TAKUŚKAŊŚKAŊ, THE MOVING DEITY.
§ 127. This is a form of the wakan which jugglers, so-called mystery men, and war prophets invoke. In their estimation he is the most powerful of their gods; the one most to be feared and propitiated, since, more than all others, he influences human weal and woe. He is supposed to live in the four winds, and the four black spirits of night do his bidding. The consecrated spear and tomahawk (see § 124) are its weapons. The buzzard, raven, fox, wolf, and other animals are its lieutenants, to produce disease and death.[130] (Compare this with some of the pictographs on the war chart of the Kansa tribe: Fig. 4, Wind songs; the connection between the winds and war is shown in § 33. Fig. 8, Deer songs. Fig. 9, an Elk song. Fig. 10, seven songs of the Wakanda who makes night songs. Fig. 11, five songs of the Big Rock. This is a rough red rock near Topeka, Kans. “This rock has a hard body, like that of a wakanda. May you walk like it.” Fig. 12, Wolf songs. The wolf howls at night. Fig. 13, Moon songs. Fig. 14, Crow songs. The crow flies around a dead body which it wishes to devour. Fig. 18, Shade songs. There is a Wakanda who makes shade. Fig. 20, song of the Small Rock. Fig. 22, songs of the young Moon. Fig. 23, songs of the Buffalo Bull. Fig. 27, Owl songs. The owl hoots at night.[131])
§ 128. Miss Fletcher has given us a very interesting account of “The Religious Ceremony of the Four Winds or Quarters, as observed by the Santee Sioux.” “Among the Santee (Sioux) Indians the Four Winds are symbolized by the raven and a small black stone, less than a hen’s egg in size.” “An intelligent Santee said to me: ‘The worship of the Four Winds is the most difficult to explain for it is the most complicated.’ The Four Winds are sent by the ‘Something that Moves.’”[132] There is a “Something that Moves” at each of the four directions or quarters. The winds are, therefore, the messengers or exponents of the powers which remain at the four quarters. These four quarters are spoken of as upholding the earth,[133] and are connected with thunder and lightning as well as the wind.[134] * * *
“My informant went on to tell me that the spirits of the four winds were not one, but twelve, and they are spoken of as twelve.”[135] (See § 42.)
§ 129. In Tah-koo Wah-kon, pp. 64, 65, Riggs says:
This god is too subtle in essence to be perceived by the senses, and is as subtle in disposition. He is present everywhere. He exerts a controlling influence over instinct, intellect, and passion. He can rob a man of the use of his rational faculties, and inspire a beast with intelligence, so that the hunter will wander idiot-like, while the game on which he hoped to feast his family at night escapes with perfect ease. Or, if he please, the god can reverse his influence. He is much gratified to see men in trouble, and is particularly glad when they die in battle or otherwise. Passionate and capricious in the highest degree, it is very difficult to retain his favor. His symbol and supposed residence is the bowlder (see Big Rock and Small Rock, § 127), as it is also of another god, the Tunkan.
Pond assigns to him the armor feast and inipi or vapor bath (called steam or sweat bath). He says:[136]
The armor feast is of ordinary occurrence when the provisions are of sufficient abundance to support it, in which the warriors assemble and exhibit the sacred implements of war, to which they burn incense around the smoking sacrifice.
§ 130. In October, 1881, the late S. D. Hinman read a paper before the Anthropological Society of Washington, entitled “The Stone God or Oracle of the Pute-temni band of Hunkpati Dakotas.” He said that this oracle had been seen by him while on an expedition with some Dakotas across the James River valley in Dakota Territory. A Hunkpati man of the party gave the history of the stone and an account of its miraculous movement from the Sacred Hill to the old dirt lodge village. This oracle was called the Takuśkaŋśkaŋ.
§ 131. But the Takuśkaŋśkaŋ assumed other shapes. Said Bushotter, in one of his Teton texts:
The Lakotas regard certain small stones or pebbles as mysterious, and it is said that in former days a man had one as his helper or servant. There are two kinds of these mysterious stones (i.e., pebbles, not rocks). One is white, resembling ice or glass (i.e., is probably translucent; compare the translucent pebbles of the Iⁿ-ʞugȼi order of the Omaha, see Om. Soc., p. 346); the other resembles ordinary stones. It is said that one of them once entered a lodge and struck a man, and people spoke of the stones sending in rattles through the smoke hole of a lodge. When anything was missed in the village the people appealed to the stones for aid, and the owner of one of the stones boiled food for a mystery feast, to which the people came. Then they told the stone of their loss and the stone helped them. It is said that the stones brought back different messages. If anyone stole horses the stones always revealed his name. Once the Omahas came to steal horses, but the stones knew about them and disappointed their secret plans; so that the Lakotas learned to prize the stones, and they decorated them with paint, wrapped them up, and hung a bunch of medicine with each one.
It is very probable that the Assiniboin also worshipped the Takuśkaŋśkaŋ; for they reverenced the four winds, as Smet tells us.[137]