RELIGION WD I EREMONIES L09 



for all desiring to become shamans, or those in close 

 rapport with the divine element, to thrust skewers 

 through the skin and tie themselves up as in the sun 

 dance, to be discussed later. 



Now. when a Blackfoot, a Dakota, or an Omaha 

 went out to fast and pray tor a revelation, he called 

 upon all the recognized mythical creatures, the heavenly 

 bodies, and all in the earth and in the waters, which is 

 consistent with the conceptions of an illy localized power 

 or element manifest everywhere. No doubt this applies 

 equally to all the aforesaid tribes. If this divine 

 element spoke through a hawk, for example, the 

 applicant would then look upon that bird as the 

 localization or medium for it; and for him, wakonda, 

 or what not, was manifest or resided therein; but, of 

 course, not exclusively. Quite likely, he would keep 

 in a bundle the skin or feathers of a hawk that the 

 divine presence might ever be at hand. This is why 

 the warriors of the Plains carried such charms into battle 

 and looked to them for aid. It is not far wrong to say 

 that all religious ceremonies and practices (all the 

 so-called medicines of the Plains Indians) originate 

 and receive their sanction in dreams or induced visions, 

 all, in short, handed down directly by this wonderful 

 vitalizing element. 



Medicine Bundles. In anthropological literature 

 it is the custom to use the term medicine in a technical 

 sense, meaning anything that manifests the divine 

 element. Among the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Crow, Kiowa, 

 Hidatsa, and Mandan especially and to varying extent 



