PONKA BELIEF ABOUT MALEVOLENT SPIRITS.
§ 26. About eighteen years ago, the author was told by the Ponka, whose reservation was then in southern Dakota, that they believed death to be caused by certain malevolent spirits, whom they feared. In order to prevent future visits of such spirits, the survivors gave away all their property, hoping that as they were in such a wretched plight the spirits would not think it worth while to make them more unhappy. At the burial of Mazi-kide, an Omaha, the author observed that some one approached the corpse and addressed it. In referring to this in 1888, Samuel Fremont said that the speaker said, “Wakanda has caused your death.” In telling this, Fremont used the singular. “Wakanda aka.” On repeating this to George Miller, the latter said that it should have been “Wakanda ama,” in the plural, “the Mysterious Powers,” as the Omaha believed in more than one Wakanda before they learned about the one God of monotheism.
This agrees with what was learned about the Dakota by the late missionaries, Messrs. S. R. Riggs and G. H. Pond, and by the late James W. Lynd, as stated in chapter V.