PRAYER TO WAKANDA.
§ 24. Prayer to Wakanda, said La Flèche and Two Crows, was not made for small matters, such as going fishing, but only for great and important undertakings, such as going to war or starting on a journey. When a man wished to travel he first went alone to a bluff, where he prayed to Wakanda to help him and his family by protecting them during his absence and by granting him a successful journey. At a time when the Ponka were without food, Horse-with-yellow-hair, or Cañge-hiⁿ-zi, prayed to Wakanda on the hill beyond the Stony Butte. The latter is a prominent landmark in northern Nebraska (in what was Todd county, Dakota, in 1871-’73), about 7 miles from the Missouri River and the Ponka Agency (of 1870-’77)[8]. Several Omaha said that the places for prayer were rocks, high bluffs, and mountains. “All Omaha went to such places to pray, but they did not pray to the visible object, though they called it Grandfather.”—(Frank La Flèche.) They smoked towards the invoked object and placed gifts of killickinnick, etc., upon it. Compare with this the Dakota custom of invoking a bowlder on the prairie; calling it Tŭñkaⁿcidaⁿ (Tuŋkaŋśidaŋ), or Grandfather, symbolizing the Earth-being.[9] Though it has been said that a high bluff was merely a place for praying to Wakanda, and that it was not itself addressed as Wakanda, the author has learned from members of the Omaha and Pouka tribes that when they went on the warpath for the first time, their names were then changed and one of the old men was sent to the bluffs to tell the news to the various Wakandas, including the bluffs, trees, birds, insects, reptiles, etc.[10]