the anthropologist and the magic shell

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AND THE MAGIC SHELL NOTES ON THE MIDEWIWIN •

FRANCESCO SPAGNA •

ABSTRACT ..............................................................................................................................................

Midewiwin is the name given to the sacred Medicine Society of the Native peoples of the Great Lakes, the Anishinawbe. The Midewiwin is an important repository of native culture as regards spiritual and therapeutic knowledge, music, singing and dancing, identity and social unity. It also hosts rites of passage, gift exchange and manifestations of solidarity. Midewiwin ceremony is currently performed by various groups of Anishinawbe traditionalists in the US and Canada. This paper investigates the often difficult relations between anthropologists and native specialists throughout the centuries, based on a review of the literature produced in the course of contact. .............................................................................................................................................. Keywords: tradition, shamanism, ritual, myth, Native Americans, ethnohistory, transcultural diffusion Introduction The definition of the Native American concept of tradition is a crucial challenge for anthropology and history. Ethnohistory (and archaeology) has taught us to deal with categories of time that are culturally oriented and that express—in the literal meaning of the term category—oppositional thought. ‘Pre-contact’, ‘transitional’, and ‘post-contact’ are discrete temporal frameworks wherein different peoples, different places, and different meanings take place. The conceptual divide of the time-line is, of course, contact with white newcomers, which is generally assumed to be a dramatic agent of change and destruction. ‘Aboriginal past’, in this perspective, has been associated with prehistoric time, in a somewhat dark age of unfathomable meanings, almost impossible to penetrate. ‘Contact’ can be perceived as a screen upon which newcomers have rewritten the world, and through which the old world is no longer legible. From this point of view, tradition is usually designated to an undefined past, or a transitional, post-contact, and thus mostly ‘invented’ cultural background. From a Native point of view, tradition is rather a metaphysical concept: it does not appear on the time line; it is neither from the future, nor from the past, but in another level of reality, in the mythical realm: a changing and generative dimension that cannot be reduced to a fixed pattern or crystallized in a definite form. A review of the research literature on the Midewiwin demonstrates the level of cultural difference and misunderstandings between Euro-American anthropologists and Native traditionalists, and the importance of an intercultural reconsideration of the subject. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 38(2) Summer 2013 PO Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

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Map 1: Location of all Anishinawbe reservations in North America, with diffusion rings about communities speaking an Anishinawbe language. Cities with Anishinawbe population are also shown (Wikipedia).

‘Very likely…’ Midewiwin is the name of the sacred Medicine Society of the Native peoples of the Great Lakes, representing the sound of the sacred Drum (Mede-we) of the Anishinawbe. Midewiwin ceremony can be considered one of the most important religious and spiritual complexes of North America. Its origin myth is also that of the Algonquian speaking Anishinawbe people (Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menomini, Cree, etc.; see Map 1), referencing their epic migration from the Atlantic coast and St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. Similar ceremonies described as ‘Medicine Society’ or ‘Medicine Dance’ can be found among neighbouring Siouan people. The midewayan, or Medicine Bag, made with the entire skin of an otter (or other animals) decorated with porcupine quills, beads and ribbons, is the principal shamanic and initiatory equipment. It marks the paths of diffusion of the ceremony, together with the water drum and the long lodges of poles with the roof left uncovered. In these lodges, or midewigan, orientated east-west, the seasonal gatherings of the Medicine Society take place. At these gatherings the spiritual teachings of initiates, the entry of new candidates destined to become spiritual leaders and healers, or the progression of the initiates to increasingly higher levels of apprenticeship take place. The climax of initiation is the symbolic killing of the candidate by ‘shooting’ a little white shell from the mouth of the midewayan. Then follows the symbolic rebirth of the initiate, who receives new life, his new midewayan, and access to a new degree. During these sessions, which could involve hundreds of people, the ceremonial ground itself becomes a therapeutic site. The Midewiwin represents, in general, an important repository of native culture with regards spiritual and therapeutic knowledge, music, singing and dancing, identity and social unity. It also hosts rites of passage for the whole social group such as marriages or funerals, 24

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along with gift exchange and manifestations of solidarity. The Midewiwin tradition is currently upheld by different groups of Anishinawbe traditionalists.1 Since the first half of the nineteenth century, various scholars and the earliest anthropologists began studying the Midewiwin and its complex initiation ceremony. Some of these scholars displayed a method of observation implicitly based on the acknowledgement of something familiar: a ‘spontaneous’ anthropology, which nevertheless has left conspicuous volumes of observations and debates. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was a geologist, explorer and pioneer in American ethnology. After the Lewis Cass expedition on Lake Superior in 1822, he started working as an Indian Agent for the Chippewa at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. He became involved in Native culture and married the daughter of a Chippewa leader of La Pointe and learned the Chippewa language. La Pointe, on the beautiful Madeline Island in Lake Superior, was at that time a vital Midewiwin centre.2 Schoolcraft, in a book published for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in1847, reported observing ‘the exhibitions of the Medawin, and the exactness and studious ceremony with which its rites were performed, in 1820, in the region of Lake Superior’; he also mentioned having made ‘further inquiries’ as a Government Agent in 1822, for which ‘purpose I had its ceremonies repeated, in my office, under the secrecy of closed doors, with every means of both correct interpretation and of recording the result’ (Schoolcraft 1851 [1847]: 361). This ‘laboratory experiment’ by an incipient social science (at that time Auguste Comte was still recovering from a nervous breakdown!), probably seemed strange behaviour to the Mide traditionalists of La Pointe. They likely interpreted Schoolcraft’s acts as ‘spiritual theft’, or as an egoistic (thus deviant) attempt to shelve the mysteries of the Midewiwin. The possibility that he was initiated to the ceremony is unlikely: ‘hard to believe’, in the resolute opinion of William Warren: [W]hen the old initiators or Indian priests are told of it, they shake their heads in incredulity that a white man should ever been allowed in truth to become a member of their Me-da-we Lodge. An entrance into the lodge itself, while the ceremonies are being enacted, has sometimes been granted through courtesy; but this does not initiate a person into the mysteries of the creed, nor does it make him a member of the society. Amongst the Ojibway, the secrets of this grand rite are as sacredly kept as the secrets of the Masonic Lodge among the whites. (Warren 1984 [1885]: 66)

The comparison between Midewiwin and Masonry was, in the middle of the century, an exciting debate. B. T. Kavanaugh, the first grand master of Wisconsin stated, in 1855, that ‘the Indians have, unquestionably, a knowledge of the universal language of the Masonry’, probably received ‘at the time of the Babel dispersion’ (Denslow 1932: 3). The hypothesis was endorsed by another ‘mixed-blood’, George Copway. Former Methodist missionary and self-proclaimed ‘chief of the Ojibwa’, Copway was also an initiated freemason. He became famous for writing an autobiography in 1847, the first published book by a Native American (Copway 1851),3 which references the initiation degrees, considered ‘similar’ to those of the Masonry: a false alliance, a misleading track, but enough to start a debate and probably to generate future misunderstandings. Another misleading issue was that of the ‘Midewiwin cross’, raised in the late nineteenth century by Walter James Hoffman and intriguingly reconsidered in posterior ethnohistorical debate. Hoffman personally witnessed Midewiwin ceremonies in Minnesota and spoke with Mide leaders of Red Lake and White Earth. He wrote what Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2/2013

