d, the Ground, the Thunder-being, the Sun, the Moon, the Morning Star. The Upper World was perhaps the greatest of the Wakandas. In some of the tribes it was the supreme Wakanda. There was no set form of worship of Wakanda. Every one thought Wakanda dwelt in some secret place. It was believed that the Wakanda, or some Wakanda was ever present to hear any petition or prayer for help. There were many forms of propitiation, or these may have been sometimes in the nature of invocations, such as the elevation and lowering of the arms, the presentation of the mouth-piece of the pipe, the emission of the smoke, the burning of cedar needles in the sweat house, the application of the major terms of kinship, ceremonial waiting, sacrifice and offerings, and the cutting of the body with knives.
The Osages call the Sun the mysterious one of day, and pray to him as grandfather. Prayer was always made toward the sun without regard to its position in the heavens. Here is a prayer.
Ho, Mysterious Power, you who are the Sun! Here is tobacco! I wish to follow your course. Grant that it may be so! Cause me to meet whatever is good (i. e., for my advantage) and to give a wide berth to anything that may be to my injury or disadvantage. Throughout this island (the world) you regulate everything that moves, including human beings. When you decide for one that his last day on earth has come, it is so. It can not be delayed. Therefore, O Mysterious Power, I ask a favor of you.
The Pleiades, the constellation of the Three Deer (Belt of Orion), the Morning Star, the Small Star, the Bowl of the Dipper, are all Wakandas, and they are addressed as “Grandfather.” In the Osage traditions, cedar symbolizes the tree of life. When a woman is initiated into the secret society of the Osages, the officiating man of her gens gives her four sips of water, symbolizing, so they say, the river flowing by the tree of life, and then he rubs her from head to foot with cedar needles, three times in front, three times on her back, and three times on each side, twelve times in all, pronouncing the sacred name of Wakanda as he makes each pass.
These instances are given to aid in the formation of a proper conception of the Wakanda as regarded by the Osages. In the Siouan tongue Wakandagi, as a noun, means a subterranean or water monster, a large horned reptile mentioned in the myths, and still supposed to dwell beneath the bluffs along the Missouri river.1
Much concerning the early history of the Osages has already been told in the account of Pike’s expedition and the history of the Kansas. They called themselves Wa-zha-zhe. This name the French Traders corrupted to the present Osage. In historic times the tribe was divided into three bands:
- Pahatsi, or Great Osages
- Utsehta, or Little Osages
- Santsnkhdhi, or the Arkansas Band.
There are different accounts as to how the tribe became separated into the two principal bands Great and Little Osages. Some insist that the division occurred in primal times. The Osages then dwelt about a great mountain, an immense mound, or a big hill. One part of the tribe lived on the mountain, the remainder on the plain. Those on the elevation came to be called there the Great Osages, and those living in the plain were the Little Osages. It has been suggested that the names represented a social difference or some tribal distinction long forgotten by even the Osages themselves. In all probability there is no foundation for any of these explanations. Isaac McCoy, in his History of Baptist Indian Missions says the division was the result of some fault of the early traders among them. There were then two towns on the Missouri belonging to the Osages. The one above became known as the Upper town, and the people dwelling there as the Upper People. In like manner, those at the town below were the Lower People. Each town had its chief and separate local government. The white people, having an imperfect knowledge of the language and conditions of the Osages, supposed that the names of the towns signified that all the tall or large people of the tri