1?97.] CUSIIIXG — REMARKS OX SHAMANISM. 189 



gazes at the mist, or a cloud in the sky. The cloud will surely seem 

 to take the form of a great gray wolf, and when he seeks for some 

 token of that God of the Sky, — a tooth-like fossil, a few hairs 

 maybe, which he may find on the ground nearby or underneath the 

 apparition, will be reverently accepted as potent amulets, and he 

 will bear them to the tribal Fathers or Shamans, and by them they 

 will be received as a sign of his Genius, and he will be relegated to 

 the phratral division or lodge of the Wolf. Or again, it may be that 

 he will find a crystal, and because this crystal shines clearly and 

 therein resembles the light by which we see and the eye through 

 which we see — and hence is regarded as helpful in seeing — it will 

 be regarded as a token of seership, as a sign of the Seeing Spirit, 

 and fortunate the youth who is thus supposed to be endowed with 

 the power of penetration into the unseen. To give yet one more 

 example, let us suppose that he finds a concretion exhibiting spiral or 

 concentric lines. He will regard this as a symbol of the Midmost 

 itself, a token of his relation thereto also — no matter to what 

 totem he may belong, or to what region he may be related by birth. 

 For the spiral lines perceived in this crystal resemble those of the 

 marks upon the sand produced by the whirling about of objects 

 like red-topped grass by the whirlwind, yet which are regarded as 

 the tracks of the whirlwind god, whose breath is the midmost of 

 all the winds of the world. 



Permit me to here give parenthetically a striking illustration of 

 the way in which these primitive Shamans personify phenomena of 

 nature, by instancing their personification of this god of the 

 whirlwind. Of all the winds of heaven, the whirlwind alone is 

 upright — progresses as man does, by walking over the plains. The 

 whirlwind god is therefore endowed in part, with the personality of 

 a man ; but like the eagle, also, the whirlwind flies aloft and circles 

 widely in the sky ; therefore he is endowed with the wings and tail, 

 the head, beak and talons of an eagle. Since the sand which he, the 

 whirlwind, casts about, pricks the face as would minute arrows, the 

 dreadful wings of the god are supposed to be flinty, and his character 

 warlike or destructive, as is that of the eagle; yet of all the Beings 

 of Wind, he is the most potent, for he twists about or banishes 

 utterly from his trail, either the north wind or the south, the east 

 wind or the west, and overcomes even gravity, — the pulling-breath 

 of the earth or under world, — and therefore is the god of the mid- 

 most among all the six gods of wind. Thus, lucky in a purely prac- 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXVI. 155. N. PRINTED AUGUST 4, 1807. 