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is surely the first anthropological monograph of the Midewiwin, prepared with precision and care, for the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology of 1885– 86, published in 1891. The place described was Wisconsin, the year 1673, in a relatively calm period during the wars between the Algonquians, the French, and the Iroquois. That year, Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette participated in an expedition along the Fox River, not far from Green Bay. ‘Upon his arrival at the “Bay of Puans,”’ wrote Hoffman, ‘Marquette found a village inhabited by three nations, viz: “Miamis, Maskoutens, and Kikabeux.”’ Marquette continues: When I arriv’d there, I was very glad to see a great Cross set up in the middle of the Village, adorn’d with several White Skins, Red Girdles, Bows and Arrows, which that good People had offer’d to the Great Manitou, to return him their Thanks for the care he had taken of them during the Winter, and that he had granted them a prosperous Hunting. Manitou, is the Name they give in general to all Spirits whom they think to be above the Nature of Man.

Marquette, according to Hoffman, was undoubtedly ignorant of the fact that the cross is the sacred post, and the symbol of the fourth degree of the Midē´wiwin, as will be fully explained in connection with that grade of the society. The erroneous conclusion that the cross was erected as evidence of the adoption of Christianity, and possibly as a compliment to the visitor, was a natural one on the part of the priest, but this same symbol of the Midē´ Society had probably been erected and bedecked with barbaric emblems and weapons months before anything was known of him. (Hoffman 1891:155)

Hoffman maintained the original character of the Midewiwin and refused the hypothesis of its contamination by Christian elements. Not as convinced was Harold Hickerson, in his ‘Notes on post-contact origin of the Midewiwin’, published in 1962. According to Hickerson, the cross seen by Marquette was presumably the one introduced two years earlier by another French missionary, Father Claude Allouez: while the research of this American ethno-historian is accurately documented, his conclusion contains what may be an unjustified inference: ‘Was the emblem of the fourth degree of the Midewiwin merely the cross transplanted from the mission chapel (or the village plaza) to the Mide lodge? Very likely.’ (Hickerson 1962: 417) This became—for further interpretations—a leading question. The adverb ‘merely’ suggests the idea of the Midewiwin as a fragile and extemporized cult, easily incorporating a recently arrived religious symbol from the world of newcomers. The demonstration of the syncretic nature of the Midewiwin—assimilated to other ‘post-contact’ and ‘nativistic’ ceremonials like the Ghost Dance or the Handsome Lake religion (Hickerson 1988 [1970]: 52)—became a sort of paradigm for almost three decades of anthropological interpretations. When, at the beginning of the eighties, Christopher Vecsey prepared his important study on the Ojibwa religion, he did not hesitate to present Midewiwin ceremony as patched-up, with most elements taken from Christian tradition, at that time in decline and ‘nearly defunct’ (Vecsey 1983: 174–190; see also Vennum 1978: 753). There seems to be a sort of perceptive distortion, along with the presumption of inflicting a Western concept of time upon others. In addition to Hoffman’s work, it is sufficient to consider the excellent ethnographical studies from the beginning of the twentieth century—such as those by Frances Densmore, Paul Radin, Alanson Skinner 26


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or Alice Fletcher and Francis la Fleche—to be convinced that Midewiwin ceremony, as with that of other Medicine Societies, is both remarkable and self-sufficient, with a strong traditional background. Melissa Pflüg’s (1998) recent research on the reconstitution of Odawa traditions and Midewiwin has continued and promoted this line of thought. The question of time is, again, highly significant. The description in the letters of Antoine Denis Raudot, intendant of New France visiting the Saulteurs in 1710, is considered ‘the first recorded eye-witness report of a ceremony resembling the Midéwewin’ (Dewdney 1975: 161–162; Kinietz 1940: 329). In this report, the medicine dance with otter skins, the ‘enclosure made of poles’, the symbolic death and shamanic curing, are sufficiently evident. According to Vecsey (1983: 176), Raudot ‘depicted a nascent Midewiwin ceremony’; as the contact between natives and whites became less frequent in the eighteenth century, this religious movement ‘formed in historical obscurity’ attracted less outside attention. Very interesting in this passage is the use of the light/darkness metaphor and the correspondence—taken for granted—between the first white eyewitnesses and the ‘birth’ of the native religion. On the other hand, anthropologists often charge themselves with the duty of bearer of bad news. We can take, for example, the incipit of the article by Alfred I. Hallowell, ‘The Passing of the Midewewin in the Lake Winnipeg Region’ (1936): ‘This study is a post-mortem record of a ceremony which once was of major importance in the native culture of the Salteaux Indians of the Lake Winnipeg country’ (Hallowell 1936: 32). What, exactly, does ‘post mortem record’ mean: a lament? Or something having to do with the amendment of the new penal code of the Saskatchewan province, in 1925, promulgated with the intent of persecuting the Midewiwin and dispersing its members? (Pettipas 1994: 157.) That had been the hope of the missionaries on the Saskatchewan River since the mid-nineteenth century, as Hallowell himself reported (Hallowell 1936: 33 n.7). Fortunately, things took a different turn. A Midewiwin tradition is still carried on in Saskatchewan.4 The ‘post mortem record’ remained in the mind of the anthropologist. In terms of historical ‘paternity’, however, Vecsey’s certainty about the ‘nascent’ Midewiwin was grounded on what appeared very convincing sociological theory. In ‘The Sociohistorical Significance of Two Chippewa Ceremonials’ (1963), by Harold Hickerson, the subjects under discussion are the Feast of the Dead and the Midewiwin. The Feast of the Dead was a great ceremony that gathered together—at the time of colonisation and fur trade—both the Algonquians and Wyandot (Huron) groups of the Great Lakes. These groups took turns in organising the ceremony, which involved hundreds of people. The climax was a funerary ritual, but the main purpose of the meeting was to form alliances. During the ceremony, trading, marriages between the different groups, and many other ritual or recreational activities took place. According to Hickerson, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the groups of ‘proto-Ojibwas’ gathering in the fisheries of the Great Lakes—like the Boweting (Sault Ste Marie), from which was derived the French ethnonym ‘Saulteurs’5—or in the hunting grounds, still had not developed a ‘tribal cohesion (…) but comprised a number of local totemic kindreds whose relationship with each other was voluntary and equal’ (Hickerson 1963: 71, 80). Around 1680 the situation changed. After the destruction of the Huron confederacy, the dispersal of the Ottawa, and the alliance with the Dakota, groups of Saulteurs migrated to the south shore of Lake Superior and established a village on the Chequamegon Peninsula. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2/2013

