Ritual and belief

by Edwin Sidney Hartland

I do not pause here to adduce illustrations of this attitude towards the objects surrounding mankind. In any event it would of course be impossible to illustrate it from prehistoric, not to say primeval, ages. It is characteristic of modern savages wherever an intimate acquaintance enables the civilized observer to penetrate into their arcana. Some of them have got no further; others have advanced to the full stage of animism. Reference may be made to any work in which the life and ideas of a savage tribe are depicted.

Not merely was every personality, human and other, endowed with qualities, but by virtue of those qualities it possessed a potentiality and an atmosphere of its own. The successful warrior and huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag, his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary. Nor would this atmosphere surround only important or successful men. Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would be richly endowed. None, human or non-human, would (in theory, at least) be wholly without it.

The Iroquoian tribes of North America possess a word which exactly expresses this potentiality, this atmosphere, which they believe inheres in and surrounds every personality. They call it orenda. A fine hunter is one whose orenda is fine, superior in quality. When he is successful he is said to baffle or thwart the orenda of the quarry; when unsuccessful, the game is said to have foiled or outmatched his orenda. A person who defeats another in a game of skill or chance is said to overcome his orenda. “At public games or contests of skill or endurance, or of swiftness of foot, where clan is pitted against clan, phratry against phratry, tribe against tribe, or nation against nation, the shamans—men reputed to possess powerful orenda—are employed for hire by the opposing parties respectively to exercise their orenda to thwart or overcome that of their antagonists,” and thus secure victory. So, when a storm is brewing, it (the storm-maker) is said to be preparing its orenda; when it is ready to burst, it has finished, has prepared its orenda. Similar expressions are used for a man or one of the lower animals when in a rage. A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts forth his orenda, and has thereby learned the secrets of the future. The orenda of shy birds and other animals which it is difficult to ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive—that is, in detecting the presence of the hunter, whether man or beast. Anything reputed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or accomplishing some end is said to possess orenda. Of one who, it is believed, has died from witchcraft it is said, “An evil orenda has struck him.”^[37.1]

Among the Algonkian and Siouan tribes are found beliefs that seem to go behind this personal but mystic potentiality to its source in the Unknown, the Impersonal. The Algonkian word expressive of the idea is manitou. The early French missionaries, who were the first to make it known to us, interpreted it of a personal being—God or the Devil, they hardly knew which. They were reading into it their own more highly crystallized beliefs. As in the case of orenda, we are fortunate in having the term more accurately defined for us by a descendant of the native tribes, who may be presumed to have been better equipped by inheritance and early associations to understand Algonkian thought than the Jesuit Fathers were. “The Algonkin conception of the manitou,” he tells us, “is bound up with the manifold ideas that flow from an unconscious relation with the outside world.… The term manitou is a religious word; it carries with it the idea of solemnity; and whatever the association it always expresses a serious attitude, and kindles an emotional sense of mystery.… The essential character of Algonkin religion is a pure, naïve worship of nature. In one way or another associations cluster about an object and give it a certain potential value; and because of this supposed potentiality the object becomes the recipient of an adoration. The degree of the adoration depends in some measure upon the extent of confidence reposed in the object, and upon its supposed power of bringing pleasure or inflicting pain. The important thing with the individual is the emotional effect experienced while in the presence of the object, or with an interpreted manifestation of the object. The individual keeps watch for the effect, and it is the effect that fills the mind with a vague sense of something strange, something mysterious, something intangible. One feels it as the result of an active substance, and one’s attitude toward it is purely passive. To experience a thrill is authority enough of the existence of the substance. The sentiment of its reality is made known by the fact that something has happened. It is futile to ask an Algonkin for an articulate definition of the substance, partly because it would be something about which he does not concern himself, and partly because he is quite satisfied with only the sentiment of its existence. He feels that the property is everywhere, is omnipresent. The feeling that it is omnipresent leads naturally to the belief that it enters into everything in nature; and the notion that it is active causes the mind to look everywhere for its manifestations. These manifestations assume various forms; they vary with individuals and with reference to the same and different objects.

