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

by Dog, Leonard C.

  First we untied the frayed strings holding together an old army canvas. Then came another old canvas. Then what we call a crazy blanket, with designs all mixed up. Then came an ancient star quilt. Then a buffalo hide and next a deer hide of great age. Then some old Hudson’s Bay trade cloth, then some four direction materials of different colors. Thus we unwrapped the bundle, layer by layer. Within, we came upon a ball of some eight hundred tobacco ties, some eagle feathers so old that almost only the quills remained. We found also some small round pieces of skin with hair on them. I believe that these were human scalps. There were also two flat pieces of carved bone like the ones they used in the old days to handle glowing coals from the fire during ceremonies. And, finally, there was the Ptehinchala Huhu Chanupa, together with an ancient tribal red stone pipe, also sacred, but not as sacred as the holy Calf Pipe. After we had unwrapped the bundle, my father went outside and started a fire. Inside the house we smoked up the room with sage and sweet grass. The twelve of us were privileged to pray with the Calf Pipe and to touch it. We could not smoke it. It is too old for that. It is brittle with age and very fragile. It has to be handled with the greatest of care. Its stem is made from a buffalo calf’s legbone. We were allowed to smoke the companion pipe with the red stone bowl.

  I have no words to describe the great power of the Calf Pipe. As I touched it I felt its heart beating. Power flowed up my arms as, very lightly, I put my hands upon it. The power flowed into me like ocean waves. It overwhelmed me. I was crying; I felt as if I were enfolded by a black cloud. Outside there was thunder and lightning. It lit up the house. We all felt as if the lightning was coming from the inside of the room. I heard the pipe speaking. It was Tunkashila’s voice: “This pipe I am giving you—for life, for good understanding.” Tears were streaming down my face. I sobbed, “Tunkashila, we hear you.” We all sat still for a long time without moving or talking.

  My father and Joe Eagle Elk tied up the pipes and rewrapped them. Arvol Looking Horse picked up the bundle and took it to the place where it was kept. We followed him. We walked four times around the place. Then we went back inside the house and ate. Arvol told me that there were designs on the pipe, wakan designs, which change from time to time in a magical manner. I told Arvol, “You have a great sacredness here, the soul of the nation. With it the people will follow you. Pass it on to the next generation. It is a great responsibility. You carry a heavy burden.”

  Often I have gone hungry. Often I have been in trouble. But always the pipe was there to help me. It is the one thing they can never take away from us.

  Friend,

  to you I pass the pipe first.

  Around the circle I pass it to you,

  around this circle to begin the day.

  Around the circle to complete the hoop,

  the hoop of the four directions.

  I lift up the pipe to the spirit.

  I smoke with the Great Mystery.

  It is good.

  fifteen

  SOUL KEEPING

  Treat this soul well.

  Treat it lovingly.

  Give sacred food

  to the soul you are keeping.

  Because this soul is wakan.

  It is not dead.

  It is alive.

  Henry Crow Dog

  We have seven sacred ceremonies given to us by Ptesan Win, the White Buffalo Woman:

  Inipi—the sweat lodge

  Hanblecheya—the vision quest

  Wiwanyank wachipi—the sun dance

  Ishnati alowanpi—making a girl into a woman

  Hunka kagapi—making relatives

  Tapa wakayapi—throwing the ball

  Nagi uhapi—soul keeping

  I have already talked about the vision quest and the sweat lodge. These two ceremonies have come back strong. And the sun dance, too, is getting stronger. Every summer more and more people come to Crow Dog’s Paradise to dance, to pierce, to suffer in the sacred way. All over the Lakota reservations they are sun dancing now. But the other four sacred rituals are hardly being performed anymore. Now that some of the old spiritual men have died, I think I am the only one left who can run these ceremonies in the right way. People don’t ask anymore to have these ceremonies performed for them. It seems to me that there is only a handful of people left who want them done. Some people in our tribe have not even heard of the ball-throwing ritual or the women’s puberty ceremony. This is sad, because these sacred rites bound us to one another, kept our families together, and preserved a way of life that now is disappearing. The ceremonies were given us for a purpose. I still perform them. I want them to live. Yuwipi is not one of the seven rituals. It is as old as the others, maybe even older, but it was not inspired by a vision from the White Buffalo Woman, but by the rock spirit. The ghost dance and peyote are also not part of our ancient seven rites. They came to us from other tribes some hundred years ago.