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This village soon became ‘the largest and most important of all the historic Chippewa settlements’ (ibid.: 72), the first step, according to Hickerson, towards a former nomadic and scattered people forming a tribal unity. To this purpose, the sociological and religious device is to establish a new ceremony, with a sort of shamanic priesthood: the Midewiwin. The classical typology of subarctic individual shamanism is thereby transformed into something completely different: the complex and hierarchized Medicine Society of ‘Mide priests’. The great transformations and crises brought by the white newcomers and their civilisation, along with the decline of preceding inter-clan alliances, spurred the making of a new single community, provided with a new ethnic identity and a new cult. ‘The emergence of the Saulteurs tribe’, as Hickerson called it, corresponds to the end of traditional ‘pre-contact’ native cultures of this area. The fascination with historical ‘reasons’ risked evaporating, however, as a new anthropological paradigm started to pose crucial questions about the real nature of ethnic groups and social evolution. In the mid-eighties, it became quite problematic for anthropologists to determine the exact nature of a ‘tribe’ and why it should ‘emerge’. This new perspective is evident in the revised and expanded edition of The Chippewa and Their Neighbours, edited in 1988 by Jennifer Brown and Laura Peers (Hickerson 1988: 135). The ‘Saulteurs tribe’ is also something in which colonial interests were deeply involved and that to some extent ‘emerges’ in the mind of colonial administrators. ‘Ojibwa’ today means many things, and it could also be viewed as a sort of bureaucratic and administrative label for peoples ranging—with significant linguistic differences—from Lake Ontario (Mississauga) to the Rocky Mountains (Bungee). On the other hand, there is not a real ethnic borderline that divides, for example, Chippewa from Potawatomi. Those whom the French called ‘Bois Fort’, the anthropologists referred to as ‘Oji-Cree’, and today these native people call themselves ‘Anishinabek’. ‘Anishinawbe’ in its original meaning is not so different from ‘native’ but works as a collective denomination for the peoples of the Canadian Shield watershed. Today, a Micmac or a Mesquakie (Sauk and Fox) could reasonably adopt this denomination or simply consider him/herself as Anishinawbe. In this framework, it is always important to remember the extent to which the area of the Great Lakes became, from 1634 to 1700, a scenery of intense mobility and dramatic changes: conflicts, epidemics, depopulation, loss (White 1990; Schlesier 1990). Nevertheless, this is also the era of great cultural exchanges and métissage. As Hickerson pointed out, during the Feast of the Dead gift exchange took place between ‘allies’ who necessarily became ‘relatives’ (Hickerson 1963: 70). In the mid-nineteenth century, when William Warren described the ‘totemic division of the O-Jib-ways’, he informed us that those of the Wolf totem (Mah-een-gun) ‘derive their origin on the paternal side from the Dakotas’ (Warren 1984 [1885]: 49). Meanwhile, intermarriage between natives and French coureurs de bois or hivernants in the Great Lakes had been frequent since the early seventeenth century.6 The friend who hosted me in the Lac Courtes Oreilles reservation in Wisconsin inherited both Oneida matriclan and Chippewa patriclan, and is partly British from his mother’s side and partly French from his father’s side. His four-sided origins are a true mirror of the history of his homeland. Beyond ethnic politics or ‘blood quantum’ issues, Anishinawbe is a wide cultural denomination of increasingly inclusive and comprehensive meanings. In reconsidering origins and the transformation of Midewiwin in the Anishinawbe culture, persistence of tradition is the concept we would stress most. 28


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‘Smoking and coughing & speechifying goes on…’ Since the interpretation maps of anthropologists changed in the eighties, the theory of the post-contact origins of the Midewiwin was reconsidered. The findings of Midewiwin ceremonial objects and birch bark scrolls by Kenneth Kidd in a cave in Quetico Park in western Ontario (radiocarbon- dated in a period antecedent to the arrival of newcomers in that area), can now be viewed as more than an isolated archaeological anomaly (Kidd 1981). The comparison work by Grace Rajnovich on petroglyphs of the Canadian Shield, from Eastern Ontario to Saskatchewan, show that some cardinal symbols and representations of the Midewiwin could date back to Laurel culture (200 BC–1000 AD) (Rajnovich 1994). In my previous research, I compared Midewiwin charter myths with those of the circumboreal bear cult (Spagna 1998). Through structural analysis I found interesting similarities in the Ket and Evenk shamanism of Siberia: the same symbolic code of ‘bears’ / ‘evergreens’ / ‘initiatic death’ seems to have been prevalent in the wide area extending from the Yenisey River to the Great Lakes. In recent decades, new contributions—by native and non-native scholars—have been oriented towards the interpretation of Midewiwin as an aboriginal institution, thereby rejecting former anthropological theories (Benton-Banai 1988; Deleary 1990; Spagna 2000; Angel 2002). Nevertheless, I believe that this confrontation between ‘aboriginal’ and ‘syncretistic’ should not be limited to fixed positions and that reconsideration opens interesting anthropological viewpoints. The diffusion of Midewiwin has been to some extent underestimated, and many surprising aspects have emerged considering the whole complex of what are usually called ‘Medicine Dances’ or ‘Medicine Societies’. In his Archaeology of the Soul (1997), Robert L. Hall reworked hypotheses by Felix M. Keesing about the origin of Midewiwin. Keesing maintained he had perceived the ‘gist or kernel of the Midewiwin among the Hurons as early as 1636’, in a ceremonial called Akhrendoiaen (‘giving poison to another’) organized by a society of shamans called Atirenda (Keesing 1987 [1939]: 49).7 According to Hall, the Midewiwin could have originated in the Huron-Nipissing milieu and then—through Nipissing shamanism— spread to the Amikwas and the Saulteurs (Hall 1997: 75–76). Furthermore, Raudot’s description is neither the only one in that period, nor the first. In the historical accounts of Baqueville de la Potherie, based on the memoirs of Nicholas Perrot (coureur de bois, trader, interpreter and intendent among native peoples of the Great Lakes from 1665 to 1699), there is a description of a ‘solemn feast’ held by the Miami the day after a war path. In this ceremony, the dances of medicine men with their ‘pouches for medicine and for jugglers’, the death/resurrection ritual and other aspects similar to the Midewiwin, are clearly recognizable. This Medicine Dance of the Miamis of ‘Muramik’ (Maramek) took place south east of Michigan Lake, presumably at the end of the seventeenth century (Blair 1996 [1911] vol. II: 85–88). Perrot himself reported on the ‘religion or rather superstition’ of the people he visited, who ‘honour as the god of waters the great panther, whom the Algonkian call Michipissy’ (ibid. vol. I: 59). Michibissy, Missibizi or Missibiju—the underwater Great Lynx—is the chthonian patron of the Midewiwin. Despite dispersion of bands and the decay of culture, Miami ‘Midewiwin’ traditions continued to be carried on (Trowbridge 1938; Kinietz 1940; Callender 1978). In 1804, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2/2013

