Cogewea, the Half-Blood

the elements or celestial bodies, and not infrequently the departed human dead. Events of the future are revealed and certain rules are laid down by which the devotee must be guided if she or he would profit by the occult power conferred. Not every Indian attains to this favor. It comes only to those who have found “medicine” during the fasting time of life, which is childhood. Children are sent into dreary and solitary places at night where, alone, they commune with the mysteries of nature, and where often there appears to them some apparitional tutelary, which instructs them in the “medicine” of hunting, of war, of occult healing and the wisdom of prophecy; in short, covering practically every avocation in Indian tribal life. Ofttimes children of very tender age are “staked” or tied out in desolate and terrifying spots⁠—some of which I have seen⁠—for the purpose of obtaining this strange and mystifying “power.” Youths of more years are placed under the care of some man renowned for his occult and skill along certain lines, who guides and trains his protégés for their coming sphere in life. He sees to it that his charges are given ample experiences calculated to foster and develop the primitive attribute of self preservation in meeting and combating all exigencies of danger under whatever form, and above all, respect and reverence for the spiritual. A boy may be sent alone into the awesome woods, there to listen the whole night long to the “song” of the “dancing” grizzly; into the barren desert hills where the impressive silence is fraught with communicative wisdom; to weird and ghostly bodies of water inhabited by monsters and indescribable terrors; to the proximity of old burial grounds where passing flames and other unearthly demonstrations are in evidence⁠—the entire system trending to a development of the heroic and the religious in the primitive mind⁠—the mind closest to nature and to nature’s God. This training was extended to both sexes. ↩

(Refer to note 53.) To hear voices from inanimate objects as intermediary to the Great Spirit or Great Maker, is not uncommon in Indian philosophy, but more frequently the revelations come through some member of the animal world. However, the celestial bodies, thunder and lightning, the wind and other elemental forces, are often channels of Divine communication. The Indian as an integral is profoundly psychical. ↩

Colophon

Cogewea, the Half-Blood
was published in 1927 by
Mourning Dove.

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