reincarnation, an afterlife, and the soul all exist. Origin myths, such as the origin myth of the medicine dance, placed an Earthmaker, or Great Spirit, as the giver of life, and other spirits as his intermediaries. Through both the spirits and shamans, the Earthmaker bestowed blessings upon the Winnebago people. The tribe also believed in a creature dubbed the Trickster (Radin 1956). The Trickster is an impulsive creative and destructive force who does not consciously make any decisions. He does not understand the concepts of good or evil, but he is nonetheless responsible for both. He is not moral or social because he possesses no values, yet somehow it is through his actions that all values came into being. He is not however the only being in the Winnebago religion that possesses such powers, other various supernatural beings, as well as man and the animals are connected with the same characteristics. In recent times, other religious ideas have permeated into the Winnebago society. Two apparently related revival movements have occurred within the Winnebago society (Radin 1990). The first is the teachings of the Shawnee Prophet. He proposed that all Native American tribes must return to the older, purer way of life that they lived before contact with the Europeans. The second is the peyote (mescal) religion. Peyote was apparently brought to the tribe by a man named Rave when he returned from a trip to Oklahoma in the early 1900’s. The man claimed that eating peyote cured him of disease. Later, elements of Christianity were mixed with the ingestion of peyote. The peyote cult spread quickly along family lines and is still practiced today in many Native American tribes, including the Winnebago.The Winnebago tribe first encountered white men in 1634 when Jean Nicollet, an agent for Governor Champlain of France, sent him to the Green Bay area. The tribe's pre-contact population is estimated to be about 8,000 people....
