IIIC

Shaking-Lodge

146-158

"The foundation text on ... the shaking lodge is Hallowell's monograph The Role of Conjuring in Salteaux Society (1942), ... a nearly exhaustive compendium ... . Since the publication of Hallowell's monograph, the conjring complex has been described among Pikangekum Salteaux (Dunning 1959, 177-80), the Sand Lake Wisconsin Chippewa (Ritzenthaler 1953, 200-4), the Oxford House Swampy Cree (Mason 1967, 63), the Sandy Lake Cree (Stevens 1985), the Attawapiskat Swampy Cree (Honigmann 1956, 73-75), the Rupert House Cree (Preston 1975, 25-90), the Mistassini Cree (Rousseau and Rousseau 1947; ... Tanner 1979, 111-16), the Lac St. John Montagnais (Lips 1947, 476-82), the Natashquan Montagnais (Vincent 1973; 1976), and Ft. St. George Cree (Bauer 1971, 21-27). The accounts by Rousseau, Ritzenthaler, Dunning, and Preston are based on firsthand observation of the ritual."

"Kosapahcikewin (Cree) or conjuring with the shaking lodge continues to be practiced in some subarctic communities."

"Illness was ... thought to result from ... misdeeds committed earlier by the sufferer

or by his or her relatives;

{That sickness may result from the misdeeds of one's own relatives is a standard Chinese doctrine : ""pathogenic" sins or transgressions ... could more frequently be traced back to one of the patient's forebears" (ChMM, p. 14).}

spirits ... exhorted the sufferer or other implicated person {i.e., sinning relative} to confess publicly their misdeed as a preliminary to cure (cf. Hallowell 1942, 53-64; Dunning 1959, 180)."

{"illness was a punishment for moral transgressions. ... Thus healing must begin with contrition and penance. Confession of sins was central to both the Celestial Masters and Great Peace sects." (SW, p. 114)}

"Among the Saulteaux and Cree ..., the spirits were perceptible as tiny luminous specks of light hovering near the top of the lodge (cf. Hallowell 1942, 51 fn; Mason 1967, 63)."

{Spirits are similarly visible during the Yuwipi of the Sioux; there, however, the spirits often hover visibly around the heads of human participants.}

"According to Manitoba Cree, a bear [spirit] or caribou [spirit] brought into the lodge might begin by producing animal calls

and gradually switch to progressively more intelligible Cree."

{Evidently, such animal-guardian spirits are able within some minutes to absorb, by telepathic osmosis from humans in the locality, a capacity for conversing human language. (When departing at the termination of such a seance, the animal-guardian spirits lose such ability, and must therefore redacquire it afresh in each successive shaking-lodge caerimony.)}

IIID

Windigo Complex

158-171

"The word 'windigo' (Cree wihtikow, Ojibwa wintiko) refers to a spiritually powerful anthropomorphic monster that overcomes and feeds upon human beings. Although some windigos are seen as members of an autochthonous nonhuman race or class of harmful spirits, it is believed that many windigos were once human beings who were transformed into their monstrous condition ... by dream predestination or spirit possession ... ."

p. 159

"Nelson defined the windigo as a 'Giant of the anthropophagi {anthropo-phagoi} Genus' ... and elaborated upon its attributes with a myth describing ... one such cannibal giant. This myth, which was known also to the Te^te de Boule of Quebec (Davidson 1928, 267), is one of several characterizing windigos as a race of giants without human

p 160

antecedents ..., and this distinction between nonhuman and human windigoes persists in some boreal Algonquian communities (Landes 1938, 213-14; Flannery et al. 1982, 57)."

"On commonly reported windigo symptom absent from Nelson's account is the hallucinatory perception of human beings as animals."

{This is likewise reported from elsewhere (such as among tribes in Indonesia, in describing living-conditions in the afterlife, where humans appear as animals, and animals appear as humans), and would naturally tend to refer to experiences in dreams. Perhaps those who tell of such dreams of own, neglect to explain (on account of some conventional taboo against explaining such) that the actual experiences are confined to their dreams.}

p. 166

"windigo appears ... in the sense of the physical inhabitation of the victim by a malignant spirit.

Crees in northwestern Manitoba use the verb pihciskow- to refer to [spirit-]possession of this kind, and it remains a conventional explanation of windigo. ... Other Cree explanations, however, parallel Nelson's emphasis on the relationship in Algonquian thought between waking experience and the beings and events experienced in dreams ... . To Nelson's Saulteaux and Cree informants,

p. 167

the windigo condition ... were prefigured in dream experiences with specific malevolent beings who functioned as spirit guardians.

