WEATHER MAKING, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 253 



Dorsey says the Kauze (Kausa or Kaw) gens of the Omaha tribe, being 

 Wind people, "flai^ their bhmkets to start a breeze."^ He adds that 

 when there is a blizzard the other Kausa tribe of Indian Territory beg 

 the members of the Wind gens to interpose, saying, "O grandfather, 

 I wish good weather. Cause one of your children to be decorated." 

 Then the youngest sou of a Kanze man, say one about 4 feet high, is 

 chosen for the purpose, and i)ainted with red paint. The youth rolls 

 over and over in the snow, reddening it for some distance all around 

 him. This is supposed to stop the blizzard. 



The following account is from a book entitled The Fourteen loway 

 Indians (London, 1844), and relates to raising wind: 



"A ])acket ship with Indians on board, was becalmed for several days 

 near the English coast. It was decided to call upon the medicine man 

 to try the efficacy of his nuigical powers with the endeavor to raise 

 the Avind. After the usual ceremony of a mystery feast, and various 

 invocations to the spirit of the wind and ocean, both weVe conciliated 

 by the sacrifice of many plugs of tobacco thrown into the sea, and in a 

 little time the wind began to blow, the sails Avere filled, and the vessel 

 soon wafted into port." 



The Indians also have many associations with thunder. Madam 

 Lucy Elliot Keeler, in a paper recently contributed to the American 

 Agriculturist for December, 1892, says : 



"The Dakotas used to have a company of men who claimed the 

 exclusive power and privilege of fighting the thunder. Whenever a 

 storm which they wished to avert threatened, the thunder fighters 

 would take their bows and arrows, their magic drum, and a sort of 

 whistle made of the wing bone of a war eagle, aud, thus armed, run out 

 and fire at the rising cloud, whooping, yelling, whistling, and beating 

 their drum to frighten it down again. One afternoon a heavy black 

 cloud came up, aud they repaired to the top of a hill, where they 

 brought all their magic artillery into play against it; but the undaunted 

 thunder darted out a bright flasli which struck one of the party dead 

 as he was in the very act of shaking his long-pointed lance against it. 

 After that they decided that no human power could quell the thunder." 



In the Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-tales, jjublished by George 

 Bird Grinnell, we find the following: 



"An old Pawnee Indian said : 'Up north where we worshipped at the 

 time of the first thunder we never had cyclones. Down here [Indian 

 Territory], now that this worship has been given u}), we have them.' " 



The Indians in some cases have ideas of controlling the weather more 

 generally, and Dablin, in his Eelation of the Voyages, Discoveries, and 

 Death of Father James Marquette,^ writing in 1671-1075, says: 



"It now only remains for me to speak of the calumet, than which 

 there is nothing among the Indians [i. e., the Illinois] more mysterious 

 or more esteemed. - - - They esteem it particularly because they 

 regard it as the calumet of the sun, and in fact they i)resent it to him 

 to smoke when they wish to obtain calm, or rain, or fair weather." 



1 Third Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, page 241. 



2 Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, Part IV, 1852, pages 3.4, 35. 



