Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143)

by Dog, Leonard C.

  We still have our allotment land. Part of it is down near the road, by the river. It is where we have our sun dance every summer. The other part is up on the hill. That is Crow Dog’s sacred place. Before giving me the pipe with flesh offerings, Arrow Sight asked me if I was prepared to fast for four days and nights. I nodded. Then he put me up there. There is a stream running through our land with a tree trunk across it. So we crossed on that and walked up to the hilltop. There is a flat place up where, in 1974, we brought the ghost dance back. There’s cedar and pine at this place. Eagles circle over it. You hear the coyotes yapping, singing to the moon. It is beautiful and lonely up there. All you hear are the sounds of nature, animal talk, the wind blowing through the trees. In the center of all this is our family’s vision pit. It is formed like an “L” pointing the wrong way. First you go down and then crawl across until you come to the dead end. That is the spot where we sit and cry for a dream.

  Arrow Sight told me to take my moccasins off and walk to the sacred ground barefoot. On the way, he let me stop four times. Each time he sang “Tunkashila, I am coming to see your power. Anpetu, today, see me, see me. With the sacred pipe I am coming to you to sacrifice myself, to learn, to see my sacred roots. I give myself to the sacred pipe.” Tunkashila is the grandfather word for Great Spirit. Frank Arrow Sight made me walk four times around the vision pit. He made me put up four sacred direction flags: red material first, then the yellow, then the white, and then the black. So we put up these colors at four points around the vision pit. And then we put up a center pole with an eagle tail feather tied to the top and a deer tail farther down. Then I connected the four direction flag sticks with four hundred chanli, tobacco tie offerings. Finally we made an altar out of gopher dust—an Iktomi, or spider man, altar.

  After that Arrow Sight took wachanga, sweet grass, and smoked up all the flags and sacred things and made everything holy. “Go around, clockwise inside the hanbleceya grounds four times,” he told me. “Think only good thoughts. From your vision quest bring something good back, something good for yourself, something good for your people. Stay inside the tobacco ties, stay inside the four colors. I go back down now, back to the sweat lodge and your father. But through spiritual power, we will be with you, we will feel physically and spiritually whatever you feel—your fears, your hopes. We will be praying for you.” Then he left me alone up there with my thoughts.

  I was afraid. I did not know what was going to happen. I might be rejected. I might not be given a vision. I would be up there alone for four days and nights, without food, without water. It would not be easy.

  The first night, sometimes I sat close to the pit entrance, my head above ground. All I could see at first was a red circle. That’s all. Then I crawled back into the hole, all the way, and I heard somebody walking on the left side—a rustling, like a scattering of kindling. I heard birds, heard an owl whooping four times. That is what I heard and saw the first night. All the time I was sitting there, praying, holding onto the pipe with my sister’s flesh offerings tied to it, I was thinking that somewhere near were some of my ancestors’ graves. I felt their presence. Then, at dawn, before the sun came up, at the west I saw a spark, a little red hoop, and I saw something like a lightning bug coming in the entrance. It made a clicking noise, like knocking small stones together. And I heard a voice: “Some things are still sacred. The spirit will direct you.”

  During the day I stayed in the pit. I lost all sense of time, of feeling. I was like dead. I wanted water but tried not to think of it. I was in a different world, in a different dimension. As the second night started, I looked out. Wiyatki, the Big Dipper, was halfway up. The evening star went down. It clouded over. It was pitch dark. Darker than dark. I prayed hard. And a white, shiny, fast ball came from the north. As it was coming toward me I gripped my pipe. A voice was coming out of it: “Power is going into your body. It is coming. It does not speak, but you will know. The iktomi power is given to you.” Then it hit me like a blow, like being struck by lightning. I crawled back into the pit as far as I could. I heard people talking but could not see them. Then I saw tipis, horses, deer, buffalo. I was in another time. I heard children playing and laughing. I heard somebody saying, “Wauntinkte, we’re going to eat.”

