While we are eating we ask the father of the Indian family we are visiting how the chief of his tribe obtained his position. We are told that his ability as a warrior and leader has led to his being chosen war chief, and his ability as an orator and his power to make people like him has kept him in authority. He says that in a nearby village the chief is also a great war leader, but he is not well liked otherwise. For that reason he sometimes finds it difficult to make his warriors obey him and he is therefore not nearly as powerful as our leader. We soon realize that the Indian chiefs depend primarily upon personal prestige and influence to keep them in power. We are informed, however, that in some other tribes the chief is always selected from a certain clan.
YOUTH FASTING FOR A VISION (PAINTING BY A. O. TIEMANN).
One morning we witness a curious ceremony. Grandfather offers Blackbird, the older boy, some charcoal as well as his food. The father seems very proud when his son rejects the food, applies the charcoal to his face, and leaves the village to enter the forest alone. Grandfather explains that Blackbird, by accepting the charcoal, automatically agreed to fast alone in the forest for one day. This one-day fast will be good training for the day when he will feel ready to go on the long fast of four or five days. Every man has taken this long fast in the hope of seeing a vision of a guardian spirit who would then be his lifetime protector.
The girls, too, must fast, but in a somewhat different fashion. Soon Morning Star, the older girl in our friend’s family, will reach womanhood and be segregated for a number of days in a secluded lodge, and during this period no men may approach her.
The summer season rapidly nears an end. We have enjoyed ourselves watching the activities of our friends at work and at play. We have learned, too, some of the beliefs of our friends. Grandfather has told us stories about the great white bear with the copper tail who dwells underground and is the greatest power for evil. He has told the children how the “Indian Sandman,” a good-natured elf, would put people to sleep at night by hitting them on the head with a soft war club. We have learned, too, of the many spirits for good and evil who control the sun, moon, stars, winds, rain, thunder, and all the other phenomena of nature. One evening he pointed out the Milky Way and told us that this was the road over which the dead travelled to the land of the spirits. He also warned us about entering the woods alone at night because of the evil, living skeleton which haunts the forest paths seeking unwary men.
TALES OF THE SPIRIT WORLD (PAINTING BY A. O. TIEMANN).
THE RICE GATHERER.