Among Ojibwa-speaking groups, these beings were the nonhuman windigo giants in the north (cf. Landes 1938, 214). Also "delegated" in Nelson's idiom was a third form of windigo caused by dreaming of the evil beings, Ice and North ... . ... Landes (1938, 214) described the Ojibwa belief {or rather, dream-experience?} that human windigos possessed one of the giant nonhuman windigos as spirit-guardians. A similar explanation was given by the Plains Cree ... (Preston 1978, 62), although the guardian ... might deceive the visionary by appearing in another form. ...

p. 168

Nelson also reported the belief {or rather, dream-experience?} that a windigo condition might be induced ... by the individual's normally supportive spirit guardian is the latter became angry {exasperated} with its human dependent for neglecting sacrifices or making disparaging remarks (... cf. Preston 1978, 62; Landes 1938, 214)."

p. 168

"Of methods for curing windigo, other sources have noted ... proximity to a hot fire, ...

p. 169

particularly by melting the windigo's supposed heart of ice."

"The evil spirit entities that "delegate" the windigo condition are the giant cannibals of the north (Ojibwa), and beings associated with ice and the northern direction ... (Cree).

Nelson noted also the idea that the human windigo ... develops a frozen heart or other {frozen} internal organs (cf. Cooper 1933, 21)."

"The distributional problem of why Algonquians but not other boreal forest inhabitants possessed the windigo complex was noted as early as the late eighteenth century David Thompson (1962, 194) and remains to be satisfactorily elucidated."

{Such alleged problem is, in fact, non-existent : for, in fact, the Ataspaskan tribes have, in their wec^uge, an aequivalent to the windigo. Thus (cited supra on p. 166), the Algonkian "superhuman strength which allowed the windigo to overcome its human victims (Speck 1935, 37)", is matched by (LBKS, p. 20) the Ataspaskan "person ... said to become "too strong." This person is then compelled, by ... the authority of having truly experienced the story in a vision ..., to begin a transformation into the person-eating mythic monster." (It is typical of overly-specialized anthropologists to be quite unaware of the customs, habits, and literature of even nearby tribes in the same country.)}

IIIE

Medicine

171-184

"such techniques as singing or sucking with tubular bones ... presupposed or was derived from ... communication with spirit beings."

"each medicine revealed to humans in dreams had its own song which was sung when the plant ... was collected and administered. Nelson also made it clear that the effectiveness of the medicine depended upon the performance of the song and the simultaneous attendance or influence of the curer's spirit guardian ... . Songs might also be sung when medicines such as roots were removed from the earth and tobacco offerings were placed in the hole (Densmore 1928, 325; Smith 1932, 349)."

"A sizable literature describes the medicinal uses of specific plants by Ojibwa ... and Cree ... . ...

A detailed account of the preparation and administration of botanical and other medicines by Minnesota Ojibwa was prepared by Densmore (1928, 325-35)."

p. 173

"all Cree and Ojibwa groups recognized one or more categories of professional healers whose vocation derived from the special character of their dreams".

p. 174

"Such aspects of curing as the identification of medicinal uses for specific plants or

the compounding of plants for a new medical purpose

{This is usual in Chinese medicine.}

are understood by Crees to derive from dreams or from their interpretation".

"Among some Southwestern Ojibwa ..., Thunderbirds and Bear were identified as the spirit-guardians of shamans (Densmore 1928, 324; Landes 1968, 47-50)."

p. 175

"The account of the underground abode of the medicine owner with its adjacent rivers and lakes parallels in certain features the ... vision of a Lake Nipigon Ojibwa (Morriseau 1965, 65-67), but Nelson did not make it clear whether his description came from ... Ojibwa sources.

The beliefs Nelson described are of sufficient theological and symbolic complexity to suggest affinity with the Ojibwa Midewiwin society ... . Nelson had attended the "Mee-tay-wee" at Jack Head on Lake Winnepeg (Brown 1984, 204) ... . ...

{Not clarifying the sources could be due to the perfunctory secrecy imposed by the Midewiwin; and a claim to the information as having come out of a personal vision may likewise be an attempt to obfuscate sources.}

During the vision, ... the dreamer's soul, left the site of the fast and travelled to the medicine owner's abode. The spirit dwelt inside a mountain from which forty rivers with

colored water issued to converge in a large lake on on a plain at the foot of the mountain.

{Are the combined waters (in the dream-lake) iridescent?}

The different water conditions in the rivers (turbulent, placid, etc.) symbolized or prefigured variations in human health and longevity. The underground dwelling possessed

six doors, each oriented to a different direction.

{If so, the aedifice would likely be hexagonal. Likewise, the mystical music-composer Karlheinz Stockhausen "lives in a hexagonal house of his own design in the forest" (M&S, p. 353).}

After being greeted ..., the dreamer was admitted through a door positioned exactly in the midst of the rivers

p. 176

with twenty on either side. ... There the dreamer was taught ... ."