We Indians did not believe in one Great Spirit, as white men seem to think all Indians do. We did believe that certain gods were more powerful than others. Of these was It-si-ka-ma-hi-di, our elder creator, the spirit of the prairie wolf; and Ka-du-te-ta, or Old-woman-who-never-dies, who first taught my people to till their fields. Long histories are given of these gods.
Any one could pray to the spirits, receiving answer usually in a dream. Indeed, all dreams were thought to be from the spirits; and for this reason they were always heeded, especially those that came by fasting and suffering. Sometimes a man fasted and tortured himself until he fell into a kind of dream while yet awake; we called this a vision.
A man whom the gods helped and visited in dreams, was said to have mystery power; and one who had much mystery power, we called a mystery man, or medicine man. Almost every one received dreams from the spirits at some time; but a medicine man received them more often than others.
A man might have mystery power and not use it wisely. There once lived in our village a medicine man who had one little son. On day in summer, the little boy with some playmates crossed a shallow creek behind the village in search of grass for grass arrows. It happened that the villagers’ fields were suffering from drought, and that very day, some old men brought gifts to the medicine man and asked him to send them rain.
The medicine man prayed to his gods, and in an hour rain fell in torrents. The little boys, seeking to return, found the creek choked by the rising waters; greatly frightened, they plunged in, and all got safely over but the medicine man’s little son; he was drowned.
The medicine man mourned bitterly for his son, for he thought it was he that had caused the little boy’s death.
Believing as he did that the world was full of spirits, every Indian hoped that one of them would come to him and be his protector, especially in war. When a lad became about seventeen years of age, his parents would say, “You are now old enough to go to war; but you should first go out and find your god!” They meant by this, that he should not risk his life in battle until he had a protecting spirit.
Finding one’s god was not an easy task. The lad painted his body with white clay, as if in mourning, and went out among the hills, upon some bluff, where he could be seen of the gods; and for days, with neither food nor drink, and often torturing himself, he cried to the gods to pity him and come to him. His sufferings at last brought on delirium, so that he dreamed, or saw a vision. Whatever he saw in this vision was his god, come to pledge him protection. Usually this god was a bird or beast; or it might be the spirit of some one dead; the bird or beast was not a flesh-and-blood animal, but a spirit.
The lad then returned home. As soon as he was recovered from his fast, he set out to kill an animal like that seen in his vision, and its dried skin, or a part of it, he kept as his sacred object, or medicine, for in this sacred object dwelt his god. Thus if an otter god appeared to him, the lad would kill an otter, and into its skin, which the lad kept, the god entered. The otter skin was now the lad’s medicine; he prayed to it and bore it with him to war, that his god might be present to protect him.
Indians even made offerings of food to their sacred objects. They knew the sacred object did not eat the food; but they believed that the god, or spirit, in the sacred object, ate the spirit of the food. They also burned cedar incense to their sacred objects.