M. R. HARRINGTON — SACRED BUNDLES OF THE SAC AND FOX INDIANS. 135

after the crops are gathered. Blessings and invocations are said when a child is bom. . . . Holy or consecrated tobacco is burned on certain occasions as incense, and they have some- thing that profane eyes are never allowed to see, called 'Me- sham,’ corresponding to the Jewish Ark of the Covenant.” This was, of course, a “ml cam’,” or sacred bundle.
Incidental mention is made of the sacred bundles in Dr. William Jones’ Fox Texts , 1 also under the head of Sauk in the Handbook of American Indians . 2
1 Publications of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. I, pp. 161, 165, 169.
* Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 30, Part 2, p. 478.
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136 UNIVERSITY MUSEUM — ANTHROPOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS VOL. IV.
MYTHS OF ORIGIN.
The origin of the different kinds of sacred bundles, in fact of many kinds of fetishes, amulets and charms, is gen- erally traced, by tradition, to the custom of the youth’s fast, widespread especially among the eastern and central tribes, in which the boy subjects himself to hunger and exposure in the hope that some supernatural being will appear to him and offer to be his guardian spirit and helper through life. At such a time, say the legends, the originator of the bundle, then a poor starving boy, was visited by the Manitos and told how to make the amulets and other things that would give him the power he craved. Such a bundle would then be handed down to the succeeding generations. Thus it hap- pened that many a warrior used a bundle that was not the product of his own dream, but the vision of one of his ancestors. Bundles may be divided and made the basis of several new ones, and changes may be introduced in response to new revelations.
A tradition purporting to be the story of the origin of fasting for power, and of the first bundle ever made among the Sac and Fox, was obtained from Mecabekwa (PI. XX, A), a man of Fox descent, living near Cushing, Oklahoma. This is given substantially as he related it, sentence by sentence, as translated by the expedition interpreter, Leo Walker. Meca- bekwa’s name means Big Back, but he goes by the name of U. S. Grant among the whites. The tradition runs as follows:
The man to whom the Great Manito first gave this bundle received the name of Pi toe ka h' (redoubled). The name he bore in childhood is not now remembered. He was poor and as he grew up he did not enjoy living, but was always dis- satisfied, so at last he painted himself and made up his mind that he would go out and starve.
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