The writer in examination at three reservations in Wisconsin obtained information concerning the Midē' ceremonies additional to the details described by Dr. Hoffman (a) and by others quoted in the present work. The full ceremonies of the Midē' lodges, which the more southern Ojibwa, who speak English, translate as “grand medicine,” were performed twice a year—in the fall and in the spring. Those in the spring were of a rejoicing character, to welcome the return of the good spirits; those in the fall were in lamentation for the departure of the beneficent and the arrival of the maleficent spirits. The drums were beaten four days and nights before the dance, which lasted for a whole day. After the dance twelve selected persons built a lodge, about the center of which they placed stones which had been heated, and dancing went on around it until the stones were moistened and cooled by the sweat of the performers. Singing, or more properly chanting, regulated the rhythm of the dances, although, perhaps, in the order of evolution the dance was prior to the chant. These ceremonies were performed by the body of the people, and were independent of the initiations in the secret order. With regard to the candidates who passed the initiations, it was mentioned as an undisputed fact that they always became stronger and better men, perhaps because only those succeeded who had the requisite strength of mind and body to endure the various ordeals and to pass examination in the mysteries. In pictography the spring and the fall, the drums and the steaming stones, the dancing forms and the open chanting mouth are shown.

Fig. 715.—Ah-tón-we-tuck.

Catlin (a) gives an account of Kee-an-ne-kuk, the foremost man, who, though a Kickapoo, was commonly called the Shawnee Prophet, and also the following description relating to Fig. 715, painted by that author in 1831:

Ah-tón-we-tuck, The-Cock-Turkey, is another Kickapoo of some distinction and a disciple of the [Shawnee] Prophet, in the attitude of prayer, which he is reading off from characters cut upon a stick that he holds in his hand. It was told to me in the tribe by the traders (though I am afraid to vouch for the whole truth of it) that while a Methodist preacher was soliciting him for permission to preach in his village, the Prophet refused him the privilege, but secretly took him aside and supported him until he learned from him his creed and his system of teaching it to others, when he discharged him and commenced preaching amongst his people himself, pretending to have had an interview with some superhuman mission or inspired personage, ingeniously resolving that if there was any honor or emolument or influence to be gained by the promulgation of it, he might as well have it as another person; and with this view he commenced preaching and instituted a prayer, which he ingeniously carved on a maple stick of an inch and a half in breadth, in characters somewhat resembling Chinese letters. These sticks, with the prayers on them, he has introduced into every family of the tribe and into the hands of every individual; and as he has necessarily the manufacturing of them all, he sells them at his own price and has thus added lucre to fame, and in two essential and effective ways augmented his influence in his tribe. Every man, woman, and child in the tribe, so far as I saw them, were in the habit of saying their prayer from this stick when going to bed at night and also when rising in the morning, which was invariably done by placing the forefinger of the right hand under the upper character until they repeat a sentence or two, which it suggests to them, and then slipping it under the next and the next, and so on to the bottom of the stick, which altogether required about ten minutes, as it was sung over in a sort of a chant to the end.

Fig. 716.—On-sáw-kie.

Fig. 716, from the same volume, opposite page 100, is a portrait of On-sáw-kie, The-Sac, a Pottawatomie, using one of these prayer sticks, which had been procured from the Shawnee Prophet.

Figs. 715 and 716 with their descriptions exhibit an intermediate condition between the aboriginal mnemonic method and the Christian formula of prayer by the use of printed books. They should be considered in comparison with the remarks on the “Micmac Hieroglyphs,” Chap. XIX, Sec. [2].