  All during the next day I was half awake and half asleep. I didn’t know anymore what was real and what was not. I was really hungry. I wanted water. But then I saw a woodpecker on top of one of the pine trees. Did I really see it or was I dreaming? I heard him hammering against the tree. Then I heard someone say, “You are standing on wakan makoce, on sacred ground. Be happy. You are suffering now, but you are being given a power that will help you later in life.” So, toward evening, on my third night, I crawled out just a little. The morning star was shining on me. I wasn’t myself. I was facing toward the east. I felt spiritually as I had never felt before. And a man appeared to me, a soldier. It was Ruben Red Feather, who had been killed in action during World War II. He had been dead so long, but here he was. I think he wanted to help me in some way. I saw lightning, and the morning star reflected the lightning to where I stood. It turned into a rainbow, which was like a funnel, funneling the rainbow right into my eyes. And in there I saw a man’s face, with five points sticking out all around like horns. It was a star who spoke to me: “He has seen you. Wowakan, power from the star, he has given you.”

  The next morning and afternoon, I stayed in the pit. I no longer felt hunger or thirst. In the middle of the day I saw a gopher’s face. It came out of the altar. When it looked at me I felt that a strange power entered me. The gopher was swinging its tail and sprinkled me with sacred gopher dust. It rained down on me.

  On the fourth day, just as the sun was coming up, just when it peeked a little over the horizon, I saw a blinding whiteness reaching all the way up to the sky. And I saw the universe filled up with green and blue, just the colors. Then I saw a man walking a mile off with a standing-up feather in his hair. He was carrying six sticks, six roots. And he was singing: “From Four Directions, Grandfather will see you. I bring the roots you will use in the Iktomi altar.”

  I turned toward the south and prayed. The sun was halfway out when I was given another vision. Right behind me I heard a voice from a spirit, from a hairy spider. An eagle was flying over me. A real eagle, not a dream eagle. I had my eagle bone whistle. I blew it four times in the four directions. Then a black cloud formed over me and water sprinkled down on my head. And the voice said, “The spirit will take care of you. Tunkashila blesses you with the water.” That was all I heard on the fourth day, standing there with the pipe.

  It seemed like forever until Arrow Sight came to bring me down. The sweat lodge was ready. I was hungry and thirsty. Arrow Sight said, “Before you talk, before you sweat, there is a young boy to feed you.” They gave me water and corn, and that young boy, George Four Horns, gave me four spoonfuls of everything they had prepared for me. Inside the sweat lodge I told them what I had seen and heard. I left nothing out. I added nothing. Arrow Sight, Good Lance, my father, they all interpreted it for me. “It is all good. It made you a medicine man. But that’s only one vision quest. You must go on three more before you can be the four different kinds of spiritual man combined in one person. But you have enough power now to take it from here. You are a medicine man. From now on you have to travel Grandfather’s road. There is no looking back.”

  eleven

  THE HOLY HERB

  I’ll jump into the sacred medicine,

  dive into it. I want to know,

  experience the knowledge the

  sacred herb can give me.

  It elevates me into another world.

  Leonard Crow Dog

  I am a member of the Native American Church, the peyote church. Some people criticize me for that. They say that the sun dance is a Lakota belief, but peyote comes from another tribe. I shouldn’t mix the two up. But I was born into the peyote way. I like it because it unites our people. Whatever religion, whatever ceremonies
a tribe has, peyote makes them as one. I see nothing wrong with holding onto my old Lakota beliefs while, at the same time, I also practice the peyote way together with my brothers and sisters from all tribes. When we sit in a meeting with people from other Indian nations, we might not speak their language, but spiritually we understand one another. In our songs our languages become one. Anything is good that brings our people together in a spiritual way, from the Yukon to the Rio Grande, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

  Peyote power is the knowledge of God through peyote. It is our Indian medicine, our holy herb, our sacrament. It is not a chemical drug but a natural plant. It elevates my mind into another world, into a higher dimension. With the peyote I went to a lot of good places and met a lot of good people. Grandfather Peyote has no mouth, but he talks to me; he has no eyes, but he looks at me; he has no ears, but he listens. He is a song brought by the wind. The peyote way is thousands of years old. It is as old as the earth.

