He can rob a man of the use of his rational faculties, and inspire a beast with intelligence, so that the hunter, like an idiot, will wander and become bewildered on the prairie or in the forest, and the game on which he hoped to feast his family at night, escapes with perfect ease. Or, if he please, he may reverse his influence, and the animal has not even brutal instinct to escape from its pursuer.
This god is passionate and capricious to the highest degree; and, hence, it is very difficult to retain his favor. Often he is likened to a passionate, whimsical child, taking offence at everything, while it is as necessary to secure his favor, on the part of the hunter or the warrior, as it is to procure food, or to prove one’s manhood by taking a scalp. Subordinate to this god are the buzzard, the raven, the fox, the wolf, and other animals of a similar nature. To him belong the “armor feast” and the “vapor bath.”
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.
THE HEYOKA.
This god is so curiously wakan that he is entitled to a brief notice.
Like the Wakinyan, there are four varieties of them, all of which assume, in substance, the human form, but it would be unnecessarily tedious to note the differences of form, especially as the differences are unimportant.
These objects of superstition, are said to be armed with the bow and arrows, and with the deer-hoof rattle, which things are charged with electricity. One of the varieties carries a drum, which is also charged with the same fluid. For a drumstick, he holds a small Wakinyan god by the tail, striking on the drum with the beak of the god. This would seem to us to be an unfortunate position for a god to be in, but it must be remembered that it is wakan, and the more absurd a thing is the more wakan.
One of these gods, in some respects, answers to the wreathed zephyr of Grecian mythology. It is the gentle whirlwind which is sometimes visible in the delicate waving of the tall grass of the prairie.
By virtue of their medicine and tonwan powers, they render aid to such men as revere them, in the chase, in inflicting and healing diseases, and especially in the gratification of their libidinous passions.