Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/74

22 political ceremonies, and at their great feasts, the calumet presides; the savages send its first fruits, or its first puffs, to the Great Waconda, or Master of Life, to the Sun, which gives them light, and to the Earth and Water by which they are nourished; then they direct a puff to each point of the compass, begging of Heaven all the elements and favorable winds." And again: "They offer the Calumet to the Great Spirit, to the Four Winds, to the Sun, Fire, Earth and Water."

The ritual of the calumet defines for the Indian the frame of the world and the distribution of its indwelling powers. Above, in the remote and shining sky, is the Great Spirit, whose power is the breath of life that permeates all nature and whose manifestation is the light which reveals creation. As the spirit of light he shows himself in the sun, "the eye of the Great Spirit"; as the breath of life he penetrates all the world in the form of the moving Winds. Below is Mother Earth, giving forth the Water of Life, and nourishing in her bosom all organic beings, the Plant Forms and the Animal Forms. The birds are the intermediaries between the habitation of men and the Powers Above; serpents and the creatures of the waters are intermediaries communicating with the Powers Below.

Such, in broad definition, was the Indian's conception of the world-powers. But he was not unwilling to elaborate this simple scheme. The world, as he conceived it, is a storeyed world: above the flat earth is the realm of winds and clouds, haunted by spirits and traversed by the great Thunderbird; above this, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars have their course; while high over all is the circle of the upper sky, the abode of the Great Spirit. Commonly, the visible firmament is regarded as the roof of man's world, but it is also the floor of an archetypal heavenly world, containing the patterns of all things that exist in the world below: it is from this heaven above the heavens that the beings descend who create the visible universe. And as there are worlds above, so are there worlds beneath us; the earth is a floor for us, but a roof for those