers of the tribes in all the ceremonies and mysteries now known to them. They sometimes designate him as Itaka-te-taś, or Old Man Immortal.