KANSA BELIEFS RESPECTING DEATH AND A FUTURE LIFE.
§ 71. When the author was at Kaw Agency, Indian Territory, in the winter of 1882-’83, a man named Ho-sa-sa-ge died. After the representatives of all the gentes had assembled at the house, Wakanda (named after the Thunder-being), the father-in-law of the deceased, removed the lock of hair called the “ghost,” and took it to his own house, weeping as he departed.
When Mr. Say was among the Kansa[80] he obtained the following information about their beliefs concerning death and the future life:
When a man is killed in battle the thunder is supposed to take him up, they do not know whither. In going to battle each warrior traces an imaginary figure of the thunder on the soil; he who represents it incorrectly is killed by the thunder. A person saw this thunder one day on the ground, with a beautiful moccasin on each side of it. Having need of a pair, he took them and went his way; but on his return to the same spot the thunder took him off, and he has not since been heard of.
They seem to have vague notions about the future state. They think that a brave man or a good hunter will walk in a good path; but a bad man and a coward will find a bad path. Thinking that the deceased has far to travel, they bury with his body moccasins, some articles of food, etc., to support him on the journey. Many persons, they believe, who have revived have been, during their apparent death, to strange villages, where they were not treated well by the people, so they returned to life.
The author, when among the Kansa, in the winter of 1882-’83, learned the following, which differs from anything he has ever obtained elsewhere: “The Kansa believe that when there is a death the ghost returns to the spirit village nearest the present habitat of the living. That is to say, all Indians do not go to one spirit village or ‘happy hunting ground,’ but to different ones, as there is a series of spirit villages for the Kansa, beginning with the one at Council Grove, where the tribe dwelt before they removed to their present reservation in Indian Territory, and extending along both sides of the Kansas River to its mouth, thence up the Missouri River, as far as the tribe wandered before meeting the Cheyennes (near the State line), thence down the river to the mouth of Osage River, and so on, down to the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers,” etc.