  The word peyote, my elders told me, comes from the Uto-Aztecan peyotl, meaning caterpillar, because the peyote cactus is fuzzy, like a caterpillar’s back. In Lakota we call it unchela, or simply medicine. When the Spaniards came to Mexico, peyote was already there. The priests called it the “devil’s root, which keeps the Indians from salvation.” They burned alive all Indians they found using this sacred medicine. In the United States, the missionaries called peyote “a barrier to civilization” and put in jail those who prayed with it.

  There is a tale of how peyote came to the people. My father told it to me. Somebody had taught it to him. Long ago, long before the white man came, there was a tribe living far to the south of us. Those people were suffering from a sickness, and many died of it. An old woman had a dream that she would find a medicine to cure her people. So she went out to search for this plant. She took her young granddaughter along. They got lost in a desert. They were getting weak from hunger and thirst. They lay down to sleep under some bushes. They thought they would die.

  Suddenly, toward morning, an eagle flew above them, from the east toward the west. The old woman prayed to this sacred bird for help. Then she heard a voice, saying, “I have a medicine that will help you.” The voice came out from a peyote plant. It was a big Grandfather Peyote, with sixteen segments. The old woman cut the top part off, the green part, and they ate this. The peyote juice inside refreshed them and made them strong. The old woman and her granddaughter got peyote power.

  When the second night came, the old woman prayed to the spirit, “I am lost. Have pity on me.” And a voice answered, “You are lost now, but after two more nights you will find your way home.” When they awoke at dawn, the old woman and the girl partook again of the sacred medicine. It made them feel strong, as if they had eaten a big meal. The old woman told the girl, “Granddaughter, pray with this new herb. It has great power in it.”

  During the third night, the woman had a vision that showed her how to use the peyote spiritually. In the morning she told the girl, “Granddaughter, we must find more of these holy plants to save our people.” Then she heard many voices calling: “Over here, over here, I’m the one to pick.” The peyote plants were leading them to their hiding places under shrubs and bushes. The old woman and the girl filled a whole hide bag with them.

  During the fourth night, the old woman heard the voice again: “Toward the sunrise, you’ll see three mountains. Behind the one in the middle you’ll find your camp.” So in the morning they walked that way and found their village. And the people were happy to have them back. Though they had not eaten in four days, the medicine had kept them strong. The people were still dying of sickness, but the old woman had been shown in her vision how to use peyote ceremonially to cure the people. So she did this, and the people got well. Through the peyote they received new understanding. It gave them a new mind. And they brought this medicine to their neighbors and instructed them in its use until the peyote way was accepted by many tribes.

  Peyote doesn’t grow in this country, except for a small area in southern Texas. We have to go into Mexico to harvest it. The Huichol, Yaqui, and Tarahumara have always had it, but not the tribes north of the Rio Grande. About one hundred fifty years ago the Comanche had a chief called Quanah Parker. In his youth he had been a great warrior. He traveled down into Mexico and there a bull gored him. He was about to die, but an Indian woman cured him with peyote. He took the medicine back to his tribe. He also had the ritual as the woman had taught him. It was different from the Huichol and the Yaqui way, though they all used the same sacrament. Quanah Parker founded the Native American Church. It was part Indian religion and part Christianity. His ritual became known as the crossfire ceremony, because a Bible was used in it and prayers to Jesus were in its songs. And they smoked cornhusk cigarettes in their meetings. Later non-Christian Indians founded the moon fire ceremony. They don’t use the Bible and have the pipe instead of the cornhusk cigarettes, but we all get along with one another. We all pray with the same medicine. From the Comanche peyote spread to other tribes, farther north.

  Peyote came to us in Rosebud around 1903. I was told that some people from the Winnebago tribe, John Bearskin and Mountain Wolf Woman, taught this religion to some of our Lakota men.

  In 1922 we got the first charter for the Native American Church in South Dakota. Eagle Hawk, a college student, and Joe Good Breath were the ministers. Francis Little Stallion was a leader, Fanny Little Stallion a delegate. Orange Star was a helper, and Ed Red Feather and Jim Blue Bird were directors. Jim Sky Bull became the overseer.

  My grandfather on my mother’s side ran into trouble on the Rosebud reservation. That was in 1918. He went to Kansas and met up with some Potawatorni and Oto. They invited him to join in their peyote ceremony.

