178 



OYARON 



[b. a. b. 



Oyaron {o-i-d^-ro>'i') . The common Iro- 

 quois name of the personal, and some- 

 times the gentile and tribal, tutelary, 

 guardian genius, or guiding spirit believed 

 to protect and watch over the destiny 

 and welfare of every person or kindred. 



The doctrines connected with the con- 

 cept of the oyaron lie at the base of the 

 activities comprehended under the rubric 

 totemism, the key to which is the idea of 

 guardianship or voluntary protection, 

 based on the concept of primitive man 

 that the earth and all that it contains 

 was brought into being Vjy the primal 

 beings of his cosmogony solely for the 

 welfare and glory of man, and that there- 

 fore these owed to him the duty of vol- 

 untarily making provision for his welfare. 

 It was a dogma of this early philosophy 

 that the oyaron was revealed or mani- 

 fested itself to the subject in a vision or 

 dream, either before or after birth. After 

 birth it could be ceremonially acquired 

 in the following general manner: At the 

 age of puberty, the boy under the tutor- 

 ship of an old man, usually a diviner or 

 prophet, and the girl under that of a 

 matron, withdrew to some secluded spot, 

 in which tutor and pupil lived in a lodge 

 built for the purpose, from which all 

 persons except the novice and the tutor 

 were rigidly excluded. During this 

 period of strict seclusion, the novice was 

 subjected to a rigorous fast and dosed 

 with prescribed powders and decoctions, 

 and his face, shoulders, and breast were 

 blackened to symbolize the mental dark- 

 ness in which the novice or initiate then 

 was and also his physical want of occult 

 power. The initiate was directed care- 

 fully to observe his or her dreams or 

 visions during this fast and to report 

 them in minutest detail to his tutor, 

 whose duty it was to give attention to 

 the behavior of his charge. In the ful- 

 filment of his duty, the tutor frequently 

 conferred with the ancients, the elders 

 and chief women of the clan and tribe, 

 concerning his charge, in order the better 

 to choose from the occult hints embodied 

 in the dreams and visions what should 

 be selected, or rather what had been 

 suggested in the dreams as the tutelary 

 or guardian genius of the initiate, on 

 which would in the future depend the 

 welfare and security of his life, his oyaron, 

 and, lastly, what vocations he should 

 choose to be successful in after life. The 

 oyaron revealed in one of these mysteri- 

 ous dreams or visions consisted usually 

 of the first trifle that impressed the 

 imagination of the dreamer — a calumet, 

 a pipe, a knife, a bow or an arrow, a 

 bearskin, a plant, an animal, an action, a 

 game: in a word, anything might become, 

 if suggested in a dream or vision, a tute- 

 lary or an oyaron. But what is funda- 

 mental and important is that it was not 



believed that the object itself was in fact 

 a spirit or genius, but that it was its em- 

 bodiment, the symbol or outward sign of 

 the union subsisting between the soul 

 and its tutelary or guardian genius, 

 through the guidance and potency of 

 which the soul nmst know and do every- 

 thing; for, by virtue of the oyaron a per- 

 son could transform himself in shape 

 and size, and could do what he pleased, 

 unless checked by a more powerful 

 orenda (q. v.) guided by a more astute 

 oyaron; it was the subjective being which 

 was the means of his metamorphoses, 

 his enchantments, whether he regarded 

 these changes real or whether he was 

 persuaded that it was the soul alone that 

 detached itself, or the genius that acted 

 in conformity with his OM'n intention and 

 according to his will. 



Tutelaries had not the same efficiency, 

 nor the same scope of action. There were 

 persons more favored, more enlightened, 

 than the common people, through the 

 guidance of genii of superior potency, 

 enabling the souls of such persons to feel 

 and to see not only what concerned their 

 possessors personally, but to see even into 

 the very bottom of the souls of other 

 persons, to pierce through the veil which 

 covered them, and there to perceive the 

 natural and the innate desires and 

 promptings which those souls might have 

 had, although these souls themselves 

 had not perceived them, or at least had 

 not expressed them by dreams and vi- 

 sions, or although so expressed in this 

 peculiar manner, those revelations had 

 been entirely forgotten. It was this 

 ability of seeing into the bodies of men 

 that gave these persons the name saiot- 

 katta (Huron), or shayotgathvaft (Onon- 

 daga), or agotKinnacJien (by both Hurons 

 and Iroquois), the first signifying 'One 

 who examines another by seeing,' liter- 

 ally, 'one customarily looks at another.' 

 But beyond this occult knowledge of 

 hidden things, they professed the fur- 

 ther ability to perform still other won- 

 ders by means of certain chants, songs, 

 and dances, through which they were 

 enabled to put forth their own orenda. 

 In this capacity, a person of this class 

 received the name arendwuanen (ior ha- 

 rendiowanen), a compound of the noun 

 orenda and the qualifier -wanen, 'large,' 

 'great,' 'powerful,' together signifying 

 'his orenda is powerful,' or 'one whose 

 orenda is powerful.' Lastly, the inter- 

 course of the persons having potent 

 orenda and superior oyaron, with sjiirits, 

 especially those regarded as monstrous 

 in form and disposition and as hostile to 

 the welfare of man, gave them the name 

 of agotkon, 'one who is ah otkon' (q. v. ). 



Those having powerful orenda and 

 possessing the protection of a ])Otent 

 and resourceful oyaron were regarded as 



