The Hok'awas Manina, "Those Who Walk in Darkness," are also known as "Night Soldiers," and some are called "Those with the Rounded Wood" (after a kind of warclub?). Their sacrificial emblem is four black, parallel vertical lines, or a wavy black line, as seen in the illustrations to the left. Like the Thunderbirds with whom they intermarry, the Nightspirits appear before humans in the shape and aspect of men. They are as much responsible for the black of night as Sun is for the light of day, since darkness spreads as the Nightspirits walk about the world. [1] When the Nightspirits walk fast, dawn comes swiftly. The oldest Nightspirits walk the slowest, and their white hair may be seen in the twilight that follows after them. The elders carry canes, and if a passing Nightspirit points his cane at anyone still asleep, that person will not live to see the sun. [2]

The Night Soldiers are especially warlike and to show them disrespect would mean certain death. In the early history of the earth, the Night Soldiers used to bare many scars on their faces from being speared by the cranes with whom they constantly warred. However, when the Thunderbirds first visited them, they entered the fray with the newly invented Thunderbird Warclub, with which they decisively defeated and subdued the cranes. Like Thunderbirds, the Nightspirits like to kill and eat Waterspirits, whom they call "beavers." [3] Despite their warrior prowess, they consider their sisters to be so wakâtcâk that the women are permitted to walk in front of them. [4] Nightspirit women have the power to create such cold that they can even freeze a Thunderbird. Like the Thunders, however, some Nightspirit women have man-eating proclivities, but such practices are aberrations abhorred by most Nightspirits. Nightspirit women travel from their spirit village on the eastern shore of the earth-circling ocean by simply walking on its waters, a feat the Thunderbirds are unable to accomplish. Nevertheless, the Thunders sailed across the eastern ocean to the spirit village of the Nights at the edge of the world by placing themselves inside bladders made of bear skin. There they married Nightspirit women and returned with them to the other side of the ocean by stepping in their wives' first four footprints as they walked on the waters. [5] A human once married a Nightspirit woman, but fighting soon broke out with the Waterspirit woman she had as a cowife. From this unpleasant experience, humans learned to be monogamous. [6]

In their village in the east whence night arises, stands the Night Soldiers' Lodge. Before the lodge is a tree of incomparable beauty, an incorruptible evergreen with leaves untouched by death. The Night Soldiers Lodge is ankle deep in pure white feathers [7], and not far distant is a Creation Lodge full of the offerings made to them by human beings. From this stock they grant vision seekers blessings of war and of life. [8] A mortal, Djobenâgiwíñxga, was once summoned to this Creation Lodge by a special messenger. There he saw a long lodge facing east covered with a giant buffalo skin. As he waded in through white feathers up to his knees, he saw a row of kettles stretching as far as he could see. With this he was blessed. [9] The spirits called "Happy Nights" are especially powerful in their war blessings, but they also control certain plants through which they can dispense the blessings of medicine. [10] In ancient times offerings of tobacco, red feathers, and white deerskins could be put on the roof of a lodge and the Nightspirits would receive them as they passed over in the darkness. [11]

In times not long past, Nightspirits used to bless fasting neophytes with visions of the future. [12] In the past people blessed by the Nights performed "Nightspirit tricks" during the Sore Eye Dance in honor of the Nights, a feast which lasted five sleepless nights. The holiest of the "Night-blessed children" could stick their hands into boiling water without getting scalded, and they could take live coals into their mouths with impunity and blow them out like a flash of lightning. [13] A hint of how this is possible is indicated by Gilmore. Used for this purpose was the narrow-leaved purple cone flower (Echinacea angustifolia).

It was said that jugglers bathed their hands and arms in the juice of this plant so that they could take out a piece of meat from a boiling kettle with the bare hand without suffering pain, to the wonderment of onlookers. A Winnebago said he had often used the plant to make his mouth insensible to heat, so that for show he could take a live coal into his mouth. Burns were bathed with the juice to give relief from the pain, and the plant was used in the steam bath to render the great heat endurable. [14]

Echinacea was generally used as a pain killer.

Some important human beings have been reincarnated Nightspirits. Tciwoit'éhiga was thought to be a son of a Nightspirit princess who descended to earth to live as a human being. He was blessed with the knowledge of the Nightspirit Songs, which can be sung during the warbundle feasts. [15] Fourth Universe, the founder of the Black Bear Subclan, was originally a Nightspirit. At the end of his life he disappeared in a storm, but left behind a white flowered plant with strong curative powers. [16]

Nightspirit Songs

Walking on the Nights are coming.

I am not able to bless, How could I bless?

Then they came walking, The Nights are coming.

Charles Bonaparte

It was I that said that to him.

I drum, See one.

This is him, Say to him now.

The naked one that is here crying the distance,
Bless him or her now.

Say it to him, Bless him now.

Charles Bonaparte

I am he that is walking, I am walking, see me.

You are to be that way they planned.

