THE SUPERHUMAN. 215 
cations from the spirit world. ‘Thus, armed by all these experiences and 
aids, the man becomes a wiéasta wakay indeed, a man of mystery, a healer 
of diseases, a war-prophet and a leader on the war-path. 
The conjuring, the powwowing, that is, the magic of the healing art, 
may always have called to its aid, in some small degree, a knowledge and 
use of barks and roots and herbs. But as the magic declined the use of 
roots and medicines increased, so that the doctor comes to be designated 
Pezihuta wiéasta, the Grass Root Man. As the knowledge of letters and 
Christianity have come in, their faith in vision seeking and necromancy 
has been undermined and the power, they say, has departed. 
The Dakota beliefs in regard to diseases, and the common way of 
treating them, as well as the progress of thought, and change of practice, 
consequent upon the introduction of Christianity, will be well illustrated in 
the following sketch of a full blood Dakota man, who was a member of the 
Presbyterian General Assembly of 1880, and who before that body made 
a speech on Indian rights in the capitol of Wisconsin. 
EHNA-MANI. 
The “One who walks through,” as his name means, is now a man of 
fifty winters or more and the pastor of the Pilgrim Church at the Santee 
Agency, in Knox County, Nebraska. He was born at Red Wing on 
on the Mississippi, which place the Dakotas called He-mini-éay—hill- 
water-wood—thus finely describing the hill, standing so close to the water, 
with its river side covered with trees. 
At his baptism Ehna-mani was called Artemas. Tall and athletic, en- 
ergetic and swift of foot, as a young man, he appears to have made his 
mark on the war path, in the deer hunt, on the ball ground, and in the 
dancing circles. Even now he can sing more Dakota songs of love, war 
songs, and songs of the sacred mysteries, than any other man I have seen. 
During last summer I journeyed with Artemas and others, on horseback, 
many hundred miles up the Missouri River, and across to Fort Wadsworth 
and Minnesota, and often beguiled the tedious prairie rides with listening 
to these songs, hearing his explanation of the enigmatical words, and. then 
stopping my pony to note them down. 
Because of the light that came through the increasing intercourse of 
the Dakotas with white people, the father of Artemas was afraid he might 
be induced to forsake the religion of his ancestors, and so made him 
promise that, while he had his children educated in the civilization and 
