Midewiwin, Spirituality -- Indigenous, Ojibwa, Ojibwa -- Religion, Saulteaux -- Religion, Saulteaux 

"The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway provides a previously unavailable chart of the emergence, development, and decline of a unique religious nexus known as the Midéwewin, an untranslatable Ojibway word inadequately rendered in English as the 'Grand Medicine Society.' The Midé cult was introduced by a young visionary in the late eighteenth century, and later spread from Lake Superior as far as Lake Winnipeg.

Coincident with the emergence of the Midéwewin, and developing out of it, was a transformation in the life style of the Saulteur bands migrating along the south shore of Lake Superior; a nomadic bush people became sedentary village dwellers. With increasing organization came a change in the nature of shamanism among them. The amoral, socially irresponsible visionary shamanism, with its potential for destructive sorcery, became a community menace, and began to be replaced by tutorial shamanism, which placed a distinct emphasis on healing. Birchbark scrolls were used by Midé initiates as teaching devices, promoting and reflecting more and more complex variations of the oral traditions and of the ceremonies of the religion.

By 1800 AD the Midé ceremony had developed into a symbolic re-enactment of the westward migration, each step of initiation representing a stopping-place along the route. Dire warnings represented in the teaching scrolls by a snake diverging from the true Path of Life were made of the consequences of using the supernatural powers of a Midé master in any destructive way. So great, however, were the rewards of private sorcery that many initiates cultivated the traditional visionary powers, protecting themselves from evil consequences in their later years by converting to Christianity. This 'Evil' Midéwewin was never purged from the cult, even in its heyday, and in the latter days of its decline threatened to altogether submerge its good name.

In this book, Selwyn Dewdney examines over a hundred Midé scrolls found in some forty public and private collections from Denver, Colorado, to Edinburgh, Scotland, and relates them to the mainstream of the oral tradition as preserved in Ojibway literature. Seven of the many scrolls carefully reproduced in this volume belong to James Red Sky Senior, the last of the line of orthodox Midé shamans. Interviews with him, conducted both in English and Ojibway, have been invaluable in providing Dewdney with knowledge necessary to the interpretation of the pictographs and their relation to the Ojibway religion. Red Sky, because he has no successor, sees this book as a means of preserving his ancestral identity, and it indeed records a dying tradition.

In tracing the history of a fascinating cult, the author also provides perspectives on Ojibway identity and on the rise and fall of Ojibway civilization."--Book jacket. 

199 pages, [2] leaves of plates : illustrations (Some color) ; 18 x 26 cm. 

Notes:
Bibliography: p. [180]-181.

Includes index.


Lore 23 --
4. Other Origin Tales and Scrolls 37 --
5. The Midé Migration Charts 57 --
6. Master Scrolls and Ritual Charts 81 --
7. The Ghost Lodge and Sky Degree Scrolls 103 --
8. The Mighty Manitos of the Bad Medicine 115 --
9. The Deviant Scrolls on Trial 131 --
10. The Enigmatic Scrolls of the Midé Decline 145 --
11. Some Thoughts on Midé and Ojibway Origins 161 --
References 180 --
Key to Sources 182 --
Inventory of Birchbark Scrolls and Charts 183 --
Inventory of Scrolls Examined Only in Photographs or Copies 190 --
Index 193. Comparison of lists of stopping-places traditionally assigned to the westward migration of the ancestral Ojibway --
[Ojibwa place-names are placed alongside settler given names of locations], p. 68.