You said to him, Human this earth, you said.

Human you were to be named, I was theone that said to you.

The one we meant, That is what he means.

Charles Bonaparte

The earth as in four parts.

The day sat in four parts. [17]

Links: Spirits, Thunderbirds, Sun, Day, Crane, Moon, Cosmography, Iron Spirits, Tobacco, The Thunderbird Warclub, Bird Spirits, Bears, Polaris, Martens.

Stories: mentioning Nightspirits: The Nightspirits Bless Djobenagiwíñxga, The Nightspirits Bless Tciwoit'éhiga, The Big Stone, How the Thunders Met the Nights, Fourth Universe, Battle of the Night Blessed Men and the Medicine Rite Men, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, Ocean Duck, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Sun and the Big Eater; mentioning Thunderbirds: The Thunderbird, Warughápara, How the Thunders Met the Nights, Ocean Duck, Traveler and the Thunderbird War, Thunderbird and White Horse, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, The Quail Hunter, The Boy who was Captured by the Bad Thunderbirds, Redhorn's Sons, The Dipper, Brave Man, The Stone that Became a Frog, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, Redhorn Contests the Giants, Adventures of Redhorn's Sons, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, The Warbundle of the Eight Generations, Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, The Green Waterspirit of the Wisconsin Dells, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Bluehorn's Nephews, The Big Stone, Origin of the Hotcâk Chief, How the Hills and Valleys were Formed (v. 1 and v. 2), The Spirit of Gambling, The Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth, The Wonághire Wâkcik Clan Origin Myth, Eagle Clan Origin Myth, Pigeon Clan Origins, The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty, Wolf Clan Origin Myth, The Man who was a Reincarnated Thunderbird, Aratcgéga's Blessings, The Twins Disobey Their Father, Kunu's Warpath, Turtle's Warparty, The Orphan who was Blessed with a Horse, The Thunder Charm, The Boulders of Devil's Lake, Bird Clan Origin Myth, The Nightspirits Bless Tciwoit'éhiga; about the interrelationship between Thunderbirds and Nightspirits: How the Thunders Met the Nights, Ocean Duck, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, The Big Stone, Sun and the Big Eater, The Nightspirits Bless Tciwoit'éhiga; about stars and other celestial bodies: Sky Man, Îtcorúcika and His Brothers, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The Dipper, Wodjidjé, The Raccoon Coat, Grandfather's Two Families, Bluehorn's Nephews, Turtle and the Witches, The Fall of the Stars; mentioning Warbundles: Warughápara (Thunderbird), The Adventures of Redhorn's Sons (Thunderbird), Redhorn's Sons (Thunderbird), The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty (Thunderbird), The Warbundle of the Eight Generations (Thunderbird), Wanihéga Becomes a Sak'î (Thunderbird), Cûgepaga (Eagle), The Masaxe War (Eagle?), The Blessing of a Bear Clansman (Bear), The Blessings of the Buffalo Spirits (Buffalo), A Man's Revenge (enemy).

Genealogy: Thunderbirds (+ Daughter of the Chief of the Nights).

Notes:

[1] Paul Radin, The Winnebago Tribe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 [1923]) 392.

[2] Radin, The Winnebago Tribe 495; Capt. Don Saunders, When the Moon is a Silver Canoe: Legends of the Wisconsin Dells (Wisconsin Dells, Wisc.: Don Saunders, 1947) 8-9.

[3] Paul Radin, "Mâzeniabera," Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Library) #21, pp. 1-134.

[4] Radin, The Winnebago Tribe, 290-292.

[5] Radin, "Mâzeniabera."

[6] Paul Radin, "The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy," Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Library) #44, pp. 1 - 74.

[7] Radin, The Winnebago Tribe, 283, 285-295, 495.

[8] Paul Radin, ed., Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian (New York and London: Appleton and Co., l926) 25-26.

[9] Sam Blowsnake, The Warbundle Feast of the Thunderbird Clan, in Radin, The Winnebago Tribe, 428-433.

[10] Radin, The Winnebago Tribe, 282, 286.

[11] Radin, "The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy," Notebook #44.

[12] Walter W. Funmaker, The Bear in Winnebago Culture: A Study in Cosmology and Society (Master Thesis, University of Minnesota: June, 1974 [MnU-M 74-29]) 58. His informant is his father Night Walker (b. 1905), a member of the Bear Clan.

[13] Radin, The Winnebago Tribe, 282, 286-294.

[14] Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region, Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1911-12 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1919) 106.

[15] Blowsnake, The Warbundle Feast of the Thunderbird Clan, 428-433.

[16] Walter Funmaker, The Winnebago Black Bear Subclan: a Defended Culture (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Minnesota: December, 1986 [MnU-D 86-361]]) 51-57, 180. Informant: One Who Wins of the Winnebago Bear Clan.

[17] Charles Bonaparte, "Night Spirits Songs," in Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Library) Winnebago I, #3, pp. 45, 48-51.