SUBAQUATIC POWERS.
§ 77. Some Iowa claim to have seen them. No Heart (Natce-niñe) told Mr. Hamilton that he had seen a “water god in the Missouri river, when a man was drowned. When a person is drowned they sometimes say that the god who lives in the water has taken him for a servant. Not a year since, some Iowa went over the river for meat. A young girl sat down in the canoe with her load on her back. When near the shore the canoe was upset accidentally, and the girl was drowned. The men thought that they heard a god halloo in the water, and that he had taken her. One told me that the gods of the air (i. e. the Thunder-beings) fought the gods of the water, and when the latter came out of the water, the former stole upon them and killed them.”
The subterranean and subaquatic powers are called “waktceqi” by the Winnebago, and this tribe has a gens called Waktceqi ikikaratcada. The Winnebago say that the waktceqi dwell under the ground and the high bluffs, and in subterranean water, that they are caused to uphold the earth, trees, rivers, etc., and that they are the enemies of the Thunder-beings (§ 386). In the Winnebago Waktceqi gens are the following personal names: Black Waktceqi, White Waktceqi, Green Waktceqi, “Waktceqi that is saⁿ” (which may be gray or brown), Four Horned Male, Two Horned Male, and Lives in the Hill.