DoKSEv.] MEANING OF " WAKAN." 433 



WAH-KON, which is the supernatural aud mysterious. No one term can express tlie 

 liill meaning of the Dakota's Wakan. It comprehends all myster.v, secret power, 

 and divinity. * * • AH life is Wakan. So also is everything which exhibits 

 power, whether in action, as the winds and drifting clouds, or in passive endurance, 

 as the bowlder by the wayside.' 



MEANING OP "WAKAN." 



In the mind of a Dakota » « • this word Wah-kon (we write, wa-kan) covers 

 the whole field of their fear and worship. Many things also that are neither feared 

 nor worshii)ed, but are simply wonderful, come under this designation. It is related 

 of Hennepin that when he and his two companions were taken captive by a Sioux 

 war party, as they ascended the upper Mississippi one of the men took up his gun 

 and shot a deer on the bank. The Indians said, " Wah-kon chi ?" — Is not this mys- 

 terious? And from that day * * • the gun has been called Mah-za wah-kon, 

 mysterious iron. This is shortened into Mah-za-kon. The same thing we may 

 believe is true when, probably less than two centuries ago, they first saw a horse. 

 They said "Shoon-ka wah-kon," wonderful dog. And from that day the horse has 

 been called by the Sioux wonderful dog, except when it has been called big dog, 

 Shoon-ka tonka. These historical facts have satisfied us that the idea of the Great 

 Spirit ascribed to the Indians of North America does not belong to the original 

 theogony of the Sioux, but has conie from withoiit, like that (sic) of the horse aud 

 gun, and probably dates back only to their first hearing of the white man's God.'^ 



Taku Wal-aii. — This is a general term, including all that is wonder- 

 ful, incomprehensible, supernatural — what is wakan; but especially 

 covering- the objects of their worship. Until used in reference to our 

 God, it is believed that the phrase was not applied to any individual 

 object of "worship, but was equivalent to " the gods."' As tuwe, irho, 

 refers to persons, and taku, tchat, to things, the correctness of Riggs's 

 condusicm can hardly be questioned, jjrovided we add that the Dakota 

 term, Taku Wakan, could not have conveyed to the Dakota mind the 

 idea of a personal God, using the term person as it is commonly em- 

 ployed by civilized peoples. 



DAIMONISM. 



§ 96. Lynd says : 



The divinities of evil among the Dakotas may be called legion. Their special 

 delight is to make man miseraljle or to destroy him. Demons wander through the 

 earth, causing sickness an<l death. Spirits of evil are ever ready to pounce upon 

 and destroy the unwary. Spirits of earth, air, fire, and water (see § 36) surround 

 him upon every side, and with but one great governing object in view — the misery 

 and destruction of the human race.^ 



ANIMISM. 



§ 97. Their religious system gives to everything a soul or spirit. 

 Even the commonest sticks and clays have a spiritual essence attached 



■ Eiggs, Tah-koo Wah-koD, pp. 56, 57. 



'Kiggs iu Am. Antiii., Vol, ll, No. 4, p. 265; and in Am. Philolog. Assoc. Proc, 1872, pp. 5,6. 

 ' Eiggs, in Am. Antiq., vol. n, No. 4, p. 206. Pond, Minn. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. n, pt. 3, p. 33. Smet, 

 op. rit., 120, note. 

 'Minn. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. n. pt. 2. 

 11 ETH 28 



