As a priest, with all the assurance of an eye-witness—of an equal and
of intimate and long continued communion, he bears testimony for the
divinities. He gives a minute description of their physical appearance,
their dwelling place, and their attendants. He reveals their disposition,
their powers and their employments, as one who has been with them.
He dictates prayers and chants, institutes fasts and feasts, dances
and sacrifices. He defines sin and its opposite and their respective
consequences. In short, he imposes upon the people a system of demonism
and superstition, to suit their depraved tastes and passions, and
caprices, and circumstances, and interests as savages, with an air of
authority and with a degree of cunning which does seem to be almost
superhuman—a system so artfully devised, so well adapted to them, so
congenial to them, that it readily weaves itself into, and becomes a part
of them, as really as the woof becomes a part of the texture, ensuring
their most obsequious submission to its demands. It becomes part of their
body, soul and spirit. They breathe and speak, and sing and live it. It
is not something that can be assumed and laid off at pleasure.
In the character of a priest, the influence of these demons in human
form is so complete and universal, that thirty years ago, scarce an
individual could be found among them who was not a servile religionist.
Every individual was trained to it from early infancy. Mothers put the
consecrated offering into the little unconscious hand of their babes at
the breast, and caused them to cast the present to the god. As soon as
the little tongue could articulate, it was taught to say, “grandfather
befriend me;” or “grandmother befriend me.” On one occasion the writer
witnessed a whole band, old and young, male and female, march out to the
lake shore in Indian file, and perform their acts of devotion, and offer
their prayers at the back of the medicine man, who was at the same time
officiating between them and the god—each individual was obliged to the
performance—the mothers fixing the little mouths of unconscious infants
carefully, reverently, on the stem of the consecrated pipe, which the
priest extended to them backward over his shoulder.
Much as the savage loves ease and self-indulgence he will cheerfully
subject himself to almost any privation, discomfort and toil, for days,
weeks, or even months together, in order to procure the necessary
provisions for a sacrifice which the priest assures him the gods demand.
If he fails he fully believes that the penalty may be the infliction of
any, or all the evils to which an Indian is exposed. A man made a trip
on foot from the “Little Rapids,” on the Minnesota river, to Big Stone
Lake, and purchased and brought on his back, a pack of dried buffalo
meat, weighing, probably, sixty or seventy pounds, a distance of nearly
two hundred miles, to be used in the medicine-dance—a sacrifice to the
Onktehi and to the souls of the dead. This he did because the priest had
assured him that it was the will of the TAKU-WAKAN.