DWELLINGS OF GODS.
§ 80. “High rocks are supposed by the Iowa to be the dwellings of gods.” “There is a Winnebago tradition that a woman carrying her child was running from her enemies, so she jumped down a steep place and was turned into a rock. And now when they pass that place they make offerings to her.”
WORSHIP.
§ 81. “One of their most common acts of worship, and apparently one of daily occurrence, is observed when a person is about to smoke his pipe. He looks to the sky and says, ‘Wakanta, here is tobacco!’ (See §§ 29, 40, ‘Nini bahai tĕ.’) Then he puffs a mouthful of smoke up towards the sky, after which he smokes as he pleases.” “They also make offerings of tobacco by throwing a small quantity into the fire.” “They frequently offer a small portion of food at their feasts, before they begin eating.”
Mr. Hamilton saw dogs hung by their necks to trees or to sticks planted in the ground, and he was told that these dogs were offerings. “No Heart told me that when the smallpox raged among them about fifty years ago” (i. e. about 1798), “and swept off so many, that they made a great many offerings.” Said he, “We threw away a great many garments, blankets, etc., and offered many dogs to God. My father threw away a flag which the British had given him. When we had thrown away these things, the smallpox left us.” These offerings to God (literally, to Wakanta) were the means of checking it. “To throw away,” in Iowa, is the same as “to offer in sacrifice.”
TABOOS.
§ 82. Mr. Hamilton was told by the Iowa that no member of any gens could eat the flesh of the eponymic animal.
The author gained the following taboos from a Missouri, Ckaʇɔe-yiñe or Ckaʇɔinye, who visited the Omaha in 1879: The members of the Tunaⁿp’iⁿ, a Black Bear gens in the Oto and Nyut’atci (or Missouri) tribes can not touch a clam shell. The Momi people, now a subgens of the Missouri Bird gens, abstain from small birds which have been killed by large birds, and they can not touch the feathers of such small birds.
PUBLIC OR TRIBAL FETICHES.[81]
§ 83. Among these are the sacred pipes, the sacred bags, or waruxawe, and the sacred stone or iron. The sacred pipes are used only on solemn occasions, and they are kept enveloped in the skin wrappers. The sacred bags, or waruxawe, are made from the skins of animals. They are esteemed as mysterious, and they are reverenced as much as Wakanta. Among the Winnebago (and presumably among the ┴ɔiwere tribes) no woman is allowed to touch the waruxawe. There used to be seven waruxawe among the Iowa, “related to one another as brothers and sisters,” and used by war parties. On the return from war the seven bags were opened and used in the scalp dance. They contained the skins of animals and birds with medicine in them, also wild tobacco and other war medicine, also the war club. There used to be seven war clubs, one for each waruxawe, but during the last expedition of the Iowa, prior to the date of Mr. Hamilton’s letters, the war club and pipes or whistles were lost from the principal bag. The next kind of sacred bags, the Waci waruxawe, numbered seven. They were the bad-medicine bags, by means of which they professed to deprive their enemies of power, when they had discouraged them by blowing the whistles. Owing to this enchantment, they said, their enemies could neither shoot nor run, and were soon killed. The next kind were the Tce waruxawe, or buffalo medicine bags. They were not used in war, but in healing the wounded. These bags contain medicine and the sticks with the deer hoofs attached which they shake while treating the sick; also a piece of buffalo tail, and perhaps a piece from the skin covering the throat of an elk.