  Nagi uhapi, the keeping of the soul, is a very important ceremony. For many generations our people have been keeping the soul of someone they loved who died. In former times they lived with nagi, the soul, the spirit, the shadow, the essence, the ghost of him who passed away. So the soul knows them and understands them.

  If you miss a dear one, the soul can be kept for four years. Most people keep it for only one year, but it should be four. You start the soul keeping by having a holy man cut off a strand of hair from the head of the one you loved. Before cutting off the lock of hair he purifies the knife with sweet grass. The smoke makes a hoop around the whole earth and is breathed in by every living being. The holy man makes three motions as if he were cutting it, then the fourth time he does it. You wrap the hair in red trade cloth. The eyahapa, the crier, or herald, as the whites call him, goes around and weeps over the dead one’s spirit. And everybody shows sadness, everybody cries. The name for the spirit keeper is wanagi yuhapi. Usually he is the dead one’s father. He has a cottonwood stick and ties the spirit bundle to it; they call it wichaske. After four days the keeper takes three sticks and forms them like a tipi and ties the whole bundle to that. This is the wanagi tipi, the soul’s home. He smokes and cedars it up with wachanga. This is for the spirit to live in. The spirit keeper and his family behave as if somebody alive dwells inside the spirit lodge. For them the soul is alive. They show respect and have only good thoughts. They act friendly toward everyone. They take the soul tipi inside their home when the weather is bad, when it rains or snows. They have a special wooden dish to feed the soul.

  There is something else they keep separately—the dead person’s navel cord. The umbilical cord was put in a beaded or quilled pouch in the shape of a lizard or turtle at the time the child was born. This chegpagnaka, the navel bundle, is made in the shape of a lizard, because this little creature can flatten itself on the ground and play dead, but it is alive and can run off once the danger has passed. So that means telanunwela, dead but alive. Sometimes they make the pouch in the shape of a turtle, because turtles stand for long life. A turtle’s heart will keep on beating long after the animal itself has died. This navel cord bundle is tied to a child’s cradle board. An exact duplicate of this lizard or turtle pouch is made, but there is no navel cord in it. This one they hang up in a tree to fool the evil spirits. They think the umbilical cord is up there and vent their anger on the empty pouch without doing harm to the child. The umbilical cord, the chekpata, is the vein of the divine human being. Before you finally release the soul from the keeping, put the chegpagnaka away in a spot that only the soul keeper knows. Then the soul will come back to visit there.

  You have to keep a soul in a sacred way. You have to remember constantly the one who died. You have to walk in a sacred manner. You have to love in the old traditional way. You don’t socialize. You don’t make speeches. You don’t tell people what to do. You don’t hack, and spit, and scratch yourself. You live out in the woods. Every bit of the time you keep a soul you must do things right. You watch your language. You are careful how to talk to people. In public you
wear dark, simple clothes. You don’t show off. There must be no fighting, no using of a knife while a soul is being kept. The keeper must pray often and smoke the pipe. He should stay much of the time by himself, close to the spirit bundle.

  In the old days, when many people kept souls, there were no bad spirits, no wakan sicha, the missionaries’ devil. Crow Dog and his people had the knowledge and understanding for this ceremony. Many people don’t understand that anymore. In the ancient days people lived to a very old age. Death was not always around, stepping on your heels. People didn’t die from drunken driving, from AIDS, from crack, from all those white man’s diseases. You didn’t die before your time. Life was hard but natural and in many ways better than now. The soul was among the people all the time. You saw that spirit with the eye that’s in your heart. The old people used to talk to that spirit. They could feel its presence. Once in a while, when they slept, the spirit showed itself in their dreams. My dad and I were the only ones left to perform this ceremony. And I am still performing it, inside the tipi and outside it. Inside the tipi we speak with the soul, within the hearth fire and within the mind. Sometimes that soul talk is not very clear, so you have to interpret it spiritually. The soul keeper has to be generous. He has to invite many people and feed the hungry and give many gifts. He has to give away many of his possessions to the poor. People respect the man who keeps a soul; they look up to him as to a chief.

