Wise One Below

Aktunowihio (Áhk tun o wihio), the 'Wise One Below', is the great subterranean power of Cheyenne religion, dwelling within the earth as the complement of Heammawihio, the 'Wise One Above'. Early ethnographers including George Bird Grinnell, James Mooney, and George Dorsey recorded this vertical duality as the fundamental axis of Cheyenne cosmology: offerings and pipe ceremonies addressed the powers above and below before the four directions. The being below is associated with the earth's fertility, springs, and the roots of growing things.

Domains

• underworld earth depths

Powers

• to animate and sustain life within and beneath the earth

Epithets

• Áhk tun o wihioGeorge Bird Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, Yale University Press, 1923 (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: All-SpiritIn Cheyenne cosmology the subterranean Wise One Below stands as the lower counterpart within the ordered universe presided over by the Wise One Above (Heammawihio/Maheo).George Bird Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, Yale University Press, 1923 (secondary)

Sources

• Aktunowihio, the 'Wise One Below', is the great Cheyenne subterranean spirit of the earth, cosmological counterpart of the Wise One Above.: George Bird Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, Yale University Press, 1923 (secondary); James Mooney, 'The Cheyenne Indians', Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 1(6), 1907 (secondary); George A. Dorsey, The Cheyenne, Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Series 9, 1905 (secondary)