KADiN] RELIGION 283 



hestowing blessings upon him — in other words, of acting like a spirit, 

 a.waxop'i'ni. That is why he offers tobacco to it. We would be 

 inclined to say that the individual finding such an object has created 

 a new spirit. Such a new spirit may be forever confined to the par- 

 ticular family to which the individual belongs. It might die with 

 him, or, on the other hand, it might acquire great importance and 

 popularity and become a tribal spirit. What seems to have happened, 

 in the vast majority of cases, however, among the Winnebago, is 

 that owing to the marked development of the spirit-deities and cos- 

 mogonic myths, such "sacred" objects were interpreted as being 

 either some manifestation of a spirit, some transformation which he 

 had assumed, or as inhabited by a spirit. 



. The reason why, in our opinion, so many ethnologists have ap- 

 parently misinterpreted the nature of wak'O^ is due to the fact that 

 when something that, from the European viewpoint, is immaterial 

 and inanimate, like vapor, light, movement, etc., is called wa¥a^. 

 then it seems difficult for them to imagine that it can be so except 

 by virtue of some intimate connection with a definite spirit, and if 

 that can not be demonstrated, then the only solution left is to fall 

 back upon the "magic power" idea. By doing tliis they clearly show 

 that for them the test of individualization is corporeality of a fairly 

 definite kind, dependent mainly upon visual sensations. T h is; 

 brings us to a fundamental problem, not only for Winnebago re- 

 ligion, but for North American religion in general. 



The Concept and Nature of the Spirits 



Those Indians who have never spent any time thinking upon the 

 nature of spirits can not truly be said to have any concept of their 

 nature, whether vague or definite. They simply repeat what they 

 have heard from the more religiously inclined. An answer prompted 

 by a moment's consideration, as is often the case when an ethnologist 

 interrogates them, does not necessarily reflect the current view of 

 the subject, nor, for that matter, even the same Indian's behef 

 after he has given the matter some thought. Many Winnebago, 

 with whom the author was fairly well acquamted, refused to answer 

 certain questions offhand and asked for time to reflect about them. 

 It seems justified, when we are studying a subject like religion, to 

 ask for information from those who have, in all probability, formu- 

 lated the beliefs— the shamans. It is from them that we must 

 strive to learn whether the spirits are conceived of as anthropo- 

 morphic, theromorphic, dream-phantasms, or indefinite entities in 

 general. 



In trying to discover this the author found, not only that he was 

 asking a leadmg question, but that he was asking an unnecessary 

 question. It was soon quite clear that the Winnebago did not 