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Figure 1: ‘Indian Dog Feast, Rupert’s land, 1857’ by George Seton (Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1950-631.10R)

Canadian officer Edward Walsh at Fort Eire, Ontario, witnessed a Medicine ceremony conducted by a Miami ‘chief ’, in which the ceremonial ‘arched hut’, dog sacrifice, dance with medicine bags and symbolic death of the initiate are quite evident (Phillips 1984: 28, 35–36). Reviewing the description of the Mesquakie (Sauk and Fox) Midewiwin witnessed by Thomas Forsyth in 1928—in which a very interesting passage tells us that ‘this society or Great Medicine consists of four roads (or as we could call them, degrees)’— Emma Helen Blair reports a general note on native American ‘secret societies’ by John R. Swanton. After mentioning the Grand Medicine Society or Midewiwin of the Ojibwa, Swanton adds that ‘the name of this society in the form medeu occurs in Delaware, where it was applied to a class of healers’ (Blair 1996 vol. II: 223–225). This hint leads us to follow an eastward track of the diffusion. Surely the Delaware conserved some of the main Algonkian mythological characters, like the Great Horned Serpent, Thunderers and an important Bear cult complex. The Delaware ‘herb doctor’ performing shamanic curing was called məté (Goddard 1978: 233). The hypothesis that a secret society ‘of highly skilled shamans’—similar to Midewiwin— existed among the Ninnimissinuok, or the native peoples of Southern New England in the ‘contact’ period, is advanced by Kathleen Bragdon (1996: 215).8 The ‘shaman’—that is, a person with curing and herbal knowledge, spirit helpers and a sacred drum—is called mədawlinno among the Abenaki and mətéwələn among the Malisett—Passamaquoddy (Day 1978: 157–158; Erikson 1978: 132–133). Frank G. Speck analyzes the Penobscot (Abenaki) word məde’olinu, where məde- is the ‘sound of drumming’ and the final element -inu is the common Algonkian term for ‘person’ (Micmac: əlnu) (Speck 1919: 241 n.1). Heading north, mitew is the shaman and mite is the spiritual power also for the Mistassini Cree of Labrador (Tanner 1979: 110, 123). The diffusion of the Midewiwin among the Cree is an intriguing issue. Alanson Skinner, in his ethnographic research among the James Bay Cree, signalled the presence of a ceremony similar to the Midewiwin, which was held on the East Main (Labrador). Further research confirmed the presence of a ‘Mitewiwin’—as a complex of activities of a shaman (mitew)—among the Attawapiskat Cree of West Main (Ontario) (Skinner 1911: 61–65).9 An interesting watercolour by George Seton, lieutenant of the British Army in Canada in the mid-nineteenth century, is entitled ‘Indian Dog Feast, Rupert’s land, 1857’ (see 30


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Figure 1). It depicts a frame structure very similar to the one of Midewiwin, a red painted sacred pole and a sacred stone in the middle of the ceremonial ground, a line of three slain dogs and a fire; a man giving an offering on what appears to be an open bundle besides a red stone; a woman playing a water drum in one of the corners; pipe ceremonies and people eating, seated along the branch enclosure. Many of the participants—men, women, and children—are decorated with facial paintings. The scene is located in a Plains environment, with some tepees on the horizon. The inscription recorded from the Seton sketchbook says: The ‘Dog Feasts’ are held by the Cree, Saulteaux, and other Indians of the plains in & about Rupert’s Land at no stated period. They are a mixture of merrymaking and religion—at some of them a sick person is supposed to be subjected to magic cure; at others the power of this magic or ‘medicine’ is imparted to a novice—&c—They vary little in ceremony—an oblong piece of ground, say on an average about 100 feet by 20, is enclosed by branches of willow stick into the ground—Sometimes a tent is pitched at or thrown over one end. (Seton 1857)

The dog sacrifice feature is here obviously stressed: Dogs are strangled and laid out in the enclosure for some time—The Indians and their guests sit around –now & then the women collect in small parties near one of the men who has the drum, & dance, which consists in placing the feet close together and rising on the toes to the unvarying tap of the drum—Smoking and coughing & speechifying goes on—The dogs are then thrown out the entrance of the enclosure and are carried on by the women & are boiled and served up as soup from time to time. (Seton 1857)

Nevertheless, many of the features of this ceremony are very similar to Midewiwin: another sketch of Seton represents the Indians ‘walking in procession round the enclosure, the chief medicine man in front with the sacred rattle in hand, making a speech as he goes along, followed by the sacred drum’ (Seton 1857). Moving westward, in about the same period (the second half of the nineteenth century), one can find references to Midewiwin ceremonies in Saskatchewan, along the Qu’Appelle river and north of the Saskatchewan river (Peers 1994: 153). In a letter Father Petitot sent to his superior Oblates in Paris, he describes ‘many bands of Cree’ between Lac Vert and Carlton, ‘on their way to the Midewiwin which was being held on the shores of Pelican Lake’ (North West of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan) (Hallowell 1936: 33 n. 7). In his Tradition indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, Émile Petitot reports an interesting description of a Cree Mitéwi, called ‘Fête bisannuelle de medicine, des Cris’: When spring and autumn equinox are to come the oldest and most clever at medicine among the jugglers, the Sokaskew, asks all the Cris of the neighbourhood to attend the Mitewi ceremony, by sending their delegates with tobacco presents. (…) All the Cris being asked in a place chosen by the delegates, they build a hut or an oblong and conical lodge opened at both ends. It is the Mitewi tent. The nude Cris, painted and adorned as for a war, come into the Mitewi tent and stand on two lines along the walls which are raised on supporting poles. The hut center is left free for the jugglers. Then come in all the doctors and magicians, Maskikiy Iyiniwok, behind the high priest, the Sokaskew. In their hands they hold a skin or a piece of the animal which is their otem, fetiche, nagwal or manito, because it appeared in their dream and told them he was their protector and their good genius. (Petitot 1967 [1886]: 477–478)


