Chapter LXXI: Section 5: Religious Ceremonies

Many examples of masks, dance ornaments, and fetiches used in ceremonies are reported and illustrated in the several papers of Messrs. Cushing, Holmes, and Stevenson in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Paintings or drawings of many of them have been found on pottery, on shells, and on rocks.

An admirable article by Mr. J. Walter Fewkes (_b_) on Tusayan Pictographs explains many of the petroglyphs of that region as depicting objects used in dances and ceremonies.

Fig. 713 exhibits drawings of various masks used in dancing, the characters of which were obtained by Mr. G. K. Gilbert from rocks at Oakley springs and were explained to him by Tubi, the chief of the Oraibi Pueblos. They are representations of masks as used by the Moki, Zuñi, and Rio Grande Pueblos.

Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U. S. Army, writing from Camp Verde, Arizona, kindly furnished the following account of Yuman ceremonies, in which the making of sand pictures was prominent:

All the medicine men meet occasionally and with considerable
ceremony “make medicine.” They went through the performance early in
the summer of 1874 on the reservation for the purpose of averting
the diseases with which the Indians were afflicted the summer
previous. In the middle of one of the villages they made a round
ramada, or house of boughs, some 10 feet in diameter, and under it,
on the sand, illustrated the spirit land in a picture about 7 feet
across, made in colors by sprinkling powdered leaves and grass, red
clay, charcoal, and ashes on the smoothed sand. In the center was
a round spot of red clay about 10 inches in diameter, and around
it several successive rings of green and red alternately, each
ring being an inch and a half wide. Projecting from the outer ring
were four somewhat triangular-shaped figures, each one of which
corresponded to one of the cardinal points of the compass, giving
the whole the appearance of a Maltese cross. Around this cross and
between its arms were the figures of men with their feet toward the
center, some made of charcoal, with ashes for eyes and hair, others
of red clay and ashes, etc. These figures were 8 or 9 inches long,
and nearly all of them lacked some portion of the body, some an
arm, others a leg or the head. The medicine men seated themselves
around the picture on the ground in a circle, and the Indians from
the different bands crowded around them, the old men squatting close
by and the young men standing back of them. After they had invoked
the aid of the spirits in a number of chants, one of their number,
apparently the oldest, a toothless, gray-haired man, solemnly arose
and, carefully stepping between the figures of the men, dropped on
each one a pinch of the yellow powder which he took from a small
buckskin bag which had been handed to him. He put the powder on the
heads of some, on the chests of others, and on other parts of the
body, one of the other men sometimes telling him where to put it.
After going all around, skipping three figures, however, he put
up the bag, and then went around again and took from each figure
a large pinch of powder, taking up the yellow powder also, and in
this way collected a heaping handful. After doing this he stepped
back and another medicine man collected a handful in the same way,
others following him. Some of the laymen, in their eagerness to get
some, pressed forward, but were ordered back. But after the medicine
men had supplied themselves the ramada was torn down and a rush was
made by men and boys; handfuls of the dirt were grabbed and rubbed
on their bodies or carried away. The women and children, who were
waiting for an invitation, were then called. They rushed to the
spot in a crowd, and grabbing handfuls of dirt tossed it up in the
air so that it would fall on them, or they rubbed their bodies with
it, mothers throwing it over their children and rubbing it on their
heads. This ended the performance.

According to Stephen Powers (in Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 140), there is at the head of Potter valley, California, “a singular knoll of red earth which the Tatu or Hūchnom believe to have furnished the material for the erection of the original coyote-man. They mix this red earth into their acorn bread, and employ it for painting their bodies on divers mystic occasions.”

Descriptions of ceremonies in medicine lodges and in the initiation of candidates to secret associations have been published with and without illustrations. The most striking of these are graphic ceremonial charts made by the Indians themselves, a number of which besides those immediately following appear in different parts of the present work.

Fig. 714 was drawn and interpreted by Naumoff, a Kadiak native, in San Francisco, California, in 1882. It represents the ground plan of a shaman’s lodge, with the shaman curing a sick man.

The following is the explanation:

_a_, the entrance to the lodge; _b_, the fireplace; _c_, a vertical piece of wood upon which is placed a crosspiece, upon each end of which is a lamp; _d_, the musicians upon the raised seats drumming and producing music to the movements of the shaman during his incantations in exorcising the “evil spirit” supposed to have possession of the patient; _e_, visitors and friends of the afflicted seated around the walls of the lodge; _f_, the shaman represented in making his incantations; _g_, the patient seated upon the floor of the lodge; _h_ represents the shaman in another stage of the ceremonies, driving out of the patient the “evil being”; _i_, another figure of the patient--from his head is seen to issue a line connecting it with _j_; _j_, the “evil spirit” causing the sickness; _k_, the shaman in the act of driving the “evil being” out of the lodge--in his hands are sacred objects, his personal fetich, in which the power lies; _l_, the flying “evil one”; _m_, _n_, are assistants to the shaman stationed at the entrance to hit and hasten the departure of the evil being.