  In the old days, when a soul was bundled up and put into the ghost tipi, its physical body was put up on a scaffold or a tree. It was given back to nature, to the earth and the wind and the birds, to the sacred four directions of the universe. But the soul lived on in its keeper’s charge. We Crow Dogs always had a burial tree, putting the bodies of our dead in the crook of one of the branches. Our relations the Two Strikes, the Iron Shells, the Hollow Horn Bears all had their own burial trees. That’s why the mountains and hills are sacred, because the burial trees were up there. You were not supposed to go near these places. We never crossed the ancient burial grounds. Now you have those cemeteries and have to put your dead ones there. But I still bury some relations wherever I see fit.

  At one time, about a hundred years ago, the missionaries and government people forbade us to own ghosts and souls. But we kept doing it in secret. The white man could order people around, but he could not command a ghost to obey him. He can’t enforce his law upon a soul.

  There comes a time when you have to let go, when you have to release the soul. After four years, or even after one. The soul finally wants to be free to go to the spirit land, just as a child becomes an adult and leaves its parents. That does not mean that the bond is broken. The time comes to tell the soul, “Takoja, today you will go. This is the moment. Tunkashila, have pity on this soul.” The releasing is a fulfillment. It is a great thing. The soul keeper does not do this. It is done by the ataya itanchan, the universal everything chief. This medicine man runs the releasing ceremony. He puts on his best rawhide outfit. The soul keeper and his wife do the same. In this way you honor the hokshi chantkiya, the beloved departing one. There is holy food—papa, wasna, wojapi—as the soul is fed for the last time. The ataya itanchan sets up the spirit post, called wanagi glepi, made from the sacred cottonwood. At the top of the post is painted a human face. And the post is clothed with a beautiful girl’s dress or boy’s outfit. It is put up inside the tipi and the women hug it and cry over it. You place the special wooden dish with the food before the wanagi glepi. The holy man lights his pipe with a glowing buffalo chip, a dried patty of buffalo dung. Everyone sings over the soul. They smoke. The soul keeper speaks to the spirit post figure that represents the departing spirit: “Takoja, grandchild, see your people standing around you for the last time. Now we let you go out of the tipi. With visible breath you will walk. We loved you. Now we must part, but your lock of hair we shall keep forever.”

  The moment the wanagi wapahta, the spirit bundle, is brought out of the tipi the soul is released and everybody is happy. The soul keeper gives away everything he owns to the poor; he does not worry about tomorrow. The soul travels along the Tachanku, the Milky Way, to the spirit world. As the soul has been freed, so also the spirit keeper has been set free. He and his wife can now resume a normal life. They have fulfilled their task.

  I want the generations to continue the sacred ways. Ceremonies such as soul keeping come from the springs of generations of our Lakota people. I have run this ceremony. I have acted the part of the ataya itanchan. I have done this. Hechetu. This ceremony will not be forgotten.

  sixteen

  BECOMING A WOMAN

  The Sun created woman power.

  He used lightning to make a bridge

  from the moon to the earth.

  Woman walked on that bridge.

  She is forever connected to the moon.

  Leonard Crow Dog

  When a woman is on her moon time she has sacred power. Her power at that time is so strong that it overcomes a medicine man’s power. If a woman on her moon should be present at a ceremony, that ceremony would be ineffective. If a menstruating woman should be present at a curing ritual, the sick person wouldn’t get well. This is power from the moon.

  When a girl has her first period her father gives a feast in honor of her entering into womanhood. This is one of the seven sacred rites. It is called ishnati lowanpi, meaning “singing over the first moon time.” When a girl experiences this for her first time, she wraps up her moon flow and puts it up high in a wild plum tree where the coyotes and evil spirits cannot get at it. If a coyote should eat it, this animal would get an evil power over the girl. If a bad person with some magic knowledge should get hold of it, he could make a love medicine from it to get power over a certain woman. So you hide this.

