158 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull, ei 



wonderful things, such as digging the ditches where the rivers run. At last they died 

 of old age, and their spirits went again to the clouds and resumed their form as thunder- 

 birds. While they were on earth, the rain fell without sound of thunder or flash of 

 lightning, but after their return to the sky the lightning came — it is the flash of their 

 eyes, and the thunder is the sound of their terrible song. WTien they are angry, the 

 lightning strikes a rock or tree as a warning to men. The bodies of these giants became 

 stone, and parts of them are found in many places, indeed the whole body of more 

 than one of these giants has been found in the land of the Dakotas. 



The Heyo'ka Ka'ga was a ceremony of public humiliation in 

 which the man who had been selected by the thunderbirds to receive 

 a manifestation of their presence in a dream voluntarily exposed 

 himself to the ridicule of the lowest element in the tribe.' His self- 

 abasement was exaggerated to the greatest possible degree. The 

 superficial and unthinking heaped their scorn and derision upon him, 

 but the wise of the tribe understood that, to the end of his life, that 

 man could command the powers of the sky to help him in his under- 

 takings. In the opinion of the writer's informants the enacting of 

 the part of a fool in connection with a thunderbird dream was an ex- 

 ample of the antithesis by which Indians sometimes disguise their 

 meaning. In this it might be said to resemble the "sacred language" 

 (see p. 120, footnote), which is unintelligible to those who are not 

 initiated into its mysteries. 



Several of the writer's informants, after consultation, gave th? fol- 

 lowing meanings (or uses) for the word Jieyo'lia: A man who has 

 dreamed of the thunderbirds; a person who does things contrary to 

 the natural way of doing them; and, in some instances, a joker. In 

 connection with the ceremony in fulfillment of a thunderbird dream 

 the word is translated ''fool," because only a foolish or hjilf-witted 

 person would behave, under such circumstances, in the manner as- 

 sumed by the dreamer, while the merriment provoked by the. action 

 gives rise to the term "clown." The writer's informants stated that 

 in their youth they had never heard of heyo'ka being regarded as 

 gods by the Teton Sioux. In their opinion the heyo'ka resembled 

 characters in the field of folk tales, rather than in that of religion. 

 Holding the opposite view, both Riggs and Pond enumerate heyo'ka 

 among the Dakota gods.^ The reason for not regarding heyo'ka as 

 gods, on the part of the writer's informants, seemed to be that they 

 are not accredited with supernatural power. Writing on this sub- 

 ject J. Owen Dorsey says :^ " Dr. Brinton has confounded the Heyoka 

 with the Wakinyan.* The two are distinct classes of powers, though 

 there is some connection between them, as may bo inferred from the 



1 Cf. Wlssler, Clark, Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota, 

 nAnthr. Papers, Amer. Mj,s. Nat. Hist.,xi, pt. 1, pp. 82-85, New York, 1912; also Lowie, Robert H., 

 Danoe Associations of the Eastern Dakota, ibid., pt. 2, pp. 113-117, 1913. 



2 Riggs, in Tah-koo Wahkan, p. GG Boston [18G9]. Pond, G. H.,in Colls. Minn. Hist. Soc. for 18G7, p. 44. 

 St. Paul, 1867. 



3 See A Study of Siouan Cults, Eleventh Rep. Bur. Ethn. p. 469, 1894. 



< It is said that the thunderbirds are related also to the sacred stones. (See p. 208.) 