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Then, as Petitot reports, all roots and medicine plants collected in the summer are brought into the ceremonial ground. The Jugement des Racines (Judgement of the Roots) begins: a collection of medicine powers, awarding this or that root according to the wish of the conjurors (Skinner 1911: 64). Following this Jugement des Médecines is the Initiation des adeptes: This initiation has to be paid and means fidelity to the magic laws. After being introduced inside the hut, novices are inspected by the jugglers with songs, grimaces, insufflations and passes by means of the powerful otem. Each doctor points at them the genius head while shouting: Wi! Wi! Suddenly, by common consent, they point it at one novice they have chosen before, shouting: Wew. Doing so they are supposed to point at the initiate chest the invisible arrows of the powerful Manitous. At once the initiate falls motionless on the ground, while they shout: He is dead. The Juggler comes near the candidate, proceeds with caresses and magnetic passes with his hand, his otem and the sacred roots. Then there are songs. Insufflations are made towards the dead’s heart for life to turn back. Little by little life starts to turn and shows in the initiate body. Invocations increase. The doctors stick their mouth to the patient body, cup it and draw from it blood, worms, stones, nails and other ingredients. Life is back. (Petitot 1967 [1886]: 479–481)10

I decided to expunge Petitot’s ethnocentric judgement and scepticism from this text. Decades of medical anthropology have taught us about the real therapeutic power of symbolism and dramatisation in curing practices. What is very interesting in the resuscitation, however, are the ritual features of circumboreal (individual) shamanism. In what appears as a ‘full fledged’ Midewiwin—recorded in the pre-ethnographic period (1873) and in a place (La Belle-Prairie, Basse-Saskatchewan) difficult to localize but surely quite far from the supposed centre of diffusion in the Great Lakes—we can see a blend of transitional elements, about half way between Labrador and Alaska. Belle-Prairie leads us back to the Plains. In 1920, Alanson Skinner published an important comparative work on the Menomini Mitawin and other medicine ceremonies of the Siouan peoples of the Plains (Skinner 1920):11 as the Mankàyê Waci—featuring initiation rituals and ‘otter hunting’—and the Wakan Wacipi or Medicine Dance of the Wahpeton Dakota.12 Some notes about the Ponca Pebble Society and the Midéwin of the Bungi band of the Plains, near the foothills of the Rockies, end the volume. Skinner identified the ‘Dakotan type’ of the medicine ceremony (Wahpeton Dakota, Iowa, Winnebago, Oto), the Omaha type (Omaha, Ponca) and the ‘Algonkian type’ (Menomini, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Cree and Sauk). The Society, writes Skinner, ‘seems to be Algonkian, and presumably of Ojibwa origin’, as Algonkian songs persist among the Siouan (and the Wahpeton assert ‘that they obtained the ceremony from the Sauk’) (Skinner 1920: 11–12). Nevertheless, if we consider the very accurate work of Alice Fletcher and Francis la Fleche (1911) on the Omaha and their Washis’ka athin, or ‘Shell Society’, a different perspective emerges. The charter myth of the Omaha Shell Society, as reported, seems to encompass, in complexity and depth, most of Anishinawbe Midewiwin myths of origin.13 It can be compared with the one Sikas’sighe—Ojibwa Mide of Minnesota—narrated to Hoffman (1891: 172–173). The narrative of the Omaha myth is profound, moving, and extremely interesting. It is the story of a family whose father is shy and reserved and whose mother is concerned about the father’s disposition. One day the family meets a stranger. The stranger engages 32


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the family with an obligation of hospitality, ritually repeated in a series of four springs. He separated the family from the rest of the group—gone for the seasonal hunt—and provides it with abundance of game. He also teaches the family about curing herbs and roots, the knowledge of mysteries and sacred songs. In exchange, the family offers its children—to test him—and he surprisingly accepts. He reveals himself as an ‘animal’, a messenger of the council of animals that lives near the lake. This council—of which the leader is the Swan—is made up of seven ‘masculine’ animals (black bear, buffalo, elk, deer, cougar, grey wolf, skunk), seven ‘feminine’ animals (otter, racoon, mink, swan, silver fox, squirrel, owl), the Sun, Moon and Lightning (Fletcher and La Fleche 1911: 512). The stranger told the father and mother ‘that he had long been seeking for such a family as theirs to whom to give his magic gift’ (ibid.). Then the children are ritually killed one by one in a lodge. Their bodies are painted following a precise pattern and symbology of colours. The body painting is also connected with stars and constellations: The painting on the body of the second son, which represented the night sky, spotted with stars, was related to the painting on the body of the youngest child, which was the colour of the earth, for the earth and the stars were brothers; he bade them observe the circle of stars [Corona Borealis]; this circle of stars were all brothers. Moreover, he told them that the shells were like the stars. He said that there was a holy bird which was the leader of all animals about the lake. This holy bird was the white swan and the birds flocked in sevens and fives. He said that the down near the left wing should be worn on the head. The left wing of the bird would be a symbol of its power. He bade them notice that the water of the lake was still; so the mind of man, he said, must be quiet. (Ibid.: 514)

The mother and the father express their human grief and desolation for the loss of their children. They cut their hair, throw away their clothes and wail in the night. The mother then walks along the shore of the quiet lake and sees the gleaming of a white shell. The father also took a dark shell from the water. ‘Just then as they stood holding their shells the mist parted, making an opening down the lake like a path and in the path stood the four children, well and happy (…) death is not to be dreaded’ (ibid.: 519–520).14 Then in the mist, ‘as through a veil’ the outline of a strange animal appeared, as big as the great lake: Its skin was covered with hair and was brown like that of the deer. The ridge of its back was serrated with tufts of hair. It had branching horns and hoofs like the deer, and a slender tail with a tuft at the end, which swept toward the sky to the farthest end of the lake. At last this mysterious shadowy figure melted away and the lake lay quiet before the astonished couple. Then the man said to the woman: ‘we have found the mystery, let us go home’. (ibid.: 515)

So they return home, even if their children appeared only spiritually. The man goes hunting and finds plenty of game. The couple is then found by a messenger of the band and finally rejoin the group. When they were once more with their people they determined to organize a society, as the stranger has told them to do, that they might give to the members of the magic power they have received. The first lodge was composed of seven, the man and his wife and the four children, under the leadership of the mysterious stranger with the magic power. The man and woman each initiated seven others. Then they waited four years, as they have been told to do. They made packs in which to keep the articles they must wear when the society met and also the medicinal roots which the stranger had Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2/2013

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pointed out to them. Some of these roots were to heal diseases; others were poisons which were to be used to punish offenders by causing them to die. A knowledge of all these roots and herbs was given as secrets by the stranger to the man and his wife, never to be imparted except to those who should be initiated into the society. Not only could the man and his wife thus impart this knowledge, but they could also give to those who were initiated a share in the magic power bestowed on them by the mysterious stranger, who was the messenger of the council of animals that dwelt in and about the great lake. (ibid.: 515–516)