“Language affords means of approaching nearer to a definition of this religious sentiment. In the Algonkin dialects of the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo, a rigid distinction of gender is made between things with life and things without life.… Accordingly, when they refer to the manitou in the sense of a virtue, a property, an abstraction, they employ the form expressive of inanimate gender. When the manitou becomes associated with an object, then the gender becomes less definite.…

“When the property becomes the indwelling element of an object, then it is natural to identify the property with animate being. It is not necessary that the being shall be the tangible representative of a natural object.” This the writer illustrates from the account given by a Fox Indian of the sweat-lodge, in the course of which he observes: “The manitou comes from the place of his abode in the [heated] stone, … when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds entrance. It moves up and down and all over inside the body, driving out everything that inflicts pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having been in the sweat-lodge.” The writer’s comment on this is instructive. “The sentiment,” he says, “behind the words rests upon the consciousness of a belief in an objective presence; it rests on the sense of an existing reality with the quality of self-dependence; it rests on the perception of a definite, localized personality. Yet at the same time there is the feeling that the apprehended reality is without form and without feature. This is the dominant notion in regard to the virtue abiding in the stone of the sweat-lodge; it takes on the character of conscious personality with some attributes of immanence and design.”

But further, as the manitou—this mystic, all-pervasive property or substance—on investing an object acquires conscious personality, so also “it is natural to confuse the property”—the manitou—“with an object containing,” or invested with, “the property.” “It is no trouble for an Algonkin to invest an object with the mystic substance, and then call the object by the name of the substance. The process suggests a possible explanation of how an Algonkin comes to people his world with manitou forces different in kind and degree; it explains in some measure the supernatural performances of mythological beings, the beings that move in the form of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and other objects of nature. All these are a collection of agencies. Each possesses a virtue in common with all the rest, and in so far do they all have certain marks of agreement. Where one differs from another is in the nature of its function, and in the degree of the possession of the cosmic substance. But the investment of a common mystic virtue gives them all a common name, and that name is manitou.”

The conclusion is “that there is an unsystematic belief in a cosmic mysterious property which is believed to be existing everywhere in nature; that the conception of the property can be thought of as impersonal, but that it becomes obscure and confused when the property becomes identified with objects in nature; that it manifests itself in various forms; and that its emotional effect awakens a sense of mystery; that there is a lively appreciation of its miraculous efficacy; and that its interpretation is not according to any regular rule, but is based on one’s feelings rather than on one’s knowledge.”^[41.1]

Whatever differences an exact analysis, in accordance with the clearly cut methods of scientific thought, may result in discovering between the concept of manitou as here displayed and the Iroquoian orenda, two resemblances stand out prominently. Orenda is, like manitou, a mystic, or magical—not a natural—quality or potentiality, which resides in some persons or objects in greater measure than others. And the fact that it is “held to be the property of all things, all bodies, and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his environment,”^[41.2] approximates the conception very closely to that of manitou.

When we turn to the Omaha, a Siouan tribe, we find a concept hardly distinguishable from that of the Algonkins. Here again we have the advantage of native help. Mr Francis La Flesche, the son of a former chief of the tribe, is jointly responsible for an exhaustive monograph on the Omaha with Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of this and neighbouring tribes is among investigators of European descent unrivalled. We may therefore rely upon their exposition with confidence equal to that we have given to those already cited on the Iroquois and the Algonkins. “An invisible and continuous life was believed,” they tell us, “to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move—all motion, all actions of mind or body are because of this invisible life; second, by causing permanency of structure and form, as in the rock, the physical features of the landscape, mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animals and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will-power of which man is conscious within himself—a power by which all things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything to its entirety. This invisible life and power was called Wakonda. While it was a vague entity, yet there was an anthropomorphic colouring to the conception, as is shown in the prayers offered and the manner in which appeals for compassion and help were made, also in the ethical quality attributed to certain natural phenomena—the regularity of night following day, of summer winter (these were recognized as emphasizing truthfulness as a dependable quality and set forth for man’s guidance),—and in the approval by Wakonda of certain ethical actions on the part of mankind.”^[42.1] “There is therefore,” the writers tell us in another place, “no propriety in speaking of Wakonda as ‘the Great Spirit.’ Equally improper would it be to regard the term as a synonym of nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of conceptions, which is not essential to the Omaha, and which, when attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning.” But while the concept appears to be vague and impersonal, inasmuch as human conditions were projected upon nature, “certain anthropomorphic attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind of personality.” Moreover, “there is a distinction in the Omaha mind between varying meanings of the word wakonda. The Wakonda addressed in the tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which pertain to the welfare of all the people is the Wakonda that is the permeating life of visible nature—an invisible life and power that reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on the one hand, the application of the word wakonda to anything mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or inanimate form can be transferred to man. The means by which this transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda, but is not Wakonda. So the media—the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the animal, the mythic monster—may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are not regarded as the Wakonda.”^[43.1]