FIRE GENTES.
The following appear to be the Fire gentes: Thunder-being people of the Omaha tribe, Elk gens, Small-bird subgens, Deer, and Ictasanda (Reptile and Thunder-being) gentes; the Hisada and Black bear gentes of the Ponka; the Lṵ or Gray hawk people (also called Thunder-being people) of the Kansa tribe, with whom are associated the Deer and Buffalo gentes in the singing of the Thunder songs (§ 36); the [K]ȼŭⁿ[311] or Thunder-being gens, on the Tsiɔu, Buffalo, or Peace side of the Osage tribe (!!), perhaps the Tcexiʇa, a bird gens of the Iowa tribe; part of the Tcexiʇa gens of the Oto and Missouri tribes; and the Wakaⁿtcară or Thunder-being subgens of the Winnebago.
Four Thunder-beings were invoked by the Ictasanda gens (§ 35): Ȼigȼize-maⁿȼiⁿ, Ȼiaⁿba-tigȼe, Ȼiaⁿba-gi-naⁿ, and Gaagigȼedaⁿ. Was each of these supposed to dwell at one of the four quarters?
Among the Osage and Kansa tribes there is a gens known as the Miⁿ k’iⁿ (from miⁿ, the sun, and k’iⁿ, to carry a load on the back), rendered “Sun Carriers.” Some of the Osage insisted that this name referred to the buffalo instead of the sun, as that animal carries a robe or plenty of hair on his back; and they maintained that the Miⁿ k’iⁿ was a buffalo gens. That there is some connection in the Indian mind between the sun and the buffalo is shown in the sun dance, in which the figure of a buffalo bull (§ 164) and buffalo skulls (§§ 147, 173, 176, 177, 181, and 198, and Pl. XLVIII) play important parts.
THE WIND-MAKERS.
§ 385. The Takuśkanśkan of the Dakotas has been described in a previous chapter (§§ 127-131). The Omaha tribe has the order of the Iⁿ-kugȼi or the translucent stone, in which order the Wind-makers were probably invoked. The Tiɔu old man addressed the four winds and as many mystic buffaloes when he laid down the four firebrands. And at a similar ceremony the old man of the Paⁿɥka gens addressed the four winds and as many mystic deer (§ 33). The Omaha evidently had a prayer, “Ho, ye four firebrands that meet at a common point!” (§ 40.) With this there may have been addresses to the winds. Four firebrands were used in a Winnebago ceremony (§ 84).
The Iñke-sabĕ (Omaha) belief as to the four winds has been related in § 366.[312] The winds and the sun were associated in the ceremony of raising the sun pole, judging from what Bushotter has written (§ 167). There was also some connection in the Dakota mind between the winds and the buffalo. Compare the figure of the winds on a buffalo skull as described by Miss Fletcher[313] in her account of the sun dance.