“From the fact that we are here moving on a level where the mythic and religious world has not yet attained any fixed form, but is presented to us, so to speak in -statu nascendi-, we may gain insight into the man-colored, variegated play of meanings in the word—and the concept—of mana. It is quite telling that even the attempt to determine the word class to which it belongs seems to encounter difficulties at every turn. According to our habits of thinking and speaking, the easiest way is to take it simply as a noun. This makes mana a sort of substance, which represents the quintessence of all the magic powers contained in individual things. It creates a unified existent thing, which may, however, distribute itself over various beings or objects. And since, moreover, this unity was conceived not only as existent, but as animate and personified, the concept of mana was endowed with our own basic notion of “spirit” —witness the way one has often interpreted the manitu of the Algonquins and the waka(n)da of the Sioux as nothing but their respective designations of the “Great Spirit,” which, one naturally assumed, they adored as the creator of the world.

But a more precise analysis of the words of their meanings has nowhere borne out this interpretation. It showed that quite apart from any category of -personal being-, which is never really strictly applicable, even the mere concept of a thing with independent, substantial existence is too rigid to render the fleeting, elusive idea that is here to be grasped. Thus McGee observed, concerning the waka(n)da of the Sioux, that the reports of missionaries, according to which it expressed the concept of a personal, original being, were completely discredited by more scholarly language studies. “Among these tribes the creation and control of the world and the things thereof are ascribed to ‘wa-ka(n)da’ (the term varying somewhat from tribe to tribe), just as among the Algonquin tribes omnipotence was ascribed to ‘ma-ni-do’ (‘Manito the Might’ of ‘Hiawatha’); yet inquiry shows that wak(n)da assumes various forms, and is rather a quality than a definite entity. Thus among many of the tribes, the sun is wak(n)da—not -the- wak(n)da or -a- wak(n)da, but simply wak(n)da; and among the same tribes the moon is wak(n)da, and so is thunder, lightning, the stars, the winds, the cedar, and various other things; even a man, especially a shaman, might be wak(n)da or a wak(n)da. In addition, the term was applied to mythic monsters of the earth, air, and waters; and according to some of the sages the ground or earth, the mythic underworld, the ideal upperworld, darkness, etc., were wak(n)da or wak(n)das. So, too, the fetishes and the ceremonial objects and decorations… In like manner many natural objects and places of striking character were considered wak(n)da. Thus the term was applied to all sorts of entities and ideas, and was used (with or without inflectional variations) indiscriminately as substantive and adjective, and with slight modifications as very and adverb. Manifestly a term so protean is not susceptible of translation into the more highly differentiated language of civilization. Manifestly, too, the idea expressed by the term is indefinite, and cannot justly be rendered into ‘spirit,’ much less ‘Great Spirit’; though it is easy to understand how the superficial inquirer, dominated by definite spiritual concept(s), handicapped by unfamiliarity with the Indian tongue, misled by ignorance of the vague prescriptorial ideation, and perhaps deceived by crafty native informants or mischievous interpreters, came to adopt and perpetuate the erroneous conclusion. The term may be translated into ‘mystery’ perhaps more satisfactorily than any other single English word, yet this rendering is at the same time much too limited and much too definite. As used by the Siouan Indian, wak(n)da vaguely connotes also ‘power,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘ancient,’ ‘grandeur,’ ‘animate,’ ‘immortal,’ and other words, yet does not express with any degree of fullness and clearness the ideas conveyed by these terms singly or collectively—indeed, no English sentence of reasonable length can do justice to the aboriginal idea expressed by the term wak(n)da.” — Language and Myth