In the Sikas’sighe myth (Hoffman 1891:172–173), the spirits (Midé Manidos) are moved to pity for the conditions of sickness, misery and death of the human beings they created, and decided to meet in a council. The Great Spirit, Dze Manido, asks the Sun Spirit to go to the earth and instruct the people and provide them with the sacred Medicine. Sun, in the form of a little boy, went to the earth and lived with a woman who had a little boy of her own. This family went away in the autumn to hunt and during the winter the woman’s son died. During the funeral, when the dead boy is laying upon the poles, the adopted child ‘plays about the camp and amuses himself, and finally told his adopted father (…) that he could bring his dead brother to life’ (ibid.: 173). He tells the women to make a ‘wigwam of bark’, and to put the dead boy in a covering of birch bark and to place the body on the ground in the middle of the lodge. The next morning the family wait in the lodge, sitting around the bundle of bark. Suddenly they see a bear entering the lodge. The bear begins to sing and dance around the body of the child, who gradually begins to move. After the bear’s fourth turn around the body, the child resuscitates completely. Then the bear tells the father to give tobacco, and reveals himself: The little bear boy was the one who did this. He then remained among the Indians and taught them the mysteries of the Grand Medicine; and, after he had finished, he told his adopted father that as his mission had been fulfilled he was to return to his kindred spirits, for the Indians would have no need to fear sickness as they now possessed the Grand Medicine which would enable them to live. He also said that his spirit could bring a body to life but once, and he would now return to the sun from which they would feel his influence. (ibid.)

The two myths—with all their cultural and geographical differences—are evidently like two pieces of a jigsaw: ‘family’, ‘hunt’, ‘death’, ‘loss’, ‘stranger’, ‘animal helper’, ‘council of spirits’, ‘regeneration’, ‘Medicine society’ are the common elements that come together. Likewise, on the ritual level, the Omaha Washis’ka athin and the Midewiwin are similar in many aspects and different in others. The ‘otter-skin mystery bags’ of the Shell Society are of course very similar to the Midewayan (Fletcher and La Fleche 1911: 519–520). The same applies to the water drum (ibid.: 371, 520). The symbolical killing, ‘shooting’ the shells from the mouth of the otter-skin medicine bags, is performed by the Omaha in a similar way along with the death/rebirth meanings of the Ojibwa/Anishinawbe (ibid.: 530). Though the initiation equipment is akin, however, the ritual space is completely different: the lodge of the Shell Society is a circular earth lodge or—in the times of ethnographic research—a covered wooden building (ibid.: 516–517). The main tutelary animal spirit of the Midewiwin is the Bear; in the Washis’ka athin this position seems pertinent to the Swan. Each member of the Shell Society, in addition to the otter skin medicine bag, had the left wing of the ‘holy bird’ (the Swan) (ibid.: 519). On the 34


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other hand, the legendary animal that appears on the lake in the vision of the Omaha myth, brings to mind the ‘underwater horned panther’ (Missibiju) of the Anishinawbe, reported as a devotional subject of the Natives in the Jesuit Relations (1667, 1673); it is represented in the impressive pre-contact rock paintings of Agawa, Lake Superior, and stylized in Mesquakie traditional decoration patterns. What emerges from this interplay of differences and similarities cannot be interpreted simply as a matter of cultural borrowing. It is more likely that Anishinawbe Midewiwin and Omaha Washis’ka athin derive both from an antecedent tradition or a more ancient cultural background.15 Therefore, these two rituals are not only ‘aboriginal’ with regards their particular ethnic groups but also with reference to a tradition (or a cultural milieu) that precedes ethnic differentiation and that is shared between linguistically and culturally different groups. Rather, when the cultural borrowing is evident—for example between the Midewiwin and the Winnebago Medicine Dance, where the songs are sung in the Algonkian language (Radin 1911: 168)—we can consider this fact in an intercultural perspective: sharing elements within a common cultural background. The same may be said concerning shells. The question of the Migis shell, Cypraea Moneta (cowrie), has been raised to infer the hypothesis—since Cypraea is not native American—that the Midewiwin is a ceremony of post-contact origins (Dewdney 1975: 71–72). But the same ‘fact’ could also be interpreted as evidence of pre-historical contact. As to the ‘unusual records’ of Cypraea Moneta in North America, the malacologist R. T. Abbott, quoted by Dewdney, reported five specimens found in the Roden mounds of Alabama (ibid.). In either case, in the Midewiwin ceremonies marginellas are also used, shells that can be easily found along the southeast coast, in North Carolina and Florida (Rajnovich 1994: 52–53).16 That much and more… Missionaries, traders and anthropologists witnessed a Native spiritual tradition centred on initiation. These encounters are marked by three different kinds of opacity: that of missionaries, unable to recognize spiritual prominence in what they considered pagan superstition; that of traders, mostly occupied with the management of a changing world of conflicts and desgregation and the new values of enterprise and materialism; that of the anthropologists, dealing with ‘informants’ who reported traditions that were becoming mute and meaningless. ‘Do you see that book?’ said Red Sky to Selwin Dewdney in the sixties, pointing to a well known English Bible. ‘Well there is that much and more in the Midewiwin’ (Dewdney 1975: 2). The problem was that most of that ‘much and more’ was untranslatable and non-negotiable. As many others who tried to live with two visions of the world—Red Sky was Presbyterian—he decided to sell off his ancient traditions, considering them dead and useless. The breadth of tradition, the way in which it can be recorded and the time required to do so, have also been relevant problems for Sam Blowsnake, Paul Radin’s Winnebago informant: to inscribe the Medicine Rite from the words of Jasper Blowsnake, Sam’s older brother, required two months consisting of seven-day work weeks, six hour work days. In addition, the transcript had to be carefully reviewed by Jasper to correct any error, as errors are considered dangerous in a ritual (Hall 1997: 69; Radin 1945). Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2/2013

