580 STUDY FROM THE OMAHA TRIBE: IMPORT OF THE TOTEM. 



The appeal. — The prayer, which formed a part of the rite of the vision, 

 was called Wa-kow'-da gi-ko%. Gi gi-ko^?,' is to weep from loss, as that 

 of kindred; the prefix "gi" indicates possession. Gi-kou 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 the prayer, "wa-kow'-da dhe-dhu wah-pa'-dhi?* a-to></ he," 

 literally rendered, are " wa-ko^i'-da," "here needy I stand." (A- tow-he is 

 in the third person aud implies 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-ko?*'-da was a vague entity to the Omaha, but the anthropomor- 

 phic coloring was not lacking in the general conception. The prayer 

 voiced man's ever-present consciousness of dependence, was a craving 

 for help, and implied a belief in some mysterious power able to under- 

 stand and respond to his appeal. The response came in a dream, or 

 trance, wherein an appearance spoke to the man, thus initiating a rela- 

 tion 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 pebble. This memento or totem was never an object of 

 worship ; it was the man's credential, the fragment, to connect its pos- 

 sessor with the potentiality of the whole species represented by the 

 form seen in his vision, and through which the man's strength was to 

 be reenforced and disaster averted. 



Basis of the efficacy of the totem. — The efficacy 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 disas- 

 sociated. 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 ceremony 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 — 

 by one gifted to see into the future — the disaster could be averted by 

 certain ceremonies, which included the cutting off a lock of hair from 

 one side of the head and a bit of flesh from the arm on the oi)posite 

 side of the body and casting them into the fire. By this sacrifice of a 

 part the whole was represented, 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 kernels were the little poitions which would draw 



'This prayer can be seeu on page 136, song No. 73, of vol. 1, No. 5, of the Archae- 

 ological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. 



