Lakota Electronic Texts
Fletcher, Alice "Haökah - A Dacota God". In Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe 1851 Information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States. Philadelphia,: Lippincott Grambo. Part 2.[Page 224] To the Indian mind, many of the phenomena of nature, which are familiar to persons of even the lowest grade of information in civilized life, are invested with the attributes and functions of a god. Whatever, in fact, is mysterious, abstruse, or unknown in nature or art, is referred to the power of a deity. It is with him the short cut to solve every question beyond his depth. Superstition is exceedingly acute in observing phenomena, in the great area of the forest. Not a sound escapes, his ever quick ear, and if there be any thing in the attending circumstances in which he is placed, to raise a suspicion, it is immediately set down as of superhuman influence.
It is one of the notions of the ancient poets, [FN 1] that the spirit of a man might inhabit a tree, injuries to which were, in such cases of transition, to be regarded as shocking cuelties. It is not conceived by the Indians, that a mere man could be thus transformed, without, at the same time, possessing the attributes of a god. The evidence of the enchantment or transformation is to be drawn from the senses. If a tempest sweeps the forest, producing a tumult of sounds, there is no cause for wonder. It is an ordinary event. But should a tree emit from its hollow trunk or branches a sound during a calm state of the atmosphere; or what is more probable, [Page 225] should an excited mind, anxious to accumulate the number of facts upon which the superstitious reverence of the people relies in their estimate of him, fancy an emission of such sounds, the tree would at once be reported, and soon come to be regarded, as the residence of some local god.
Should he find in perambulating the prairies, or crossing the table-lands, elevated above the present level of the waters, or resting among the boulders and drift, still accumulated along the shores of existing lakes and rivers, a mass of drift in some imitative form, it is in either case regarded as something out of the common course, and regarded as the residence, or material form, or exuviae of some local god. In this manner the Indian country is found to reveal many points of local allusion be the natives, where the geologist or the meteorologist would find nothing strange to remark.
The Indian mind creates, in truth, the intellectual atmosphere within which it dwells; and in our endeavors to account for its modes of action, we are not authorized by a summary philosophy, to sweep away his theories.
It is seldom, however, in their deification of geologic and organic monuments, that we behold the pictographic symbols of these gods of the imagination, such as is presented in the accompanying figurative device of Haokah. This god is presented under the form of a giant. The following is a complete key of the separate symbols, as taken from the lips of a Dacota. [FN 2]Fig. 8. The giant.
9. A frog that lie use, for an arrow-point.
10 and 11. Birds that he has kept within his court.
12 and 13. Ornaments that he keeps over his door.
14 and 15. His court-yard, ornamented with red down.
16. A deer living in his court.
17. A bear " " "
18. An elk " " "
19. A buffalo " " "
20 and 21. Incense offerings.
22. A rattle of deers' hoofs, used in singing.
23. A long flute or whistle.
24, 25, 26, and 27, are meteors that he sends out for defence, or to protect him from invasion.
28, 29, 30, and 31. Lightning which surrounds his house, with which he kills all kinds of animals.
32. A large fungus that grows on trees.
33. Touchwood. Nos. 32 and 33, are eaten by animals that enter his court, causing immediate death.
[Page 226]
34. Lightnings from the giant's cap.
35. The giant's cap.
36. His bow and arrows.
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FN 1 -Virgil. Tasso.
FN 2 - BY Captain S. Eastman, U.S.A.
[Plate 55]
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