Note 44.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Like the Algonkian manitou, the Siouan wakonda is thus seen to hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoian orenda clings about persons and things. Yet it is applied in an adjectival form by various Siouan tribes to medicine-men, to the sacred pipe, to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by the medicine-men or jugglers, and apparently to anyone who displays unusual qualities or powers. Thus it is used for a man who is extraordinarily stingy, to a man who has a habit of loud and rapid speech, to one who is a hard, almost an unmerciful, rider, to a child who speaks or walks for the first time and has thus manifested a new and individual power to act. A woman during her menstrual period is wakan; to perform acts of worship is to make wakan; the secret society among the Dakotas which is the depository of their mysteries is wakanwacipi, the sacred dance. In these cases the word conveys the sense not only of mysterious, powerful, wonderful, but also of sacred, spiritual, taboo. And a Ponka medicine-man once told the late J. O. Dorsey, “I am a wakanda.”44.1