In particular, they are invested with the irresistable powers of the gods to do good or evil, with their knowledge and cunning, and their everywhere present influence over mind, instinct and passion. They are instructed how to inflict diseases and to heal them, to discover things concealed from common men, to foretell future events, to manufacture implements of war, and infuse into them the missive virtue—the tonwan—of the gods, and to perform all sorts of wonders.
Thus qualified for his mission, this germ of wakan, to become incarnate, is again committed to the direction of the “four winds.” From his elevated position, he selects a place which is to be the scene of his service, and enters the body of an unborn infant. Thus he effects an entrance into the world and into the sympathies of mortals.
When one of them dies, he returns to the abode of his gods, where he receives a new inspiration and a new commission, to serve a new generation of men in some other portion of the world. In this manner he passes through four inspirations and incarnations, and then returns to his primitive nothingness. These characters, however, do not always appear in human form, but enter the bodies of beasts, as the wolf, the bear, and the buffalo.
To establish their claims to inspiration, these characters must, of course, perform things that are wakan, in a manner to satisfy those on whom they purpose to impose their superstitions.
For this purpose, they artfully lay hold of all that is strange and mysterious, and if possible turn it to their own advantage. To do this is the one object and effort of their lives. It is their study day and night, at all times and on all occasions. They think about it when awake, and dream about it when asleep. They make use of all the means in their power, and their zeal never grows cold.
They assume familiarity with whatever astonishes other people, with a degree of self complacency, and an air of impudence and assurance which strikes the observers with amazement. They foretell future events with a degree of accuracy or of ambiguity which is sufficient for their purpose. Those at one village affect to be familiar with what is transpiring at another village leagues distant They predict the result of a war expedition as if they had already been there; and if the prediction is not fulfilled they find no difficulty in setting the failure to the account of the sins of their followers.
They inflict diseases and heal them. They kill and make alive. When occasion requires they seem to calm the tempest, or to raise the storm, and converse with thunder and lightning, as with a familiar friend and equal. In their devotional exercises, at times, they wrangle with the gods, charge them with duplicity, and are defiant. If one of them is killed by the electric fluid, which sometimes happens, it only proves the truth, to the living, of all he had taught them concerning the Wakinyan, and that he had provoked their anger by his sins.
The medicine man is not only familiar with the superior gods who are out of him, but he also has inferior gods dwelling in him, to satisfy whose cravings he frequently, and in the most public manner, tears off with his teeth and eats the raw, quivering, bleeding flesh of newly-slaughtered animals, like a starving beast or bird of prey, devouring parts of dogs or fish entire, not excepting bones and scales.
RAW FISH FEAST.
In the summer of 1852, a feast of this kind was observed at Shakopee. It was made by Anoginajin, second chief of the Little Six band and others.