1S2 THE SIOI'AN INIiIANS [eth. anx. 15 



iiifusiiiably lield in clu'ck, and so that the ijmtjress of each gCMiiTatioii 

 buds ill till! spriiifftiuie of youth yet is not iieriuittetl to fruit until the 

 winter of old age approaches. Accordingly the mean of demotic prog- 

 ress tends to lag far behind its foremost advanres, and modes of 

 action and especially of tliought <;liange slowly. This is especially true 

 of beliefs, which, during each generation, are largely vestigial. So the 

 stages in the evolution of mytliologic jjhilosopliy overlap widely; there 

 is probably no tribe now living among whom zootlieism has not yet 

 taken root, though becastotlieism has been found dominant among 

 different tribes; there is jjrobably no people in the zootheistic stage 

 who are completely divested of liectastotheistic vestiges ; and one of the 

 curious features of even the most advanced psychotlieisin is the occa- 

 sional outcropping of features inherited from all of the earlier stages. 

 Yet it is none the less important to discriminate the stages. 



The Siouan SIvtholooy 



It was partly through pioneer study of the Siouan Indians that the 

 pojiular fallacy concerning the aboriginal "Great Spirit"' gained cur- 

 rency; and it was partly through the work of Dorscy among tlie(/.'egiha 

 and Dakota tribes, first as a missionary and afterward as a linguist, 

 that the earlj' error was corrected. Among these tribes the creation 

 and control of the world and the things thereof are ascribed to 

 "waka"-da" (the term varying somewhat froo tribe to tribe), just as 

 among the Algonquian tribes omnipotence was assigned to "ma-ni-do' 

 {"]\Iauito the Mighty" of "Hiawatha''); yet iiuiuiry shows that 

 waka"da assumes various forms, and is rather a quality than a definite 

 entity. Thus, among many of the tribes the sun is waka"da — not the 

 waka"da or a waka"da, but simply waka"da; and among the same 

 tribes the moon is waka"da, and so is thunder, lightning, the stars, the 

 winds, the cedar, and various other things; even a man, especially a 

 shaman, might be waka°da or a wakaMa. In addition the term was 

 applied to mythic monsters of the earth, air, and waters; according to 

 solium of the sages the ground or earth, the mythic under world, the 

 ideal upper-world, darkness, etc, were waka"da or waka"das. So, too, 

 the fetiches and the ceremonial objects and decorations were waka"da 

 among ditterent tribes. Among some of the groni)s various animals 

 and other trees besides the specially waka"da cedar were regarded as 

 waka"das; as already noted, the horse, among the prairie trilies, was 

 the waka°da dog. In like manner many natural objects and places of 

 striking character were considered waka°da. Thus the term was 

 applied to all sorts of entities and ideas, and was used (with or with- 

 out inflectional variations) indiscriminately as substantive and adjec- 

 tive, and with slight moditicatioii as verb and adverb. Manifestly a 

 term so protean is not snscei)tible of translation into the more highly 

 differentiated language of civilization. Manifestly, too, the idea 

 expressed by the term is indelinite, and can not justly be rendered into 

 "spirit," much less into "Great Spirit;'" thougli it is easy to under- 