The writer in examination at three reservations in Wisconsin obtained information concerning the Midē' ceremonies additional to the details described by Dr. Hoffman (_a_) and by others quoted in the present work. The full ceremonies of the Midē' lodges, which the more southern Ojibwa, who speak English, translate as “grand medicine,” were performed twice a year--in the fall and in the spring. Those in the spring were of a rejoicing character, to welcome the return of the good spirits; those in the fall were in lamentation for the departure of the beneficent and the arrival of the maleficent spirits. The drums were beaten four days and nights before the dance, which lasted for a whole day. After the dance twelve selected persons built a lodge, about the center of which they placed stones which had been heated, and dancing went on around it until the stones were moistened and cooled by the sweat of the performers. Singing, or more properly chanting, regulated the rhythm of the dances, although, perhaps, in the order of evolution the dance was prior to the chant. These ceremonies were performed by the body of the people, and were independent of the initiations in the secret order. With regard to the candidates who passed the initiations, it was mentioned as an undisputed fact that they always became stronger and better men, perhaps because only those succeeded who had the requisite strength of mind and body to endure the various ordeals and to pass examination in the mysteries. In pictography the spring and the fall, the drums and the steaming stones, the dancing forms and the open chanting mouth are shown.

Catlin (_a_) gives an account of Kee-an-ne-kuk, the foremost man, who, though a Kickapoo, was commonly called the Shawnee Prophet, and also the following description relating to Fig. 715, painted by that author in 1831:

Ah-tón-we-tuck, The-Cock-Turkey, is another Kickapoo of some
distinction and a disciple of the [Shawnee] Prophet, in the attitude
of prayer, which he is reading off from characters cut upon a stick
that he holds in his hand. It was told to me in the tribe by the
traders (though I am afraid to vouch for the whole truth of it)
that while a Methodist preacher was soliciting him for permission
to preach in his village, the Prophet refused him the privilege,
but secretly took him aside and supported him until he learned
from him his creed and his system of teaching it to others, when he
discharged him and commenced preaching amongst his people himself,
pretending to have had an interview with some superhuman mission
or inspired personage, ingeniously resolving that if there was any
honor or emolument or influence to be gained by the promulgation
of it, he might as well have it as another person; and with this
view he commenced preaching and instituted a prayer, which he
ingeniously carved on a maple stick of an inch and a half in
breadth, in characters somewhat resembling Chinese letters. These
sticks, with the prayers on them, he has introduced into every
family of the tribe and into the hands of every individual; and as
he has necessarily the manufacturing of them all, he sells them at
his own price and has thus added lucre to fame, and in two essential
and effective ways augmented his influence in his tribe. Every man,
woman, and child in the tribe, so far as I saw them, were in the
habit of saying their prayer from this stick when going to bed at
night and also when rising in the morning, which was invariably
done by placing the forefinger of the right hand under the upper
character until they repeat a sentence or two, which it suggests
to them, and then slipping it under the next and the next, and so
on to the bottom of the stick, which altogether required about ten
minutes, as it was sung over in a sort of a chant to the end.

Fig. 716, from the same volume, opposite page 100, is a portrait of On-sáw-kie, The-Sac, a Pottawatomie, using one of these prayer sticks, which had been procured from the Shawnee Prophet.

Figs. 715 and 716 with their descriptions exhibit an intermediate condition between the aboriginal mnemonic method and the Christian formula of prayer by the use of printed books. They should be considered in comparison with the remarks on the “Micmac Hieroglyphs,” Chap. XIX, Sec. 2.

Fig. 717, incised on the Kejimkoojik rocks in Nova Scotia, suggests the midē' lodge, sometimes called the medicine lodge, of the Ojibwa, which is described above. The ground plan indicated in this figure seems to be divided by partitions, which, together with the human figures and designs, probably refer to the rites of initiation and celebration performed in them. Some of the Micmacs examined had a vague recollection of these ceremonies, which, at the time of the European discovery of the northeastern part of North America, probably were as widely prevalent, as they continued to be much later, among the regions farther in the interior, also occupied by the Algonquian tribes.

