uoBSET.] THE MINIWATU. 441 



waves by pushing' the water toward the lowlands; therefore, the In- 

 dians prefer to eneanip on or near the blutfs. They fear to swim the 

 Missouri River on account of the water monsters, who can draw people 

 into their mouths." Can these be the Unktehi, whom the Teton call 

 Uijkce^'ila? 



§ 115. " Long- ago," according to Bushotter, "the people saw a strange 

 thing in the Missouri liiver. At night there w%as some red object, shin- 

 ing like lire, making the water roar as it passed upstream. Should any 

 one see the monster by daylight he became crazy soon after, writhing 

 as with pain, and dying. One man who said that he saw the monster 

 described it thus: ' It has red hair all over, and one eye. A horn is in 

 the middle of its forehead, and its body resembles that of a butialo." 

 Its backbone is like a cross-cut saw, being flat and notched like a 

 saw or cog wheel. When one sees it he gets bewildered, and his eyes 

 close at once. He is crazy for a day, and then he dies. The Teton 

 think that this matter is still in the river, and they call it the Miniwatu 

 or water monster. They think that it causes the ice on the river to 

 break up in the spring of the year."^ 



The Teton say that the bones of the Uijkcegila are now found in the 

 blufls of Nebraska and Dakota. 



TUE WAKI^YA^ (WAKigYAIj), OR THUNDER-BEINGS. 



§ 116. The name signifies the flying ones, from kinyan, to fly. The 

 thunder is the sound of their voices. The lightning is the missile or 

 ton wan of the winged monsters, who live and fly through the heavens 

 shielded from mortal vision by thick clouds. By some of the wakan 

 men it is said that there are four varieties of the form of their external 

 manifestation. In essence, however they are but one. One of the 

 varieties is black, with a long beak, and has four joints in his wing. 

 Another is yellow, without any beak at all; with wings like the first, 

 except that he has six quills in each wing. The third is scarlet, and 

 remarkable chiefly for having eight joints in each of its enormous pin- 

 ions. The fourth is blue and globular in form, and it is destitute of both 

 eyes and ears. Immediately over the places where the eyes should be 

 there is a semicircular line of lightning resembling an inverted half 

 moon from beneath which project downward two chains of lightning 

 diverging from each other in zigzag lines as they descend. Two plumes 

 like soft down, coming out near the roots of the descending chains of 

 lightning, serve for wings.^ 



These thunderers, of course, are of terrific proijortions. They created 

 the wild rice and a variety of prairie grass, the seed of which bears 

 some resemblance to that of the rice. At the western extremity of the 



' According to Omaha tratUtion, two buffalo gentes are of subaquatic origin. See Om. Soc, pp. 231- 

 233. 



'From an unpublished text of Bushotter. 



■^The Thunderers iu the Omaha mytli Iiave hair of ditierent colors. One has white hair, the second 

 has yellow, the third, bright red, and the fourth, gre'-n Iiair. See Contr. N. A. Eth., vol. VI. p. 1S7. 



