Some people were helped by the spirits of the dead in the same way that others received aid from animal or other nature spirits.
“Old man” Secondine, now dead, a well known Oklahoma Lenape, was one of these. When a boy his parents drove him out in the woods, as was the custom, in the hope that he might receive a supernatural helper. After wandering about for a time, he took refuge in a large hollow tree, and made that his camping place. Before long he was visited by apparitions of persons he knew to be dead, who took pity on his starving condition, and brought him food which they had taken at night from the houses of the living, this being the way that disembodied spirits are supposed to get nourishment when visiting the scenes of their earthly life. In the meantime his parents were unable to find him, and searched for him without avail until the ghosts finally revealed to them his camping place, and then he was brought safely home. Ever afterward he claimed the ghosts as his guardians, and like others blessed with this kind of helpers, was said to hold some kind of communication with the departed.
Minsi Examples.—The late James Wolf, my principal Minsi informant, was said to possess this power, as was stated in the preceding chapter. He had, moreover, received another vision when a boy, but had made little, if any, use of it, because of his profession of Christianity. One time in his boyhood days, he told me, he thought or dreamed (he was not asleep at the time) that there was no water in the river, and that he went down into its bed and found only one little hole containing water. In this was a creature resembling a catfish, yet somewhat different, and near it was an ordinary crayfish, while on the surface of the water walked a number of little flies. The boy thinking what he had seen was real, ran home in haste to tell his father. The father walked down with him to see, but stopped on the bank where the edge of the water had been, while the boy ran on down to his pool. The river-bed seemed dry to him, but his father would not come, saying that the river was full of water. The boy then came out and they started for home, but before they were out of sight, the lad looked back. To his surprise, the river was full as usual.
The father, who was Flying Wolf, a noted Minsi warrior, had been favored himself, when a boy, with a rather unusual sort of vision, which James Wolf related to me, as nearly as possible the way the old man used to tell it at the Annual Ceremony.
“When I was a boy, I was once fast asleep on a hill near a little creek. Someone said, ‘Wake up! Let us go where our friends are!’ So I got up and followed him across the little creek and up a hill, where I saw six men sitting on a log. Then I went up and shook hands with them all. After they had shaken hands with me they all danced around in a ring.” At this point he used to sing one verse of his dance song—
Wĕmi wangoⁿtowak kewiha
All greet one another
Yoki lĕnape witci.