Volume 2

Contributions to Fox ethnology / Truman Michelson.

  • Michelson, Truman, 1879-1938.
Date:
1927-30
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Contributions to Fox ethnology / Truman Michelson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Little Spotted Buffalo.” This I know from another source (see Fortieth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 505). Similarly it is well known to me that Double Body (p. 13) and Stone Sitter (pp. 13, 33) are names of supernatural buffaloes according to Fox religious ideas (see also Bull. 87, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 45). There is also a strong presumption that Green Painted (pp. 13, 35) is the same as the supernatural buffalo called “Green Buffalo,” who traditionally bestowed a blessing upon a member of the Wolf gens who then in¬ stituted the Green Buffalo dance. And it goes without saying that the various gentes mentioned and the Little Dirty Ani Society (p. 19) actually occur among the Fox Indians. It is also obvious that Ki'ckitiyatcig*1', “Those Who Have Short Tails,” as a designation of members of the Bear gens, corresponds to Sauk Kishkitihuk [Ki'ck- it!ya'Agk1' in my transcription], “Short Tails,” which is given by Skinner, Observations on the Ethnology of the Sauk Indians, Bull. Pub. Mus., city of Milwaukee, vol. 5, No. 1, August 30, 1923, p. 14; the difference in the termination of the words is due to the fact that the former is an animate plural, intransitive, of the participial, while the latter is simply an animate plural of a substantive. There is, accordingly, every reason for considering the present account truthful. It is stated above that the Indian text is incomplete and ends in the middle of a sentence. The speech at the close of the third dance is cut short. This should have been completed, the fourth dance mentioned, and the short speech of dismissal given. I en¬ deavored in the summer of 1927 to induce the informant to remedy these defects, but without success. The text is also incomplete in that additional data on the Buffalo dance of the Bear gens surely could have been given. Thus mention is made of the tying of the drum by four men: now in the Green Buffalo dance of the Wolf gens this will be done by four men, one of the Thunder gens, one of the Bear gens, one of the Eagle gens, and one of the War Chiefs gens. Similarly a cardinal feature of the Fox gens festivals is that there are four women stationed in the corners, two on the south side being Ki'ckos, two on the north To'kans (see Fortieth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 517; Bull. 85, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 114, 142, 144; Bull. 87, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 19, 21; Bull. 89, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 59). Such women are supposed to have ceased to menstruate (cf. Fortieth Ann, Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 517; Bull. 89, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 29). It should be noted that “Those (women) who have ceased to menstruate are considered as men” (Fortieth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 231). [Since this last is also a Winnebago belief (Lowie, Primitive Religion, p. 217) it is obvious that acculturation has taken place.] It is not likely that this feature is absent from the Buffalo dance of the Bear gens of the