Among the Iroquois, whose social organization has an even more pronouncedly totemic character, this, same idea is found again; the word _orenda_ which expresses it is the exact equivalent of the wakan of the Sioux. "The savage man," says Hewitt, "conceived the diverse bodies collectively constituting his environment to possess inherently mystic potence ... (whether they be) the rocks, the waters, the tides, the plants and the trees, the animals and man, the wind and the storms, the clouds and the thunders and the lightnings,"[632] etc. "This potence is held to be the property of all things ... and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his environment."[633] A sorcerer or shaman has orenda, but as much would be said of a man succeeding in his enterprises. At bottom, there is nothing in the world which does not have its quota of orenda; but the quantities vary. There are some beings, either men or things, which are favoured; there are others which are relatively disinherited, and the universal life consists in the struggles of these orenda of unequal intensity. The more intense conquer the weaker. Is one man more successful than his companions in the hunt or at war? It is because he has more orenda. If an animal escapes from a hunter who is pursuing it, it is because the orenda of the former was the more powerful.
This same idea is found among the Shoshone under the name of _pokunt_, among the Algonquin under the name of _manitou_,[634] of _nauala_ among the Kwakiutl,[635] of _yek_ among the Tlinkit[636] and of _sgâna_ among the Haida.[637] But it is not peculiar to the Indians of North America; it is in Melanesia that it was studied for the first time. It is true that in certain of the islands of Melanesia, social organization is no longer on a totemic basis; but in all, totemism is still visible,[638] in spite of what Codrington has said about it. Now among these peoples, we find, under the name of _mana_, an idea which is the exact equivalent of the wakan of the Sioux and the orenda of the Iroquois. The definition given by Codrington is as follows: "There is a belief in a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all ways for good and evil; and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control. This is Mana. I think I know what our people mean by it. ... It is a power or influence, not physical and in a way supernatural; but it shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses. This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. ... All Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this mana for one's self, or getting it used for one's benefit."[639] Is this not the same notion of an anonymous and diffused force, the germs of which we recently found in the totemism of Australia? Here is the same impersonality; for, as Codrington says, we must be careful not to regard it as a sort of supreme being; any such idea is "absolutely foreign" to Melanesian thought. Here is the same ubiquity; the mana is located nowhere definitely and it is everywhere. All forms of life and all the effects of the action, either of men or of living beings or of simple minerals, are attributed to its influence.[640]