The Iowa, who have these social divisions and personal names of mythic significance, also have sacred songs, but these are in the Winnebago language. It is probable that they are the property of a secret order, as they, too, show how some of the gentes descended as birds from the upper world. The names of the Winnebago gentes and of some members of the tribe have been recorded by the author, who has also learned parts of their traditions. He infers that their secret society has not been abolished.
When a man of the Kansa tribe observed that the author had an inkling of the matter he related part of the tradition of that tribe, explaining the origin of the names and the taboos of several Kansa gentes. The ancestors of these gentes were spoken of as birds which descended from an upper world. The phratries in that tribe, the "Wa-yŭn min-’dŭn," or "(Those who) sing together," refer to mystic songs and strengthen the view that the secret society exists among these Indians. Several members of the tribe have positively stated its existence.
As one phratry is composed of the two gentes, Large and Small[pg 397] Hañka, that have the sole right to sing the war songs, time may show that these songs, which, with their chart of pictographs[23], are used by the Osage, are substantially those of the seventh degree in the Osage society. This is rendered the more probable by the fact that the Kansa have grouped their gentes in seven phratries, just the number of the degrees in the society. And this arrangement by sevens is the rule among Osage, Kansa, Ponka, Omaha, and Dakota, though there are apparent exceptions.
Further investigation may tend to confirm the supposition that in any tribe which has mythic names for its members and its social divisions (as among the Osage, Kansa, Quapaw, Omaha, Ponka, Iowa, Oto, Missouri, Tutelo, and Winnebago), or in one which has mythic names only for its members and local or other names for its social divisions (as among the Dakota, Assiniboin, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow), there are now or there have been secret societies or "The Mysteries."
Footnotes
The sound of this inverted ṵ, between o and u, as well as the sounds of other letters used in this article, except that of the inverted ɥ (which is a sound approximating ch in the German word ich), is to be found on page 206, Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.
It is probable, however, that the Panɥka (Ponka) man began with the stick at the east, as he must use the right hand and foot first.
Meaning uncertain; it may refer to the female or doe.