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The first time I attended a Midewiwin ceremony was on a beautiful cliff on Lake Superior. The sun was high in the morning sky when all the preliminary approaches of the candidates to the Midewayan ended, and initiation began. I felt very honoured and excited to have had this chance to assist: an opportunity due to agreements and trust obtained during a preceding trip that culminated in an unforgettable evening at the cottage of a Midé of Bad River, beside Lake Superior. After a tobacco offering, a discussion about dreams, ancient migrations and the book by Frances Densmore entitled Chippewa Music which I saw on his shelf, this man let me know about the next spring location of the Midewiwin ceremony, and told me to position myself at the north east side of the lodge. So one year later I was standing there, close to the fence, and very proud. I arrived at the camp early and helped in some preparation tasks, such as carrying sacks of sand for the ceremonial ground from the beach below the cliff. That morning I waited in my place till the break of dawn. When the initiation ritual began, I found it so complex and interesting that I took out my notebook, and started to write. The candidate in that initiation, a young woman, noticed me writing and complained to her tutor. The ceremony stopped. A Micmac friend beside me started to nudge me, and I realized that I was the problem and promptly put my notes back in my pocket. The conductor of the ceremony made a cool and collected speech, complaining about recurring problems with anthropologists and reiterating the prohibition on taking pictures or notes during the ceremony. Nobody spoke to me or asked me to leave, so I continued to assist the eight day ceremony. At the end of the last day, I was very impressed and struck by the enthusiasm and inexhaustible energy of the dancers. The closing dances and salutations continued all afternoon and evening. When the evening passed, I was very tired and went to a nearby motel. Feverish, in that lonesome motel room, I wrote anthropological field notes all night long. By morning I was face to face with myself, with no plans whatsoever. I drove my van up to the crossroad with Highway 2—at Bad River, Wisconsin—still without knowing where to go. Then I decided to turn left, eastward, and I continued in that direction, backtracking the mythical migration route of the Anishinawbe. I drove for days and days across Michigan, Ontario and Quebec, till the road literally ended at Havre St. Pierre (the old Pointe-aux-Esquimaux), on the north shore of the St Lawrence River. As to the field notes written that night in the motel room, I will be honest: I have never read or used them. In all these years I have at times skimmed through the pages, but nothing more. Nevertheless, the memory of that experience has become, in time, clearer. It has taken me years to understand and acknowledge this teaching. NOTES ................................................................................................................................................................ I personally witnessed, in 1994 and 1995, a spring and summer session of the Midewiwin in two different locations: the south shores of Lake Superior and the Georgian Bay (Lake Huron). Since 2004, the Three Fire Midewiwin Lodge has been on the web: . 2 As reported by the mixed-blood scholar William Warren (1984 [1885]: 193), La Pointe was the ‘central body’ of the Midewiwin and there it ‘had for so many years flourished and concentrated’. 3 About this interesting character, see also the monograph by A. L. Brown Ruoff and D. B. Smith (1997). 4 Katherine Pettipas, Curator of Native Ethnology at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, personal communication. 1

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In Claude Dablon’s description of 1670, the ‘Outchibous’—with the ‘Marameg’ and the ‘Nouquet’— was one of the ‘nations’ living along the south and the north shore of Lake Superior. These nations were confederated with the ‘Pahoüiting’, or the people living at the ‘Sault’ (the rapids between Lake Superior and Lake Huron: a place that Natives call ‘Baw-wa-ting’), and thus named by the French ‘Saulteurs’ (Thwaites [ed.] 1959 vol. 54: 132). 6 Coureurs de bois were independent fur traders in the time of colonization of Nouvelle France (seventeenth century). Hivernants were those among them who chose to spend the winter in the French colonies, often taking native women as wives. 7 The source is Father Jean de Brébeuf (Thwaites [ed.] 1959 vol. 10: 205–207; 207–209). 8 About the same issue among the Penobscot (Abenaki) Frank G. Speck was more sceptical and wrote: ‘if there ever did exist any organized society of shamans in this region the only vestiges of it are to be found in a few traditional items, which may perhaps indicate the former existence of something of this nature though they do not specify anything definite at all’ (Speck 1919: 247). 9 References for the Midewiwin in the Subarctic are in the Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, edited by June Helm in 1981: see the studies of E.S. Rogers and J. G. Taylor on Northern Ojibwa (Helm [ed.] 1981: 231), and J. H. Steinbring on the Salteaux of Lake Winnipeg (ibid.: 245, 251–253). 10 A l’approche des équinoxes du printemps et de l’automne, les plus âgé et le plus fort en médecine des Jongleurs, le Sokaskew, convoque tous les Cris du voisinage à la cérémonie du Mitéwi, en leur envoyant, par ses députés des petits présents de tabac(…). Tous les Cris étant convoqués sur un emplacement désigné par les délégués, on construit une case ou loge oblongue et conique, avec une ouverture à chaque extrémité. C’est la tente du Mitéwi. Les Cris, nus, peint et parés comme pour la guerre, entrent dans la loge du Mitéwi et se placent sur deux lignes, le long de parois, lesquels sont élevés sur des poteaux à hauteur d’appui. Le milieu de la loge est laissé vide pour les Jongleurs. Alors entrent tous les médecins ou magiciens, Maskikiy-Iyiniwok (magie-hommes) précédés par le grand prêtre ou Sokaskew. Ils portent dans leurs mains la peau ou quelque portion de l’animal qui est leur otem (fetiche, nagwal ou manito), parce qu’il s’est révélé à eux dans le rêve et s’est déclaré leur protecteur et leur bon géni. (…) Cette initiation se donne moyennant finances, et comporte l’obligation de la fidélité aux lois de la magie. Les novices ayant été introduit dans la loge, ils sont passés en revue par tous les Jongleurs, avec accompagnement de chants, de grimaces, d’insufflations et de passes au moyen des otem puissants. Chaque médecin dirige sur eux la tête de son génie en s’écriant: ‘Wi! Wi!’ Tout à coup, d’un commun accord, ils le dirigent tous ensemble sur un même novice qu’ils se sont désignés d’avance, en s’écriant : ‘Wew!’ Ce faisant, ils sont sensés pointer sur la poitrine de l’initié les flèches invisibles des puissants Manitous. Aussitôt l’initié tombe à terre sans mouvement et l’on s’écrie : ‘Il est mort!’ (…) Le Jongleur s’approche donc du candidat, il lui fait des attouchements et des passes magnétiques avec la main et avec son otem et les racines sacrées. Puis viennent les chants. (…) On fait des insufflations vers le cœur du mort afin d’y rappeler la vie. Alors peu à peu on voit la vie poindre et reparaître dans le corps de l’initié. Les invocations redoublent, les médecins collent leur bouche sur le corp du patient, lui font de ventouses et en retirent du sang, des vers, de cailloux, des clous et autres ingrédients. Bref, la vie est revenue. (Petitot 1967 [1886]: 477-483) 11 For the Menomini Mitä’wit the first source is that of Walter J. Hoffman (1890: 66–138). A classical anthropological research on Winnebago Medicine Dance is that of Paul Radin (1970 [1923]: 311–330; 1911: 149–208). 12 The Dakota Medicine Dance, with medicine bags made of skin and ritual ‘shooting’, was observed by Swedish writer and traveller Fredrika Bremer in 1853 (Feest and Kasprycki 1999: 90–91). Many references to Midewiwin or similar Medicine Societies in the Plains are reported in the Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13 (DeMallie [ed.] 2001). In particular, see for the Prairie Plains the studies of M. P. Liberty, W. R. Wood and L. Irwin on the Omaha (ibid.: 410); D. N. Brown and L. Irwin on the Ponca (ibid.: 424); M. M. Wedel on the Iowa (ibid.: 439, 440); M. M. Schweitzer on the Oto and Missouria (ibid.: 451). For the High Plains see the studies of P. C. Albers on Plains Ojibwa (ibid.: 656); R. J. DeMallie on the ‘Sioux Until 1850’ (ibid.: 720); P. C. Albers on the Santee (ibid.: 769); R. J. DeMallie on the Yankton and Yanktonai (ibid.: 784, 789–790). See also the paragraph ‘Midewiwin’ in G. A. Young ‘Intertribal Religious Movements’ (ibid.: 996–997) and ‘Music’ (ibid.: 1028). 5


