Observations on the thunder dance of the Bear gens of the Fox Indians / by Truman Michelson.
- Truman Michelson
- Date:
- 1929
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Observations on the thunder dance of the Bear gens of the Fox Indians / by Truman Michelson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
18/88 page 8
![On more than one occasion I have pointed out the similarity of Fox gens festivals. I therefore do not propose to give here an elab¬ orate detailed list of features held in common, but will confine myself to a few notes. It will be observed that the head ceremonial attend¬ ants of the gens festival under discussion belong to the Eagle and War Chiefs gentes, and that the Ki'cko'A attendant belongs to the former, but the To'kanA to the latter, which is also true of the gens festival affiliated with the Sagima'kwawA sacred pack. (See Bull. 85, pp. 140,147.) For the grouping of Bear Hide and A'kiwa'A (E ki we a) see also Bulletin 85, pages 148 and 149 (the translation can hardly be right, but the Indian text at the bottom of p. 158 is very difficult and possibly corrupt, unless i ne ne ma we ge ni is a plural majestatis). The eating contest also occurs in the gens festival appurtenant to the Fox A'penawana'A sacred pack, a ceremony of the Thunder gens of the Sauks (Bull. 85, p. 102), and also in the “ War-Bundle Feast of the Thunderbird clan” of the Winnebago. (Thirty-seventh Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 428, 430.) The fact that the To'kan dancers face the south and the Kl'cko dancers the north has an exact counter¬ part in the gens festival appurtenant to the Fox Sagima'kwawA sacred pack. (See Bull. 85, p. 150.) The dancing of the To'kanAgi on the north side and that of the Ki'cko'Agi on the south side also occurs when the War Chiefs gens worships the Wolf. Presumably the Sauk have a parallel. (See pp. 131, 166 of Harrington’s Sacred Bundles of the Sac and Fox Indians.) As regards the injunction to invite as hummers only such women as have ceased to menstruate, compare also Bulletin 85, page 142. For the use of hoof-rattles we have Winnebago and Sauk parallels. (See Thirty-seventh Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 343; M. R. Harrington, Sacred Bundles of the Sac and Fox Indians, p. 165.) I have previously pointed out that the Sauk, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Winnebago have counterparts to the Fox gens festivals. (See Fortieth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 504, and Bull. 85, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 102, 124.) The following quotation from an Iowa legend (Jour. Amer. Folk-Lore, vol. 38, p. 466) shows that the Iowa Indians also have or had one: “That is the reason why every spring the Iowa used to have a bundle feast, using dog meat.” The Ottawa, furthermore, had a corresponding ceremony, as may be seen from Perrot’s Memoir (apud Blair’s Indian Tribes of the Upper Missis¬ sippi and Great Lakes Region, vol. i, p. 50 et seq. [p. 53 especially]). With the knowledge at present available it is not possible to make more than a general comparison. That the Illinois and Miami used dog meat in feasts is perfectly well known; as did the Cree and certain Algonquian tribes farther east as well as the Hurons and Iroquois; and also (though apparently less frequently) the Arikara and Skidi Pawnee (see the articles “Dogs” [and references] in the Index to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29980835_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
