BULL. .'50] 



WHISTLES WHITE DOG SACRIFICE 



939 



further corrupted into whisky-jack, occa- 

 sionally into whisky-dick. (a. f. c. ) 



Whistles. See Music and Musical instru- 

 ments. 



White Apple. One of the Natchez vil- 

 lages of early writers, which seems to 

 have been situated on the. e. side of St 

 Catherines cr. , Miss. , opposite the Grand 

 village. AVhite Earth has been supposed 

 to be identical with it. For the arche- 

 ology of this section, see Bull. Free Mus. 

 Univ. Pa., ii, 128, 1900. 



Apple Village.— Bossu, Travels La., 49, 1771. 

 Great Village. — Diimontin French, Hist. Coll. La., 

 V, 31, 18.53. Great White Apple Village.— Ibid., 70, 

 Vpelois. — Iberville (1699) quoted by Brinton in 

 Proc. Am. Philos. Soe., 483, 1873. White Apple 

 Village.— Dumont, op. cit., 49. 



White Cap Indians. A band of Sioux 

 from Minnesota, under the chief White 

 Cap (Wapahaska) in 1879, who settled on 

 s. Saskatchewan r. in Assiniboia, Canada. 

 White Cap Sioux.— Can. Ind. Aff., 95, 1880. 



White Cloud. See Wabanaquot; Wabo- 

 kieshiek. 



White Dog Sacrifice. The annual im- 

 molation of the white dog (or dogs) at 

 the New Year ceremony by the Iroquois 

 is the satisfaction or the fulfilment of a 

 dream of Teharonhiawagon (q. v.), one 

 of their chief gods, who, in the Iroquoian 

 cosmic philosophy, is the impersonation 

 or the embodiment of all faunal and 

 floral life on earth. He is therefore 

 called the Master of Life, or the Life 

 God. As prescribed by the ritual em- 

 ployed, the date for beginning the cere- 

 mony, or more properly series of rites, is 

 on the 5th day of the new moon, called 

 Disgo^nd' ('long moon'), which is the 

 second coming after the winter solstice, 

 or about the end of January or the early 

 part of February. These New Year 

 rites deal symbolically with very strik- 

 ing phenomena in nature, namely, the 

 weakening or the depression of the 

 power of the Life God by the Monster 

 Forces of the Winter God, exhibited in 

 the seeming demise of nearly all fauna 

 and flora following the departure south- 

 ward of the Sun, and the dispersion of 

 the Winter God's forces and the renewal 

 of life in all things on earth by his return 

 northward. In the native mind these 

 changes are due largely to enchantments 

 produced by powerful orendas ( q. v. ) , or 

 magic powers, struggling for supremacy. 

 So the rites and ceremonies believed to 

 be efficacious in the restoration of health 

 among men are believed to be likewise 

 effective among the gods. Dreams being 

 the recognized means through which 

 tutelaries may reveal the objects or 

 agencies to be employed for the recovery 

 of health when ruined by sorcery, it was 

 assumed that Teharonhiawagon, in view 

 of his weakened power, must have 

 dreamed what would restore his life, the 

 life in nature, to its normal condition; 



and the tutelaries of man, his father's 

 clansmen, have revealed, it is thought, 

 the fact that he has dreamed that a sac- 

 rificial victim and an offering of tobacco 

 are required to disenchant the life forces 

 in nature and in man. The motive of 

 these New Year rites is therefore (1) to 

 resuscitate all life on earth by supplying 

 to the Master of Life what he has 

 dreamed is imperatively necessary to 

 secure the well-being of his specific incar- 

 nations — the normal bodies and beings 

 in nature, and (2) to renew through rite 

 and ceremony all the agencies and means, 

 largely mythic or figmental in character, 

 which are believed to secure and promote 

 man's welfare. Should the blight cast 

 upon the face of nature by the demons of 

 the Winter God, should the migration of 

 birds and fishes, and the hibernation of 

 game and other animals become perma- 

 nent facts, unchangeable phenomena of 

 the known world, the wise men of the 

 Iroquois taught that all normal life on 

 earth — birds, animals, and men — would 

 perish from the land, and that corn, 

 beans, squashes, and sunflowers, and the 

 precious tobacco, could no longer be 

 planted to sprout and grow to maturity, 

 so that the demon Famine would devour 

 the people. It is this gloomy prospect 

 that impels the tutelary of Teharonhia- 

 wagon, the Master of Life, to reveal to his 

 soul, through a dream, what is needed, 

 in the form of an offering by mankind, 

 to thwart the malign purpose of the 

 demons of the Winter God, Tawiskaron 

 (q. v.). He who seeks the fulfilment of 

 his dream must chant his death song, 

 the challenge song of his tutelary, and 

 for this reason Teharonhiawagon, too, 

 sings his death chant in midwinter, for 

 if his dream be disregarded and remain 

 unsatisfied, the complete destruction of 

 all life on earth would take place. The 

 Caucasian custom of drinking the health 

 of a person is a vestigial reflex of a similar 

 concept. 



In considering the status, the character, 

 and the dependence on man of Teharon- 

 hiawagon as a chief god among others, 

 an important caution is to be kept in 

 mind, namely, that while he is regarded 

 as the Master of Life, it must not be 

 inferred that he is also the god or ruler 

 of all other things; and it must not be 

 overlooked that all gods as such were 

 themselves subject to the inexorable 

 decrees of Fate, of Destiny. In primi- 

 tive thought the concept or idea of Fate 

 or Destiny is clearly developed out of 

 the countless failures of the gods to bring 

 about results contrary to the established 

 course of nature; every failure of a god 

 to accomplish a certain expected result 

 was at once attributed to one of two 

 things: either to the conjectured inability 



