Wakanism

Wakanism is the sacred outlook of the Great Plains peoples, taking its name from the Siouan word wakan, ‘holy’. Among the Lakota, Wakan Tanka denoted a group of sacred powers whose ways were hidden from men, and the Omaha, Osage and other Siouan peoples knew it as Wakanda.

The Pawnee, who speak a Caddoan language, show the same star-centred religion in its fullest form. They held that the Morning Star and the Evening Star bore the first woman, and the Moon and the Sun the first man, and they offered the stars maize.

The Skidi Pawnee sacrificed a captive girl to the Morning Star in a rite meant to bring fertile fields. Their chief Knife Chief ransomed captives from it, and in 1817 his kinsman Petalesharo cut a Comanche girl loose from the scaffold.