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For the study of Midewiwin myths see: Hoffman 1891; Densmore 1910–13, 1979; Jones 1917, 1919 ; Radin and Reagan 1928; Balikci 1956; Landes 1968; Dewdney 1975; Brelich 1976; Barnouw 1960, 1977; Vennum 1978; Vecsey 1984; Benton-Banai, 1988; Fulford 1988, 1989, 1990; Spagna 1998; Angel 2002. 14 The white shell, feminine, is Olivia nobilis; the black shell, masculine, is Olivia elegans. 15 This is an idea also advanced in archaeology: ‘Charles Callender suggested we cannot rule out the possibility that aspects of the Midewiwin go back 2,500 years among the Indians of Ohio’ (Rajnovich 1994: 52, citing Callender, 1979: 254–257). Along this boundary between archaeology and ethnohistory, the similarities recently discovered between a Midewiwin origin myth and the Missaukee earthwork enclosure in Michigan (Howey and O’Shea 2006) are intriguing. 16 In the ‘shooting rite’ of different medicine societies, sometimes pebbles were used (Omaha) or bipointed objects cut from shells (Wahpeton Dakota), usually referred to as ‘arrows’ (Hall 1997: 62, 72–73). A remarkable work about the symbolism of shells in Native North America is that produced by Werner Müller (1954). 13

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................................ Angel, Michael 2002. Preserving the Sacred: Historical Perspectives on the Ojibwa Midewiwin. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Balikci, Asen 1956. Note sur le Midewiwin. Anthropologica 2: 165–217. Barnouw, Victor 1960. A Chippewa Mide Priest’s Description of the Medicine Dance. Wisconsin Archaeologist 41: 77–97. Barnouw, Victor 1977. Wisconsin Chippewa Myths and Tales and Their Relation to Chippewa Life. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Benton-Banai, Edward 1988. The Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway. Wisconsin: Hayward. Blair, Emma Helen 1996 [1911]. The Indian Tribes of the Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes, Voll. I, II. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Bragdon, Kathleen J. 1996. Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Brelich, Angelo 1976. Nascita di miti: Due studi mitologici. Religioni e Civiltà, vol. II: 7–47. Brown Ruoff, A. Lavonne and Donald B. Smith 1997. George Copway: Life, Letters and Speeches. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Callender, Charles 1978. Miami. In Bruce G. Trigger (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Callender Charles 1979. Hopewell Archaeology and American Ethnology. In D. S. Brose and N. Greber (eds), Hopewell Archaeology: The Chillicothe Conference. Kent: Kent State University Press. Copway, George 1851. The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation. By G. Copway, or Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, Chief of the Ojibway Nation. Boston: Benjamin B. Mussley. Day, Gordon M. 1978. Western Abenaki. In Bruce G. Trigger (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Deleary, Nicholas 1990. The Midewiwin, an Aboriginal Institution: A Traditional, Culture-Based Perspective. M.A. Thesis, Carleton University. DeMallie, Raymond J. (ed.) 2001. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, Plains, part 1 & 2. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Denslow, William R. 1932. Fremasonry and the American Indian. Missouri Lodge of Research, vol. 32. Densmore, Frances 1979 [1929]. Chippewa Customs. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Densmore, Frances 1910–13. Chippewa Music. Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 45, 53. Dewdney, Selwin 1975. The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Erikson, Vincent O. 1978. Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. In Bruce G Trigger (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. 38


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Feest, Christian F. and Sylvia S. Kasprycki 1999. Peoples of the Twilight: European Views of Native Minnesota, 1823 to 1862. Afton, Minn.: Afton Historical Society Press. Fletcher, Alice and Francis La Fleche 1911. The Omaha Tribe. 27th Annual Report. Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology. Fulford, George 1988. Manabus and the Mitawin. In W. Cowan (ed.), Papers of the 19th Algonquian Conference. Ottawa: Carleton University. Fulford, George 1989. A Structural Analysis of Mide Song Scrolls. In W. Cowan (ed.), Actes du 20me congrès des algonquinistes. Ottawa : Carleton University. Fulford, George 1990. A Structural Analysis of Mide Chants. In W. Cowan (ed.), Papers of the 21th Algonquian Conference. Ottawa: Carleton University. Goddard, Ives 1978. Delaware. In Bruce G. Trigger (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Hall, Robert L. 1997. An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Hallowell, Alfred Irwing 1936. Passing of the Midewewin in the Lake Winnipeg Region. American Anthropologist 38 (1): 32–51. Helm, June (ed.) 1981. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, Subarctic. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Hickerson, Harold 1962. Notes on the Post-Contact Origin of the Midewiwin. Ethnohistory, 9 (4): 404–423. Hickerson, Harold 1963. The Sociohistorical Significance of Two Chippewa Ceremonials. American Anthropologist 65 (1): 67–85. Hickerson, Harold 1988 [1970]. The Chippewa and Their Neighbours: A Study in Ethnohistory. Revised and expanded edition, review essay by Jennifer S. H. Brown and Laura L. Peers. New York: Waveland Press. Hoffman, Walter J. 1890. The Menomini. Bureau of American Ethnology, 14th Annual Report. Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology. Hoffman, Walter J. 1891. The Mide’wiwin or ‘Grand Medecine Society’ of the Ojibwa. Bureau of American Ethnology, Seventh Annual Report (1885–86). Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology. Howey, Meghan C. L. and John M. O’Shea 2006. Bear’s Journey and the Study of Ritual in Archaeology. American Antiquity 71 (2): 261–282. Jones, William 1917. Ojibwa Texts. Part 1, ed. by Truman Michelson. Leyden and New York: American Ethnological Society. Jones, William 1919. Ojibwa Texts. Part 2, ed. by Truman Michelson. Leyden and New York: American Ethnological Society. Keesing, Felix M. 1987 [1939]. The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin: A Study of Three Centuries of Cultural Contact and Change. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kidd, Kenneth E. 1981. A Radiocarbon Date on a Midewiwin Scroll from Burntside Lake, Ontario. Ontario Archaeology 35: 41–43. Kinietz, William V. 1940. The Indians of Western Great Lakes, 1615–1760. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Landes, Ruth 1968. Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press. Müller, Werner 1954. Die Blaue Hütte: Zum Sinnbild der Perle bei nordamerikanischen Indianern. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Peers, Laura 1994. The Ojibwa of Western Canada: 1780 to 1870. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Petitot, Émile 1967 [1886]. Tradition indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. Pettipas, Katherine 1994. Severing the Ties that Bind: Government Repression of Indigenous Religion Ceremonies on the Prairies. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Pflüg, Melissa A. 1998. Ritual and Myth in Odawa Revitalization: Reclaiming a Sovereign Place. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.


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