A little later Tokulki went hunting and brought back dried venison to add to his winter’s stores. It was only then that he and his bride were brought to their new home, where a final feast was partaken of by all together, speeches exchanged by the leading men of the Wind and Raccoon clans, and the new couple left in possession.
During this period Tokulki was too busily occupied to think of his earlier ambitions, but after his first child was born and the routine of his new life had become well established, they began to recur to him. He communicated his thoughts to the three young men with whom he had been associated before, and he found that they too were prepared to continue in their course. They approached the Medicine Maker again, and again submitted to the fasts, the sweat baths, and the repeated instructions, more rigorous now than before. This time they learned among other things the treatment proper for snake bite, and how, as they believed, to detect objects clearly on the darkest nights.
Tokulki was still unsatisfied. Every fresh revelation awakened new ambitions. His companions, however, were content with what they had acquired and with the prestige they had attained, and were wearied with the long and exhausting fasts. Therefore when Tokulki presented himself as a candidate for the third degree he went entirely alone. In fact, so rigorous was the ordeal to which he was at this time subjected, that he debated within himself whether he should not stop there. As it was, he had penetrated farther into the mysteries than all except ten or a dozen men in the fifty allied Muskogee towns.
He allowed two years to slip away before making up his mind to undertake the fourth and crowning ordeal. Finally, however, he set himself to the task, and he came triumphantly through, though the periods of fasting were doubled, and the memorizing more severe than any which he had before experienced. He returned to his house a mere shadow of a man, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and almost fleshless bones, but with a position and influence in the Nation shared by none except the Medicine Makers of a few of the leading towns.
With the Medicine Maker of Tulsa, his instructor and uncle, Tokulki now came to be on the most friendly terms. It was natural that a man of such advanced mentality as Tokulki and such steadfastness of purpose should excite interest in his superior. It became evident that when the Medicine Maker died or gave up his spiritual headship his position would fall to Tokulki. Many were the talks which the two men had together, talks in which the older man unfolded whatever knowledge his long life of physical activity and spiritual contemplation had given him. Some was not new to Tokulki, some had been suggested to him by the other learned men, but much was novel and strange.
The world envisaged by the Tulsa sage was about like this: The middle earth which mankind knows, is flat and square and lies afloat upon “the wide white waters.” There is a world above it and a world below it, and these are inhabited by beings like ourselves. Below are those left behind when the races now on earth found their way to its surface; above, those who had lived on earth but, having undergone the experience called death, had traveled westward, crossed a narrow point in the ocean stream, upon a foot log, and either remained with the malevolent spirits in that quarter or ascended to the fortunate region directly overhead, presided over by Hisakita-imisi, “the breath holder.” The white streak in the sky which we call “the milky way” was said to be the very road which they traversed. Unavenged souls of those who had been killed in wars, however, were unwilling to begin their journey until scalps from the offending tribe were brought in, and meanwhile they remained about the eaves of the houses, moaning. Some said that bad spirits were reincarnated into beasts, but about this men differed. However, they were agreed that human beings might acquire such malevolent power as to become witches and assume the forms of animals while still living on earth. Their evil dispositions were attributed to lizards who had taken up their abode inside of the witch, but might be expelled by the proper medical rites.
The stars were thought to be attached to the under surface of the solid vault above, along which the sun and moon traveled each day. An eclipse of the sun was usually attributed to a great toad who might be frightened off by hostile demonstrations on the part of human beings. To an eclipse of the moon people paid little attention. The moon was inhabited by a man and a dog. The rainbow was a big, celestial snake which had power over rain.
The world and all that it contained were the products of mind and bore everywhere the marks of mind. Matter was not something which had given birth to mind, but something which had formerly been mind, something from which mind had withdrawn, was quiescent, and out of which it might again be roused. This mind was visibly manifested in the so-called “living things,” as plants, and, still more, animals. Nevertheless, latent within inorganic substance no less than in plants and animals, was mind in its highest form, i. e., human mind. This might come to the surface at any time but it did so particularly to the fasting warrior, the “knower,” and the doctor. Indeed, the importance of these two last lay in their ability to penetrate to the human life within the mineral, plant, and animal life of nature, and bring back from that experience knowledge of value in ordering the lives of their fellow beings. Not that mind was attributed to one individuality, but that it was recognized as everywhere of the same nature.
Its manifestations were not in all cases equally powerful. Its manifestation in the panther, bear, and bison was more powerful than its manifestation in the raccoon, the rabbit, and the squirrel. Some “inorganic” powers,—as, for instance, the wind, the rivers, and the sea,—were, however, even more powerful. Peculiarly powerful were the thunder and the lightning, which were produced by two sets of animals. The dangerous kind, the kind that “struck,” was made by huge birds from whose eyes flashed fire, and this they flashed down at the other fire-producing creatures, enormous, horned serpents, who in turn shot the blue, harmless lightning upward. Bones of these earth serpents were sometimes found after a rainstorm. Besides there were long serpents who lived in the waters and who, rearing their huge lengths straight upward at intervals, would allow themselves to fall over with a gigantic splash. There were the sharp-breasted snakes, suggested to native imagination by the tracks of lightning, snakes supposed to run straight along the surface of the ground, cutting through roots and bushes as they went. There were bodiless snakes which rose whirling into the air on still mornings. There were creatures like bison which went by fours, each resting for a minute in the tracks of its predecessor. There were very little people who sometimes deprived travelers of their senses, and very big people who ate them.
Besides the embodied power in nature there was power not altogether differentiated from it, which was unembodied, or indistinctly conceived as embodied. This power could be invoked by the use of charms and the repetition of certain formulæ. “By a word” wonderful things could be accomplished; “by a word” the entire world could be compressed into such a small space that the medicine man who was master of the word could encircle it in four steps. It was power of this kind which was imparted to medicines, yet the source of this power was after all the anthropomorphic powers, which, at the very beginning of things, declared what the diseases were to be and also appointed the remedies to be employed in curing them. But when the doctor had prepared these remedies and placed them in a pot in front of him, they were not efficacious until he had repeated the prescribed formulæ, or prayers, four times, while breathing into the medicine through a hollow cane. In this way the spirit that made the medicine powerful passed into it through the breath of life in the doctor.