-'34 



NATURE 



[October 24, 19 12 



researches has found that these two phenomena are 

 alike in sliowing an ascensional radial velocity. 



The importance of these researches is obvious, and 

 the results likely to accrue from the simultaneous 

 study of the forms and velocities of the various features 

 most valuable, but, as M. Deslandres points out, it 

 will only be possible to state g'eneral and definite laws 

 when continuous and complete observations have ex- 

 tended over at least one undecennial period of solar 

 activity. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE TO THE 

 OMAHA} 



FOR twenty-nine years Miss Alice Fletcher has 

 been studying the Omaha, and her monograph 

 of the tribe is now published in the twenty-seventh 

 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 

 Her collaborator for most of this time was Mr. Francis 

 La Flcsche (the son of Joseph La Flesche, former 

 principal chief of the tribe), who in his boyhood wit- 

 nessed some of the ceremonies described in the 

 memoir, which were later explained to him by his 

 father and bv the old men who were the keepers of 

 these ancient rites and rituals. When Miss Fletcher 

 first went to live among the Omaha, the tribe had 

 recentlv been forced to abandon hunting owing to the 

 sudden extinction of the herds of bison. All the men 

 and women had participated in the old life, many of 

 the ancient customs were practised, and much of the 

 aboriginal life still lingered. The environment was 

 changing quickly ; all that they formerly had relied 

 on as stable had been swept away; the bison, which 

 thev had been taught was given them as an inex- 

 haustible food supply, had been destroyed by agencies 

 new and strange ; even the wild grasses that had 

 covered the prairies were changing. Great unrest and 

 anxiety had come to the people through the Govern- 

 ment's dealings with their kindred, the Ponca tribe, 

 and fear haunted every Omaha fireside lest they, too, 

 be driven from their homes and the graves of their 

 fathers. The future was a dread to old and young. 

 Thanks to the strenuous efforts of Miss Fletcher on 

 their behalf, a law was enacted in 1882 granting lands 

 in severalty, and prospective citizenship. In 1802 the 

 Omaha were reduced to about 300 by smallpox ; 

 twenty-seven years later they were said to number 

 moo; in 1906 the population of the tribe was 1228. 

 The past is overlaid by a thriving present. The old 

 Omaha men and women sleep peacefully in the hills 

 while their grandchildren farm beside their white 

 neighbours, send their children to school, speak Eng- 

 lish, and keep bank accounts. 



" In the account here offered," Miss Fletcher says, 

 "nothing has been borrowed from other observers; 

 only original material gathered directly from the native 

 people has been used, and the writer has striven to 

 make, so far as possible, the Omaha his own inter- 

 preter." The most important previous accounts of 

 the tribe are the Rev. J. Owen Dorsev's "Omaha 

 Sociology," published in the third Annual Report of 

 the Bureau in 1884, which ever since has been largely 

 quoted, and his paper on "Omaha Dwellings, Furni- 

 ture and Implements " (the thirteenth Report, i8q6). 

 It will be found that there are many discrepancies 

 between Dorsev's and Miss Fletcher's statements. 

 For example, Dorsey says that the Black Shoulder 

 clan were originally bisons ("buffaloes") and dwelt 

 under the surface of the water, but Miss Fletcher 

 writes, " no Omaha believes that his ancestors ever 

 wore elk, or buffalo, or deer, or turtle, any more than 



1 Twentvseventh Annual Report of the Bure.iu of American Ethnoloey 

 to the Secret.-iry of the Smithsoni.in Institution, 1905-6. Pp.672. (Wash- 

 ington: Government Printing Office, loii.) 



NO. 2243. VOL'. 90] 



that they were the wind, the thunder, or the sky " 

 (p. 601). 



As has just been stated. Miss Fletcher gives us only 

 first-hand matter, which she has carefully sifted and 

 verified so far as possible. She evidently did not like 

 to criticise or correct Dorsey's statements; there can, 

 however, be little hesitation by students which account 

 they should follow when discrepancies occur. On 

 account of the great changes that have taken place in 

 the material, social, and religious life' of the Omaha 

 it is improbable that anything of importance can be 

 gleaned by future workers, and much that Miss 

 Fletcher describes will then be unobtainable. Her 

 monograph, the result of arduous and protracted toil, 

 is the record bv a field worker of wide sympathy and 

 insight of investigations which were begun at the 

 critical time of incipient disintegration and while the 

 old knowledge was still fresh in the minds of the 

 people. Some American ethnologists even go so far 

 as to say that she reads into the native mind ideas 

 that it does not contain, but the more we learn about 

 the North American Indian the more apparent it is 

 that he is imbued with a rare spirituality, and it is 

 a common experience that one field observer will dis- 

 cern what another cannot see, as an old writer has 

 said, " The natural man receiveth not the things of 

 the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : 

 neither can be know them, because they are spiritually 

 discerned." Doubtless Miss Fletcher is content to 

 leave this matter to the arbitration of the intensive 

 study of the religion of allied tribes. 



The legendary home of the Omaha and cognate 

 tribes was in the east, "near a great body of water," 

 and the legend gives an interesting account of cul- 

 tural evolution, due partly to invention and partly 

 to borrowing from other tribes. All children passed 

 through a ceremony of turning, which was directly 

 related to the wind, earth, and fire, whereby it was 

 introduced to the tribe. Later a lock of the boy's 

 hair was cut off and given to Thundi'r; thereby the 

 life of the child was given into the keeping of the 

 god that controlled the life and death of the warrior. 

 The next stage in the life of an Omaha youth was 

 marked bv the rite introducing him to individual life 

 and to the supernatural. Four days and nights the 

 youth was to fast and pray, then in a trance he saw 

 an object which was his personal connection with the 

 universe, by which he could strengthen his spirit and 

 his physical powers. There were societies the mem- 

 bership of which was made up of men who had had 

 visions of the same object. The sequence of rites 

 began at birth, with the announcement to all created 

 things that a new life had come into their midst; 

 when the child had acquired ability to move about of 

 its own volition, its feet were set in the path of life, 

 and it entered into membership of the tribe; the en- 

 trance into manhood required voluntary effort, and 

 by prayer and fasting the man came into direct and 

 personal relations with the supernatural. 



Miss Fletcher states that " the tribal organisation was 

 based on certain fundamental religious ideas, cosmic 

 in significance." The real division of the tribe was 

 based on the dual division in nature; each contained 

 several " gentes," which in their turn were divided 

 into " subgentes. . . . The Omaha gens was a group 

 of exogamous kindred who practised a particular rite, 

 the child's birthright to which descended solely through 

 the father; and the symbol characteristic of that rite 

 became the symbol, crest, or ' totem ' of the gens." 

 A noticeable feature in the book is the large number 

 of pravers and songs, which are given in the native 

 language, with a literal and free translation, and with 

 the musical notation. A considerable space is given 

 to an account of the social and secret societies; the 



