{"id": "DISC-0065", "item_id": "ITEM-0035", "source_id": "SRC-0075", "year": "1891", "date_precision": "year", "disclosure_method": "academic_research", "extent": "full", "coverage": "Hoffman describes the ceremonies of all four degrees, with songs, mnemonic birch-bark charts and the preparatory instruction; not yet checked degree by degree", "review_status": "unreviewed", "notes": "Hoffman says the chief priests agreed to impart the rites to him (CLM-0081).", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "source": {"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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The same device recurs at a later degree, where the candidate spits out a shell he had hidden in his mouth (p. 265).", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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He also expected the ceremonies to go on being held in secret. 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He may be taken into the woods to a particular plant or tree; a smoke offering is made before it is pulled up, and a pinch of tobacco is put into the hole as an offering to Nokomis, the earth, grandmother of mankind. The cures are not credited to any action on the body but to driving out the bad manidos that possess the sick part; the spines of conifer leaves, for example, are held to act through the vapour upon the demons in the patient's body.", "period": "by 1891", "claim_support": "single_source", "supporting_source_ids": "SRC-0075", "independent_source_ids": "", "contradicting_source_ids": "", "locators": "SRC-0075: pp. 197–198", "review_status": "reviewed", "verification_notes": "Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04. Hoffman lists the plants with botanical, English and Ojibwe names and their uses on pp. 198–201.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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Because much knowledge was believed lost through the reticence of former chief priests, these 'higher secrets' were by the 1880s given in the instruction for the first and second degrees, while the third and fourth degrees were very rarely conferred.", "period": "by 1891", "claim_support": "single_source", "supporting_source_ids": "SRC-0075", "independent_source_ids": "", "contradicting_source_ids": "", "locators": "SRC-0075: pp. 201–202", "review_status": "reviewed", "verification_notes": "Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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See also CLM-0081, where the chief priests' expectation that the rites could not continue is the reason they gave the material to Hoffman.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. Hoffman's fieldwork in Minnesota followed a Bureau survey with Garrick Mallery. 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The love powder's composition is a profound secret, passed on only for a large fee: vermilion, powdered Seneca snakeroot (Polygala senega), a very small amount of blood from a girl's first menstruation, and powdered ginseng cut from the fork of the root, mixed and kept in a small buckskin bag. It is prepared only after a tobacco offering to Kitshi Manido and a Mide' song with a rattle.", "period": "by 1891", "claim_support": "single_source", "supporting_source_ids": "SRC-0075", "independent_source_ids": "", "contradicting_source_ids": "", "locators": "SRC-0075: p. 258", "review_status": "reviewed", "verification_notes": "Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04. Hoffman gives the menstrual-blood ingredient in Latin. He distinguishes it from the face paint of roots and red ochre used to attract a lover, which he quotes from Peter Jones.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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In the tests, a string of four wooden beads rolls as if alive while its owner chants almost inaudibly; a small jointed wooden figure, set in a hole with a magic herb powder sprinkled around and into it, moves up and down; and the most powerful priests make a Mide' bag crawl on the ground. Hoffman suggests that a small animal in the bag would explain the last, and notes that the light is kept dim to stop the deception being seen, and that public displays are given only before the most credulous of the uninitiated or fellow priests.", "period": "by 1891", "claim_support": "single_source", "supporting_source_ids": "SRC-0075", "independent_source_ids": "", "contradicting_source_ids": "", "locators": "SRC-0075: pp. 204–206", "review_status": "reviewed", "verification_notes": "Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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When the shell has dropped from the candidate's mouth, the chief priest holds it toward the candidate's mouth, then to the east, south, west, north and sky, calling 'wa! wa! hé hé hé hé' each time, with the last syllable rising high and dropping. The new member then thanks each person present with the words Migwetsh ga-o-shi-to-in bimadisiwin, 'thanks for giving me life'.", "period": "by 1891", "claim_support": "single_source", "supporting_source_ids": "SRC-0075", "independent_source_ids": "", "contradicting_source_ids": "", "locators": "SRC-0075: pp. 215, 265", "review_status": "reviewed", "verification_notes": "Checked against the page image of p. 215 and the Internet Archive text of p. 265 on 2026-11-04; Hoffman's accents on the thanks formula are omitted here.", "item": {"id": "ITEM-0035", "tradition_id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Degree initiations and the 'shooting' of the migis shell", "secrecy_type": "initiatory_rite", "restricted_to": "Initiated Mide' of the corresponding degree", "restriction_mechanism": "fee;grade_requirement;oral_only", "stated_reason": "Secrets and remedies that have been paid for lose their virtue if passed on for nothing (CLM-0080)", "current_status": "practiced", "status_as_of": "", "status_claim_ids": "", "description": "The ceremonies of the four degrees, in which officiating priests 'shoot' the sacred migis shell into the candidate with their medicine bags, and the songs, remedies and instruction given at each degree.", "notes": ""}, "tradition": {"id": "TRAD-0027", "name": "Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society)", "tradition_type": "indigenous_tradition", "founded": "unknown", "region": "Great Lakes and upper Mississippi (Ojibwe and neighbouring Anishinaabe peoples)", "status": "active", "wikidata": "Q538136", "notes": "A graded medicine society of Mide' priests, entered by initiation and payment; its songs and teachings are recorded on birch-bark scrolls."}, "supporting_sources": [{"id": "SRC-0075", "title": "The Midē'wiwin or \"Grand Medicine Society\" of the Ojibwa", "author": "Walter James Hoffman", "original_year": "1891", "edition_year": "", "source_type": "academic", "url": "https://archive.org/details/b24883670", "identifiers": "ia:b24883670", "provenance": "academic_fieldwork", "source_authenticity": "unassessed", "verification_notes": "", "rights": "public_domain", "content_hash": "", "notes": "Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–'86 (Washington, 1891), pp. 143–300. 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