  He first went into a sweat bath for purification. At that time they did not chop up the peyote as we do now. They cleaned the middle part out. They got a whole basketful of fresh green buttons, maybe about three or four hundred. Then after they had partaken, they offered some to their Sioux guest. So he took the medicine and, in the middle of the night, all of a sudden, he felt like he was behind bars. It was as if the tipi poles had turned into bars. And he could not find the entrance to the tipi. But then suddenly he experienced the greatness of the holy herb: “A new power got hold of me, so many things peyote is showing me. It makes me understand myself. The peyote spirit is releasing me from what is binding me.” He was sitting among his new Potawatomi and Oto friends, joining them in their prayers. As he prayed, the morning star came up and the tipi poles moved aside and opened a path for him. Then he heard a mockingbird talking to him: “You have been released from what was tying you up.” He stayed with these people for six weeks, going to meetings all the time, sometimes inside a house, sometimes in a tipi. When it was time to leave he told these friends that he wanted to take these ways back to his people in South Dakota. So they instructed him in the rituals and taught him the songs. And in this way he took the new knowledge with him.

  My grandfather John Crow Dog first took peyote in Macy, Nebraska, at a powwow in 1921. He followed the sound of the water drum. It led him to where some Winnebago had a meeting. He joined them and took the sacrament and came to know the medicine. But he didn’t join the church. He told them, “You eat peyote. That’s good, I respect it. But I’m a loner. I do things my own way. When I die, just plant me someplace. I don’t need a cemetery. I stay by myself, far from other folk. I ain’t a membership man.”

  My father came to the medicine in this way. In 1929 he visited his cousin John Good Shield, who lived close to Jim Sky Bull. John Good Shield complained to my dad that his uncle Noah Little was an alcoholic. He thought maybe Sky Bull could help. So they went up to Sky Bull and took in a meeting. My dad took the medicine and was under the power for four days. He had a good vision. He felt something sacred. They gave my father water and corn, chokecherries, and jerk meat. My father got up and thanked all these people for what they had done for him. He told them, “Anytime you need help, I’ll h
elp you. I’m a poor man, but whatever I have I’ll share with you. I’ll be coming back. I’ll cut wood for you, bring food, whatever. Grandfather Peyote has spoken to me.” So from that time on my father went to the meetings and became a member of the peyote church.

  A Native American Church ritual is beautiful. It is as tightly run as a Catholic Mass. All the things we use in a meeting—the drum, the staff, the gourd, the fan—must be handled in the right way. Whether it takes place in a house or tipi, the setup is always the same. There are differences between a moon fire and a crossfire meeting, and between a Lakota and a Navajo one, but in the main parts they are all alike. If you looked down on a peyote meeting it would appear like this:

  At the west, in the back, opposite the door of the tipi, sits the road man, or road chief. We call him that because he leads us on the road of life. He has a shawl around his shoulders that is half red and half blue. To his right sits the drummer, and to his left the cedar man, who uses cedar as incense during the meeting. At the east, by the door, sits the fire man, who tends and shapes the fire and also acts as doorkeeper. Close to him is the water carrier, always a woman. Among the Lakota she is either the wife or daughter of the road chief. The road chief has with him the holy things—the staff, the gourd, the feather fan, the eagle bone whistle, and a bundle of sage. In front of him is an altar cloth. Some members bring their own staffs, gourds, and fans in a decorated wooden box. If it is a crossfire meeting, there will be a Bible. If I run a meeting there will be a rack in front of me, made of two upright forked sticks with a crosspiece. This is for the sacred pipe to rest on. In some places they smoke cornhusk cigarettes instead of the pipe. In front of the pipe rest is the half-moon altar. It is made of sand and is shaped like a crescent, a half-moon. From one tip to the other we make a groove that represents the road of life. The top of the altar is flat. On its center we place the chief peyote, the Grandfather Peyote. Farther down from the road man are the ashes, also shaped into a half-moon. Then there is the fire place itself, with its glowing coals and the fire power. And then down the line in a row is the sacred food—the pail of water, the corn, the meat (which could be wasna, or pemmican), and then the chokecherries or other fruit.