Fig. 718, from the same locality, is a drawing of the ground plan of another description of ceremonial wigwam or lodge which is remarkably similar to that now called by the Ojibwa “the jessăkân.” Its distinguishing feature is the branch of a tree erected on the outside, and it is the wigwam of a juggler or wizard, and not the lodge belonging to the regular order of the Midē'. Such wigwams of jugglers, who performed wonderful feats similar to those of modern spiritualistic exhibitions, are frequently mentioned by the early French and English writers, who gave accounts of the provinces of New France and New England. The figure now presented is not suggestive without comparison, and would not have been selected for the foregoing description without the authority of living Micmac and Abnaki Indians, to whom it was significant.

Figs. 717 and 718, however, when studied, recall the use of branches and prayer plumes in the descriptions of the houses, and especially of the kivas of the Pueblos and the forms of their consecration mentioned in the study of the Pueblo Architecture, by Mr. Victor Mindeleff, in the Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, as follows:

It is difficult to elicit intelligent explanation of the
theory of the baho and the prayer ceremonies in either kiva or
house construction. The baho is a prayer token; the petitioner is
not satisfied by merely speaking or singing his prayer; he must
have some tangible thing upon which to transmit it. He regards his
prayer as a mysterious, impalpable portion of his own substance,
and hence he seeks to embody it in some object which thus becomes
consecrated. The baho, which is inserted in the roof of the kiva, is
a piece of willow twig about 6 inches long, stripped of its bark and
painted. From it hang four small feathers suspended by short cotton
strings tied at equal distances along the twig. In order to obtain
recognition from the powers especially addressed, different colored
feathers and distinct methods of attaching them to bits of wood and
string are resorted to.

The characters in Fig. 719 are copied from a drawing on the rocks in the Canyon Segy. They have been submitted to the most intelligent of the old Moki priests, and are said to represent the primitive sun priests. They watched for the sunrise every morning and the chief sun priest kept a reckoning of the equinoxes. The chief sun priest, _a_, made the daily sacrifices to the sun by scattering consecrated meal and singing a prayer to the sun just as it rose. His assistant, _b_, lit a pipe of tobacco at the same time, and exhaled puffs of smoke, one toward each of the cardinal points, one to the zenith, and one to the nadir. The three other figures are flageolet priests, and the skins of different kinds of foxes were attached to their reed flageolets. _c_ played to the morning star, typified by the skin of the gray fox. _d_ played to the dawn, typified by the skin of the red fox. _e_ played to the daylight, typified by the skin of the yellow fox.

Dr. Franz Boas (_e_) reported as follows:

The Tsimshian have four secret societies, which have evidently
been borrowed from the Kwākiutl, the Olala or Wihalait, Nō'ntlem,
Mē'itla, and Semhalait.

The candidate is taken to the house of his parents and a bunch
of cedar bark is fastened over the door, to show that the place is
tabooed, and nobody is allowed to enter. The chief sings while it
is being fastened. In the afternoon the sacred house is prepared
for the dance. A section in the rear of the house is divided off by
means of curtains; it is to serve as a stage, on which the dancers
and the novice appear. When all is ready messengers carrying large
carved batons are sent around to invite the members of the society,
the chief first. The women sit down in one row, nicely dressed up
in button blankets and their faces painted red. The chief wears the
amhalait, a carving rising from the forehead, set with sea-lion
barbs and with a long drapery of ermine skins; the others, the cedar
bark rings of the society. * * *

The Mēitla have a red head ring and red eagle downs, the Nōntlem
a neck ring plaited of white and red cedar bark, the Olala a similar
but far larger one. The members of the societies receive a head ring
for each time they pass through these ceremonies. These are fastened
one on top of the other.

Mr. James W. Lynd (_d_) says:

In the worship of their deities paint (with the Dakotas),
forms an important feature. Scarlet or red is the religious color
for sacrifices, whilst blue is used by the women in many of the
ceremonies in which they participate. This, however, is not a
constant distinction of sex, for the women frequently use red and
scarlet. The use of paints, the Dakotas aver, was taught them by the
gods. Unktehi taught the first medicine men how to paint themselves
when they worshiped him and what colors to use. Takushkanshkan
(the moving god), whispers to his favorites what colors are most
acceptable to him. Heyoka hovers over them in dreams, and informs
them how many streaks to employ upon their bodies and the tinge they
must have. No ceremony of worship is complete without the wakan or
sacred application of paint. The down of the female swan is colored
scarlet and forms a necessary part of sacrifices.

Wiener (_d_) gives a description of Peruvian ceremonies, with an illustration reproduced here as Fig. 720.

