PAWNEE DIRT LODGE.
RELIGION.
I. BELIEFS.
IT is generally believed that, among the Indians of North America, the priests and the shamans, “medicine men,” or doctors, are the same. This is not the case with the Pawnees. Among them the priestly office was entirely distinct from that of the doctor, and had nothing in common with it. The priest was in a sense the medium of communication with Ti-ra´-wa; he prayed to the deity more efficaciously than could a common person, acted, in fact, as an intercessor; he knew the secrets of the sacred bundles, and when he asked anything good for the tribe, or for an individual, it was likely to be granted. His education and the power given him from above brought him into specially close relations with Ti-ra´-wa, who seemed to watch over him and to listen to him when he interceded for the tribe. He was an intermediary between Ti-ra´-wa and the people, and held a relation to the Pawnees and their deity not unlike that occupied by Moses to Jehovah and the Israelites.
The office of the “medicine man,” shaman or doctor, had to do only with sickness or injury. He was the healer. Disease was caused by bad spirits, and it was the doctor’s part to drive off these evil influences.
In the lodge or house of every Pawnee of influence, hanging on the west side, and so opposite the door, is the sacred bundle neatly wrapped in buckskin, and black with smoke and age. What these bundles contain we do not know. Sometimes, from the ends, protrude bits of scalps, and the tips of pipe stems and slender sticks, but the whole contents of the bundle are known only to the priests and to its owner—perhaps, not always even to him. The sacred bundles are kept on the west side of the lodge, because, being thus furthest from the door, fewer people will pass by them than if they were hung in any other part of the lodge. Various superstitions attach to these bundles. In the lodges where certain of them are kept it is forbidden to put a knife in the fire; in others, a knife may not be thrown; in others, it is not permitted to enter the lodge with the face painted; or again, a man cannot go in if he has feathers tied in his head.
On certain sacred occasions the bundles are opened, and their contents form part of the ceremonial of worship.
No one knows whence the bundles came. Many of them are very old; too old even to have a history. Their origin is lost in the haze of the long ago. They say, “The sacred bundles were given us long ago. No one knows when they came to us.” Secret Pipe Chief, one of the very oldest men in the tribe, and its High Priest, said to me:
“All the sacred bundles are from the far off country in the southwest, from which we came long ago. They were handed down to the people before they started on their journey. Then they had never seen anything like iron, but they had discovered how to make the flint knives and arrow points. There was nothing that came to us through the whites. It all came to us through the power of Ti-ra´-wa. Through his power we were taught how to make bows and stone knives and arrow heads.