The Midewiwin

William Warren, of Ojibwe descent, wrote around 1852 that he stood only 'on the threshold of the Me-da-we lodge'; Mide priests doubted Schoolcraft's initiation.

William W. Warren, History of the Ojibways (manuscript c. 1852; Minnesota Historical Society Collections vol. 5, 1885), pp. 65-66, as quoted in Hoffman (1891)

The Ojibwe Grand Medicine Society, whose teachings are kept on birchbark scrolls.

Sources2 sources

Primary source

W. J. Hoffman, The Midē'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa, Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1885-86, 1891, Red Lake chart and origin tradition; quotation of Warren and SchoolcraftThe Red Lake origin story: Minabozho, servant of the Good Spirit, pities the sick Anishinaabeg and teaches the Otter the Mide mysteries, giving the rattle, drum and tobacco; fieldwork at Red Lake and White Earth 1887-1889.
the servant of Dzhe Man'ido

The tradition itself

William W. Warren, History of the Ojibways (Minnesota Historical Society Collections vol. 5), 1885, pp. 65-66, quoted in Hoffman 1891Warren (Ojibwe mixed descent; manuscript completed about 1852) says he stands only on the threshold of the Me-da-we lodge and that old Mide priests disbelieve a white author's claim to have been initiated (Schoolcraft's 1823 claim, per Hoffman).
shake their heads in incredulity