Ethnic Studies 110
Ross Frank

Linked to Week 5 Outline, V. C.

The Wabeno — Excerpts from sources:

• 
  The History of the Ojibway, published by Reverend Jones in 1861: An “evil” group of shamans that possessed “the agency of familiar spirits from which they receive power to inflict diseases on their enemies, prevent good luck of the hunter, and the success of the warrior.” These shamans also flew invisibly and could transform themselves into animals at will. Finally, “the fox witches are known by the flame of fire which proceeds out of their mouthes every time they bark.”
• 
  The fur trader, Alexander Henry, made the first mention of the “wabbano,” celebrated in 1801 just after the Midéwiwin: “It is not so solemn as the grand medicine, nor does it require such ceremonious initiation.”
• 
  Peter Grant described the “Wabanoe” as “another order of impostors who pretend, by virtue of their medicine bags, to baffle all secret machinations of their most inveterate enemies, and even to kill them at pleasure without being detected.” The Wabeno priests also possessed a root which, when applied, rendered “such parts so insensible for a few minutes as even to bear the effect of fire without feeling or injury, to the astonishment of those who are not in the secret….”
• 
  Thomas McKenny visited US Agent, Henry Schoolcraft’s residence at Sault Ste. Marie on his way to sign the 1820 treaty of Fond du Lac. There he witnessed a “Wa-ba-no” characterized by a whole night of rather abandoned dancing and the consumption of large quantities of liquor. One Indian made a speech to the evil spirit, “the substance of which was, as I learned, to appease him; and to beg his compassion on them.”
• 
  John Tanner: The “Waw-be-no,” although “fashionable among the Ojibwa” during the period of his captivity (1789-1817) because, “it has ever been considered by the older and more respectable men as a false and dangerous religion.”
  Henry Schoolcraft, a US Indian agent to the Ojibwa in the 1820a dismissed the Wabeno saying “it is stated by judicious persons among themselves to be of modern origin. They regard it as a degraded form of the Meda [sic].”