The paintings on this vase, found by Dr. Macedo in the
excavations at Pachacamac, show the principal practices of the
exoteric worship of the sun. In this painting there are three
entirely distinct groups. The central one is composed of the solar
image surrounded by nine rays, terminating in symbols of fecundity.
Two men placed at its right and left seem to play on pandean pipes.
The group on the left is formed of four individuals, two of whom
have head-dresses of royal feathers. This group is performing a
dance, while the third group represents the same solar disk and
the sacrifice accompanied by music performed in its honor. There
are also vases of different forms containing, probably, the sacred
drink, and the officiator approaching one hand to one of the great
urns, while with the other he holds the vase or the bowl from
which he is about to drink the _chica_ consecrated to the sun. The
princely personages who have the right to approach the sun wear
casques with royal plumes, chemisettes extending below the middle,
and ornaments at the lower part of the legs and on the feet. The
musicians, four in number (two of whom play upon the pandean pipes
and two upon the henna), are distinguished by bonnets without
feathers and by a kind of cloak tied around the neck by a band
which floats behind them. Finally, the priests, one of whom is an
officiator, and the other dancers in the suite of the princely
personages, wear bonnets like that of the musicians (who very
probably belong to the same class). They have their faces painted.

A. W. Howitt, in MS. Notes on Australian Pictographs, contributes the following:

Among the most interesting of the pictorial markings used by
the aborigines are those which are made in connection with the
ceremonies of initiation. I now take as an instance the Murring
tribe of the southern coast of New South Wales, whose ceremonies I
have described elsewhere. The humming instrument, which is known
in England as a child’s toy called the bull roarer, has a sacred
character with all the Australian tribes. The Murring call it Mŭdji,
and the loud roaring sound made when it is swung around at the end
of a cord is considered to be the voice of Daramūlŭn, the great
supernatural being by whom, according to their tradition, these
ceremonies were first instituted.

On this instrument there are marked two notches, one at each
end, representing the gap left in the upper jaw of the novice after
his teeth have been knocked out during the rites; there is also
figured on it the rude representations of Daramūlŭn.

A similar rude outline of a man in the attitude of the magic
dance, being also Daramūlŭn, is cut by the old men (wizards) at
the ceremonies, upon the bark of a tree at the spot where one of
them knocks out the tooth of the novice. This pictograph is then
carefully cut out and obliterated after the ceremonies are over.

At a subsequent stage of the proceedings a similar figure is
molded on the ground in clay, and is surrounded by the native
weapons which Daramūlŭn is said to have invented. This figure, after
having been exhibited to the novice, is also destroyed, and they are
strictly forbidden under pain of death to make them known in any
manner to “women or children;” that is to say, to the uninitiated.

The Mŭdji is not destroyed, but is carefully and secretly
preserved by the principal headman who had caused the ceremonies to
be held.

The ceremonies of the Wirajuri tribe in New South Wales are
substantially the same as those of the Murring, although the tribes
are several hundred miles apart. The details, however, differ in
some respects.

For instance, at one part of the ceremonies certain carvings are
made upon the tree adjoining the place of the ceremonies and upon
the ground, as follows:

(1) A piece of bark is stripped off the tree from the branches
spirally down the bole to the ground. This represents the path along
which Daramūlŭn is supposed to descend from the sky to the place
where the initiation is held.

(2) The figure of Daramūlŭn is cut upon the ground, resembling
that which the Murring cut upon the tree at the place where in their
ceremonies the tooth is knocked out. The figure represents a naked
black fellow dancing, his arms being slightly extended and the legs
somewhat bent outwards (sideways) at the knee, as in the well known
“corroboree” attitude.

(3) The representation of his tomahawk cut on the ground, where
he let it fall on reaching the earth.

(4) The footsteps of an emu of which Daramūlŭn was in chase.

(5) The figure of the emu extended on the ground where it fell
when struck down by Daramūlŭn.

The same author (_f_) remarks as follows:

Speaking generally, it may be asserted with safety that
initiation ceremonies of some kind or other, and all having a
certain fundamental identity, are practiced by the aboriginal tribes
over the whole of the Australian continent. * * *

Here, then, the novices for the first time witness the actual
exhibition of those magical powers of the old men of which they have
heard since their earliest years. They have been told how these
men can produce from within themselves certain deadly things which
they are then able to project invisibly into those whom they desire
to injure or to kill; and now the boys see during the impressive
magical dances these very things, as they express it, “pulled out of
themselves” by the wizards.

