A Study of Siouan Cults / Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1861, pages 351-544

by James Owen Dorsey

THE SPIRITS OF THE MYSTERY SACKS.

§ 126. These are similar to the armor gods, in that they are divinities who act as guardian spirits. Each of these powers is appropriated by a single individual, protecting and aiding him, and receiving his worship. These spirits are conferred at the time of initiation into the order of the Mystery Dance, and of course are confined to the members of that order.[128] Each spirit of the mystery sack is not a separate god, but a wakan power derived from the Unkteḣi, according to a later statement of Riggs.[129]