March 4, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



299 



man's powers by the elements and the ani- 

 mals was obtainable only after an appeal 

 to Wa-koji'-da, in the rite of the vision. 



The Appeal. — The praj'er, which formed 

 a part of the rite of the vision, was called 

 Wa-kon'-da gi-ko?i. Gi gi-koji' is to weep, 

 from loss as that of kindred ; the prefix gi 

 indicates possession. Gi-ko7i is to weep 

 from want of something not possessed, from 

 conscious insufficiency, and the longing for 

 something that could bring . happiness or 

 prosperity. The words of prayer, wa-kon'- 

 da dhe-dhu wah-pa'-dhina-to?i'-he, literally 

 rendered are: Wa-kon'-da here needy Istand. 

 (A-ton-he is in the third person, and im- 

 plies the first, as he stands, and I am he — 

 a form of speech used to indicate humility. ) 

 While this prayer has been combined with 

 many rites and acts, its inherent unity of 

 name and words has been preserved 

 through generations of varied experience 

 and social development of the people.* 



Wa-kon'-da was a vague entity to the Om- 

 aha, but the anthropomorphic coloring was 

 not lacking in the general conception ; the 

 prayer voiced man's ever present conscious- 

 ness of dependence, was a craving for help, 

 and implied a belief in some mysterious 

 power able to understand, and respond to 

 his appeal. The response came in a dream, 

 or trance, wherein an appearance spoke to 

 the man, thus initiating a relation between 

 them, which was not established until the 

 man, by his own effort, had procured a 

 symbol of his visitant, which might be a 

 feather of the bird, a tuft of hair from the 

 animal, a black stone or a translucent peb- 

 ble. This memento or totem was never an 

 object of worship ; it was the man's cre- 

 dential, the fragment, to connect its pos- 

 sessor with the potentiality of the whole 

 species represented by the form seen in his 



*Thjs prayer can be seen on page 136, Soug No. 73, 

 of Vol.1, No. 5, of the ArchiEological and Ethnolog- 

 ical papers on the Peabody Mnseum, Harvard Uni- 

 versity. 



vision, and through which the man's 

 strength was to be reenforced and disaster 

 averted. 



Basis of the Efficacy of the Totem. — The efiB- 

 cacy of the totem was based upon the 

 Omaha's belief in the continuity of life, a 

 continuity which not only linked the visible 

 to the invisible, and bound the living to the 

 dead, but which kept unbroken the thread 

 of life running through all things, making 

 it impossible for the part and the entirety 

 to be disassociated. Thus, one man could 

 gain power over another by obtaining a 

 lock of his hair, which brought the man 

 himself under his influence. In the cere- 

 mony of the first cutting of the child's hair, 

 the severed lock, which was given to the 

 Thunder god, placed the life of the child in 

 the keeping of the god. Again, when a 

 man's death had been predicted — bj' one 

 gifted to see into the future — the disaster 

 could be averted by certain ceremonies 

 which included the cutting oiF of a lock of 

 hair from one side of the head, and a bit of 

 flesh from the arm on the opposite side of 

 the body, and casting them into the fire ; by 

 this sacrifice of a part the whole was rep- 

 resented, the prediction fulfilled and the 

 man permitted to live. From the ritual of 

 the Corn, sung when the priest distributed 

 the kernels to indicate that the time for 

 planting had come, we learn that these ker- 

 nels were the little portions which would 

 draw to themselves the living corn. In the 

 ritual sung over the Sacred Buffalo Hide 

 prior to the hunt the same idea is present, 

 that in the continuity of life the part is ever 

 connected with the whole, and that the 

 Sacred Biifialo Hide was able to bring within 

 reach the living animal itself. 



Limitation in Totems. — The totem opened 

 a means of communication between man 

 and the various agencies of his environ- 

 ment, but it could not transcend the power 

 of its particular species ; consequently all 

 actions were not equally potent. Men who 



