180 MORRIS — PEXTAG. DODECAHEDRON AND SHAMANISM. [Ap. 23, 



ing to run like him, only ambled around and sat upon his haunches 

 to be told with a laugh, ''No, no, you can only be a coyote." 

 (This reminded me of the bringing of the animals to Adam for 

 their names.) Filled with longing to know his fate in life, the 

 boy goes off into the forest, and communes with nature. He longs 

 to be something, somebody. He tests his powers of endurance, 

 his skill, his desires. Many and long may be his rambles in this 

 effort to place himself in his proper niche in the world. He 

 becomes dreamy — he longs to see a vision or to have some sign to 

 direct him. Perhaps some night one of these unseen spirit forces 

 may make itself known to him. At last, one night when all alone 

 on the mountain side, he sees, or thinks he sees, a wolf approaching, 

 who comes and talks to him, encourages him, lays open his career 

 of duty to him, and tells him if he will be brave and faithful he 

 will aid him and cause him to triumph over every difficulty, bids 

 him come close to him and pluck some hairs from his neck and 

 keep them always with him so that whenever he is in trouble he 

 can by pressing or rubbing them call his guardian spirit to his aid 

 and thus be enabled to succeed and triumph over his difficulties or 

 enemies, or receive counsel in emergencies. The boy returns 

 home, tells his experiences, is tested, and if found truthful and 

 brave is initiated into the lodge under the guardianship of the wolf 

 which he takes as his totem ; and in the sacred dances wears the 

 appropriate symbolic mask. Little by little, year after year, as 

 he shows himself fitted and acquires more knowledge and experi- 

 ence, learns more of the legends of the tribe in which are crystal- 

 lized the results of their contact with nature and their reasonings 

 upon it, he is advanced more and more, and becomes a medicine 

 man, or an elder, or chief, taking part in the councils and directing 

 the affairs of the community. The older, wiser, more reliable he 

 becomes the more respect is shown him. 



The idea, so common among us, that their medicine hien are all 

 mere quacks and humbugs, charlatans of a low grade, and that all 

 their dances are low orgies and mere devil-worship — that the Indian 

 is an untutored, untrained savage, bloodthirsty, revengeful and 

 treacherous — is largely erroneous, and due to a lack of proper 

 and adequate knowledge of him as he really is : and of considera- 

 tion of his circumstances in the world. Place a human being of 

 average capacity of any other race in similar conditions, and the 

 probabilities are that his chances of survival would be less, to say 