  In the old days a woman used to stay alone in a tipi for four days, with female relatives feeding her. The word for menstruating, ishnati, means dwelling alone. We don’t do this anymore, but we are still very strict about a woman on her moon time not participating in a ceremony or being anywhere near a sun dance. Formerly, when a girl was “dwelling alone” for the first time, her mother or some other wise older woman spent much time with her in the moon time tipi. She was taught everything she needed to know about being a woman, such as how to purify herself after her monthly period, what to expect upon becoming a wife and mother, and how to bead and how to do porcupine quillwork. I think this passing on of woman wisdom from mother to daughter in a solemn, ceremonial way is very important. The white man’s system has taken away a mother’s power to instruct her daughter in the right way to live and given it to the teacher, the missionary, the social worker, the bureaucrat. In the same way they have taken over much of what a father should do raising his son. The old ceremonies held the families together. So I am trying to be a guitar—the people are the strings while I try to be the tune that unites us.

  When a girl’s four days of dwelling apart are over, the ishna ta awi cha lowan ceremony is performed. It is also a tatanka lowanpi, a buffalo ceremony, because this sacred animal is the protector of young womanhood. You need a new tipi, made ready for the ceremony, and a new, beautifully beaded buckskin dress for the girl. You also need the following:

  a wooden bowl, chokecherries, an eagle plume, sage, sweet grass, dry cottonwood sticks, a drum, the pipe, chanshasha (native tobacco), a buffalo skull for an altar, food and presents for the guests.

  The girl is seated at the chatku, the place of honor, in back of the tipi. Between the chatku and the fire place is a mound of earth representing Unchi, Grandmother Earth. A wichasha wakan, a spiritual man, performs the ceremony. He has prayed earlier for a vision and, during the ceremony, reveals and interprets it. He tells the girl what her mother already has told her: “You are no longer a child. You are a woman now, capable of becoming a mother.” The girl still wears her hair loose, like a child’s, rather like mourning the passing of her childhood. Now her hair is braided like that of a grown-up woman and the wichasha wakan paints a red stripe
along the line where her hair parts in the middle. He tells her not to sit like a child, with her legs stretched out or tucked under her chin, but to sit modestly, with her legs to one side. He tells her that when getting up she should do this gracefully, not push herself up with two hands.

  In the days of my grandfather and great-grandfather, the spiritual man performing the ritual wore a buffalo headdress with horns and a buffalo tail on his back. He bellowed and snorted like a buffalo and behaved like a buffalo bull during the rutting season. This symbolized the close relationship between the Lakota people and the buffalo, the bond made by the White Buffalo Woman binding us together. The medicine man nudged the girl lightly while her mother put sage in her daughter’s lap and under her arms to ward him off. This symbolized that the girl would soon be old enough to get married and bear children.

  Today we do not do it this way. Maybe we should do it exactly as it was done a hundred years ago, but somehow our ceremonies have been watered down. Fewer and fewer fathers want to have a special feast to honor their daughters’ first moon time. I still perform a meaningful ceremony for this. I want my children to have a legend.

  I try to keep much of the old ishnati alowanpi when I perform it. I burn dry cottonwood sticks to please the buffalo spirit and to chase away evil spirits, such as Anung Ite, the double-faced woman. I sprinkle sweet grass on the fire. I cedar the girl. I make red cloth offerings to the buffalo. I fill my special wooden bowl with water mixed with chokecherries and give it to the girl to drink. Sometimes I use a turtle shell for this. After that the father drinks and then the bowl goes around clockwise and everybody takes a sip. This chokecherry drink represents the color red—the color of the buffalo, the color of our blood. I have a drum going. I sing a song to go with this ritual and all the women join in. Then we smoke the pipe. Finally I have the girl escorted out of the tipi—no longer a winchinchala, but a full-fledged winyan. After that we have a giveaway.