Figs. 721, 722, and 723 are copies of the designs upon Tartar and Mongol drums, taken from G. N. Potanin (_b_). They are used in religious ceremonies with the belief that the sounds emanating from the surface upon which the designs are made, or, to carry the concept a little further, the sounds coming from the designs themselves, produce special influences or powers. Some of these designs are notably similar to some of those found in America and reproduced in the present paper.

The upper left-hand design (_a_) in Fig. 721, on the outside of the drum, represents the sun and the moon in the form of circles with a central dot. Below the crossbar were two other such figures with central dot. Besides, were represented below, on the left side, two shamans, and under them a wild goat and serpent in the form of wavy lines; on the right side three shamans and a deer.

The upper right-hand design (_b_) on the same figure is a group representing the bringing of a horse to sacrifice. Under a rainbow, dots represent stars, and two heavenly maidens who the shamans said were the daughters of Ulgen and who were playing. They come down to the mountains and rise up to the skies.

A bow with a knob at each end is made to represent a rainbow in the lower part of a shaman’s drum.

The lower left-hand design (_c_) on the same figure on a drum of the telengit shaman is the external delineation of a head without eyes and nose. The lower end of the line coming from the head represents a bifurcation. Under the head is a short horizontal line like an extended arm. Above a line extending from side to side of the drum are two circles, and below six circles, all empty. According to the owner of the drum these circles are representations of drums, and the three human figures are masters or spirits of localities.

The lower right-hand design (_d_) in the same figure has in the upper section five zigzag lines represented similar to those with which lightning is often represented. According to the shaman these are serpents.

The upper left-hand design (_a_) in Fig. 722 inside the drum has painted two trees. On each of them sits the bird karagush, with bill turned to the left. On the left of the trees are two circles, one dark (the moon), the other light (the sun). Below a horizontal line are depicted a frog, a lizard, and a serpent.

The upper right-hand design (_b_) in the same figure has on the upper half two circles, the sun and moon; on the left side four horsemen; under them a bowman, also on horseback. The center is occupied by a picture of a net and a sieve for winnowing the nuts and seeds of the cedar tree. On the right side are two trees, baigazuin (literally the rich birch), over which two birds, the karagush, are floating. Under a division on the right and on the left side are oval objects with latticed-figured or scaly skin. These are two whales. In the middle, between them, are a frog and a deer, and below a serpent. Above, toward the hoop of the drum, is fastened an owl’s feather.

The lower left hand design (_c_) in the same figure has represented in the upper half seven figures reminding one of horses. These are the horses, bura, going to heaven, i. e., their sacrifice. Above them are two circles emitting light, the sun and the moon; on the right of the horses are three trees; under a horizontal line on the left is a serpent; on the right a fish, the kerbuleik, the whale according to Verbitski, literally the bay-fish.

The lower right-hand design (_d_) in the same figure has a drawing on the outside, a circle divided by horizontal bars into halves. The field of the upper half is divided into three strata, the first stratum of which is heaven, the second the rainbow, and in the lower stratum the stars. On the left side the sun, and the crescent moon on the right side; the goat, trees, and an undefined figure, which is not given in the drawing, underneath. The kam, a kind of shaman, called it the bura. Some said that it meant a cloud; others that it meant heavenly horses.

The left-hand design (_a_) in Fig. 723 shows four vertical and four horizontal lines. The latter represent the rainbow; the vertical lines borsui. Circles with dots in the center are represented in three sections, and in the fourth one circle.

The right-hand design in the same figure: On the upper sections are represented a number of human figures. These, according to the shaman’s own explanation, are heavenly maidens (in the original Turkish, tengriduing kuiz). Below, under a rainbow, which is represented by three arched lines, are portrayed two serpents, each having a cross inside. These are kurmos nuing tyungurey, i. e., the drums are kurmos’s. Kurmos is the Alti word for spirits, which the shamans summon.

Bastian (_a_) makes remarks as follows concerning the magic drum of the Shamans in the Altai, which should be considered in this connection:

The Shamans admit three worlds (among the Yakuts), the world of
the heavens (hallan jurda), the middle one of the earth (outo-doidu)
and the lower world or hell (jedän tügara), the former the realm
of light, the latter the realm of darkness, while the earth has
for a time been given over by the Creator (Jüt-tas-olbohtah
Jürdän-Ai-Tojan) to the will of the devil or tempter, and the souls
of men at their death, according to the measure of their merit, are
sent into one or the other realm. When, however, the earth world has
come to an end, the souls of the two realms will wage a war against
each other, and victory must remain on the side of the good souls.