426 A STUDY OF SIOUAN CULTS. 



"They frequently offer a small portion of food at their feasts, before 

 they begin eating." 



Mr. Hamilton saw dogs hung by their necks to trees or to sticks 

 planted in the ground, and he was told that these dogs were offerings. 

 "No Heart told me that when the smallpox I'aged among them about 

 fifty years ago" (i. e. about 1798), "and swept off so many, that they 

 made a great many offerings." Said he, " We threw away a great many 

 garments, blankets, etc., and offered many dogs to God. My father 

 threw away a flag which the British had given him. When we had 

 thrown away these things, the smallpox left us." These offerings to 

 God (literally, to Wakanta) were the means of checking it. " To throw 

 away," in Iowa, is the same as "to offer in sacrifice." 



TABOOS. 



§ 82. Mr. Hamilton was told by the Iowa that no member of any gens 

 could eat the flesh of the eponymic animal. 



The author gained the following taboos from a Missouri, Cka^oe-yiiie 

 or Ckapinye, who visited the Omaha in 1879: The members of the 

 Tuna"p'i", a Black Bear gens in the Oto and ISTyut'atci (or Missouri) 

 tribes can not touch a clam shell. The Momi people, now a subgeus of 

 the Missouri Bird gens, abstain from small birds which have been killed 

 by large birds, and they can not touch the feathers of such small bii'ds. 



PUBLIC OR TRIBAL FETICHES 



§ 83. Among these are the sacred pipes, the sacred bags, or waru- 

 xawe, and the sacred stone or iron. The sacred pipes are used only 

 on solemn occasions, and they are kept enveloped in the skin wrap- 

 pers. The sacred bags, or waruxawe, are made from the skins of ani- 

 mals. They are esteemed as mysterious, and they are reverenced as 

 much as Wakanta. Among the Winnebago (and presumably among 

 the jjOiwere tribes) no woman is allowed to touch the waruxawe. 

 There used to be seven waruxawe among the Iowa, "related to one 

 another as brothers and sisters," and used by war parties. On the re- 

 turn from wai- the seven bags were opened and used in the scalp dance. 

 They contained the skins of animals and birds with medicine in them, 

 also wild tobacco and other war medicine, also the war club. There 

 used to be seven war clubs, one for each waruxawe, but during the 

 last expedition of the Iowa, prior to the date of Mr. Hamilton's letters, 

 the war cliib and pipes or whistles were lost from the principal bag. 

 The next kind of sacred bags, the Waci waruxawe, numbered seven. 

 They were the bad-medicine bags, by means of which they professed to 

 deprive their enemies of power, when they had discouraged them by 

 blowing the whistles. Owing to this enchantment, they said, their 

 enemies could neither shoot nor run, and were soon killed. The next 



I See § 58. 



