hock-e-a-yum

Updated: May 18, 2025

Or if you did not succeed, might you not in your discouragement go off again to the tortures and miseries of hock-e-a-yum?" These words made him wince, but he could only feel that they were true, and that he deserved them all; and he felt that, until he did something to redeem himself in the eyes of this brave, true woman, he was only worthy of her reproofs.

Egerton Ryerson Young - Oowikapun: How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians

For a long time Oowikapun hesitated to undertake this terrible ordeal, called by the Western Indians the hock-e-a-yum, a ceremony so severe and dreadful that many an Indian has never recovered from its agonies.

Egerton Ryerson Young - Oowikapun: How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians

When Oowikapun had finally resolved on his course of action he immediately set about carrying it out. He joined himself to a company of "braves" who were also going to pass through the ceremony of hock-e-a-yum. Different motives were in the hearts of those who were about to undergo the trying ordeal.

Egerton Ryerson Young - Oowikapun: How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians

Then again she would marshal before her his weaknesses and defects, and would vainly try to persuade herself to believe that the man who had been in the tent of Memotas and had heard him pray, and had then gone into the devil dance and had voluntarily suffered the tortures of hock-e-a-yum, was unworthy of her notice.

Egerton Ryerson Young - Oowikapun: How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians