The men and women seated around the walls of the lodge sat tense. The silence was unbroken save for woodland sounds, for the great, dramatic moment had arrived.
The four assistant masters, who had just performed before Little-wolf, now assembled in the east, facing him, and the first, taking his medicine bag in his two hands, and holding it breast high before his body, sang, to the rapid beat of the drum, a song entitled “Shooting the New Member.” At its end he gave the usual sacred cry “oh we ho ho ho ho!” blew on the head of the otter-skin, and rushed forward as though to attack the candidate.
In front of the neophyte impersonator of the ancient hero the attacker paused, and jerked the head of his otter upward, crying savagely, “Ya ha ha ha ha!” The magical essence of the bag supposedly striking the candidate, he staggered slightly, but was steadied by a companion, only to meet the feigned attacks of the second and third assistants, at each of which he reeled once more. But the charge of the fourth fellow was so violent that the candidate fell flat on the ground. Stooping, the last man laid the medicine bag across the back of the apparently unconscious brother, to be his, thereafter. At a sign from Terrible-eagle, the four assistants approached the prostrate candidate, and raising him to his feet, shoo__ him gently to remove their shots and restore him to life.
And now all was rejoicing. Steaming earthen kettles were carried in, filled with delicious stews and soups of bear and turtle flesh, partridges, and young ducks. Laughing, jesting, and good-natured banter filled the lodge until the last wooden bowl was scraped clean, when the utensils and scraps were carried out, and the drummer struck up a lively dancing tune. After the men and women had had each four sets of songs, a general dance took place, wherein the members circled the lodge, the new brother among them, shooting each other promiscuously with jollity, vying with each other to rise and point their bags or fall prone on the earth. All the time a loud and lively chant was sung:
I
“I pass through them! I pass through them! I pass through even the chief!”
II
“Ye Gods take part, invisible though ye be beneath us!”
When all was over, and Keso, the Sun, was almost noon high, the four assistants took down the invitation fees from the ridgepole, and distributed them to the four old Masters and the others who had taken prominent part in the ceremonial, and all the Indians filed out of the western door, singing:
“You, my brethren, I pass my hand over you. I thank you.”
Muhwäsê, Little-wolf, watched the last of his companions strike their camps; saw the coverings stripped from the lodge structure, saw the last party vanish in the brush.
He was a Mitäo! A member of a great fraternal organization, who might travel westward to the foothills of the Rockies, north to the Barren Lands, south to the countries of the Iowa and Oto, east to the land of the Iroquois, and find brethren who had traveled the same road, or at least one fundamentally similar. He had shown his fortitude and fidelity, those two great, cardinal virtues of the Medicine Lodge, and he had come through the sacred mysteries alive and in possession of the secret rites that had been handed down since the days when the Menomini first came out of the ground.