THE WATER POWERS.
§ 386. The Unkteḣi of the Dakota answers to the Wakandagi of the Omaha and Ponka, and the Waktceqi of the Winnebago. One of the Omaha myths relates to a Wakandagi with seven heads. The Waktceqi have the Loon as a servant, and in this respect they resemble the tyrant U-twa´-ʞe of the ┴ɔiwere myth. The name utwaʞe is now given to the muskrat. The male Water powers inhabit streams, and the females dwell under the ground, presumably in subterranean streams. According to Winnebago belief, they support the weight of the hills. Some of the Omaha thought that these powers dwelt under the hills (§§ 77, 107). The monsters supposed to inhabit bogs were probably a species of water spirits (§ 254). Streams were invoked as “Wakanda” by the Omaha (§ 23). Though the natural habitat of the buffalo is the surface of the earth, and the Dakota believe the animal to be of subterranean origin, he is of subaquatic origin according to the traditions of the Iñke-sabĕ and Hañga gentes of the Omaha.[316] But no traces of such a belief have been found among the buffalo gentes of cognate tribes. “One day, when the principal man of the people not known as the Waȼigije subgens of the Iñke-sabĕ, was fasting and praying to the sun-god,[317] he saw the ghost of a buffalo, visible from the flank up, arising from a spring.”[318]