THE OSAGE TRIBE: THE RITE OF VIGIL. 



By Francis La Flesche. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The first volume of the work on the Osage tribe appeared in the 

 Thirty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 published in 1922. In that volmne is given " The Rite of the Chiefs." 

 It is first presented because in it is preserved the story of the organi- 

 zation of the Osage tribe. Beginning in allegory, the story follows 

 the career of the people thi-ough a long period of military control 

 to the establishment of a civil form of government, with hereditary 

 chiefs, whose duty, among other things, was to preserve peace and 

 order within the tribe. Throughout this long passage of time re- 

 ligious rites were formulated and given expression in the two great 

 spnbolic divisions of the tribe, each having its various gentes with 

 their gentile life symbols. The account closes with a description of 

 the annual ceremony of thanks to the life-giving power that resides 

 in the fom- winds for the gift of peace and prosperity to the people. 

 The religious conceptions of the No^'-ho^-zhi^-ga and the tribal 

 organization based upon those conceptions were essentially a part of 

 the life of the people down to historic times. 



The second rite given in the first volmne belongs to the "seven 

 ceremonial divisions "' of the tribal war rites that partake of degrees. 

 The rite is called "Ni'-ki No"-k'o'' " (Hearing of the Sayings of the 

 Ancient Men), and "deals with life in the abstract." There is no 

 single fixed order of these seven degrees, as each gens has its own 

 arrangement, yet all agree in placing this rite, the Ni'-ki No"-k'o", 

 Hearing of the Sayings of the Ancient Men, as the last or ''seventh 

 degree." The songs interspersed in the rite and its wi'-gi-es, the 

 principal one of which has 1,542 lines, all bear testimony to the 

 antiquity of this rite that deals not only with the religious concep- 

 tions of the people but designates their food and records their secular 

 and ceremonial life. 



A few sentences are quoted from the close of the first volume: 

 "What has been gathered and here presented of the Rite of the Chiefs 

 and the Ni'-ki-e rites is but a small portion of the Osage tribal rites as 

 a whole. Were the 21 versions of these two rites to be recorded and 



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