There is another ceremony that is done when a girl reaches womanhood. It is called tapa wakayapi, meaning “throwing the ball.” It also is one of the seven sacred rites and likewise it is a buffalo ceremony. We have a legend of how it started. Long ago a man had a vision sent to him by Ptesan Win. In it he saw a buffalo calf changing itself into a human girl. She had in her hand a ball made of buffalo skin stuffed with buffalo hair and she threw it up into the air toward a small herd of buffalo and, immediately, these, too, turned themselves into humans. The man who received this vision understood that he was to start a new ceremony, and so the tapa wakayapi was born.
This ceremony is hardly ever done now. As in the ishnati lowanpi, the girl is instructed in the duties of womanhood. She gets a beautiful new buckskin outfit. She is given a buffalo skin ball painted red to represent the universe. She is brought into the midst of the people who have come to be part of this ceremony. These people form groups standing at the corners of the sacred four directions. The girl throws the ball first toward the west, then toward the north, the east, and the south. After someone catches the ball he throws it back to the girl. Every time the ball is caught, the girl’s father gives away a horse in the girl’s honor. Having these rites performed after a girl’s first moon can make even a rich man very poor.
I performed this ceremony for my daughters Ina and Bernadette when they became twelve years old. I still have the tapa luta, the red ball, handed down in the Crow Dog family from generation to generation. I did it at the rising of a new moon, but I performed it somewhat differently from the way it was done in the old days. I had an elderly person throw the ball for the girls at a buffalo robe. If the ball hits the left side of the robe, the girl’s first child will be a girl. If it hits the right side, it will be a boy. If it hits in the middle, it will be chekpapi, twins. I gave the girls holy food—wasna, chankpa (chokecherries), corn, wojapi. I burned sage in a turtle shell and, with my eagle wing, fanned the smoke over them. And, naturally, I gave away things. The ball that I have, I am told, was made from the skin of an unborn buffalo calf, a calf fetus.
All our people, whether traditional or not, are still very strict about a woman on her period not coming into a ceremony or even being near it, because her power at this time is so overwhelming. But this power is not, as in some other cultures, unclean. On the contrary, the power is sacred. Once a woman gets to an age when she no longer has her monthly time, she not only can participate in all ceremonies but can become a medicine woman.
In 1964, I went to Allen, South Dakota, to perform a ceremony. There I met a medicine woman named Bessie Good Road. She had a little altar and she used a buffalo skull in all her ceremonies. And always a buffalo came into her meetings. You could see him like a shadow. She used the buffalo spiritual power. She invited me to help her and I took my drum and sang for her. I had never met a medicine woman before. I was twenty-two years old then. Every time the buffalo spirit moved his legs I saw lightning. Every time the buffalo talked you saw a little flame. When the buffalo swung his tail it made a flaming circle. Bessie told me, “Nephew, someday I won’t be here anymore. I want to leave this for my son, for my people to stand on. We are losing things, sacred things, but to this place the buffalo spirit still comes.”
That we look upon a woman’s moon time as sacred is shown by our legend of We Ota Wichasha, the Blood Clot Boy. So how was this first man born? We Ota Wichasha was born from the Sun and from the woman. This woman was all alone on the earth after it had been created. She was the only human being in the whole world. She was beautiful and no man had touched her. Then she met a spirit, a power from the sun, the moon, and the winds, a shadow of the generations, a buffalo spirit. And it worked on her so that she began to bleed after a woman’s nature cycle. And she took yellow bark powder and rabbit fur and put it between her thighs to stop the flow and to contain it. But a tiny drop of her moon blood fell to the earth. And the woman heard a voice talking to her: “Respect the sacred cycle of the earth and respect the sacred cycle of your moon time. From your blood a boy, a man, will grow and start the generations. You will be blessed by takushskanskan, the power that moves and quickens. And I will give you peta owihankeshni, the fire without end. I will strike the earth with lightning, which will turn into wahin, into flint. And you will strike two flints together and the spark will kindle dry weeds, very small and thin. In this way you will light the flame of generations.”
And mashtinchala, the rabbit, came across the little clot of blood and kicked it into life through the power that moves. The blood clot turned into a human boy, who grew up to be We Ota Wichasha, the first male of the Lakota tribe. This is the way the story was told to me by my father and by two holy men, Frank Good Lance and Jesse White Lance, after a ceremony at a sun dance held at Corn Creek when I was a young boy. They also told me that the woman’s monthly cycle was given to her by the moon and by Mother Earth, who also has such a cycle, bringing forth the green, growing things.
Henry Crow Dog in the sweat lodge, 1969.
Henry Crow Dog and his granddaughter Colleen making a fire for the sweat lodge.
Leonard Crow Dog in the sweat lodge.
Mary Gertrude Crow Dog and friend cooking or a east.
Mary Gertrude Crow Dog making moccasins.
ina Crow Dog getting water.
Sioux hoop dancer.
Henry Crow Dog with pipe.
Henry Crow Dog painting a drum.
Leonard Crow Dog dressed as road man for a peyote meeting.
Leonard Crow Dog during a peyote meeting.
Leonard Crow Dog with a courting flute.
Buffalo ceremony to cure ina Crow Dog.
Leonard Crow Dog with a buffalo skull for the sun dance.
Leonard Crow Dog sun dancing.
Leonard Crow Dog at Wounded knee sun dance, 1971.
Sun dancer with sage wreath at Wounded knee, 1971.
Sun dance at Crow Dog’s Paradise, 1971.
Sun dance piercing at Crow Dog’s Paradise, 1971.
Leonard Crow Dog entering vision pit at the Rosebud Sioux Reservation for a vision quest, 1972.
Leonard Crow Dog and friend in front of the BIA building, Washington, U.C., November 1972.
Russell Means speaking during the takeover of the BIA building, Washington, D.C., November 1972.
building, Washington, D.C., November 1972.
Woman being arrested during the protest in Custer, South Dakota, February 1971.
Wallace Black Elk praying at Wounded knee..
Wounded knee, 1973.
Dennis Banks at Wounded knee, 1973.
Leonard Crow Dog in jail talking to his son Pedro (Rip Tom at right).
Revival of the ghost dance, May 1974.
Leroy keams ghost dancing.
Crow Dog’s paradise, 1974.
Mary Gertrude Crow Dog in the old house, 1974.
Leonard Crow Dog in the interior of the Crow Dog home, 1981.
Henry Crow Dog, 1981.
Leonard Crow Dog with his children, 1989.
seventeen
THEY WILL DIE FOR
EACH OTHER
Le hunka This honored one
echa behold
wakantu kin you who are above
Hunka song
Finally, I am going to speak of the hunka lowanpi, the relation-making ceremony. Some call it the “They are waving horsetails over each other” ritual. At times two people want to make a bond between them, a bond stronger than the bond between parent and child, a bond stronger than any physical bond could ever be. In that case they have a hunka ceremony. When two people are bound by this ceremony they share everything. They will share their last morsel of food. They will care for each other unto death. They will die for each other.
We have been a relation-making tribe from the very beginning. All our ceremonies, a sweat or a vision quest, end with the words “mitakuye oyasin”—”all my relations”—and that means every living being on this earth, down to the tiniest bug or fl
ower. Everything that lives is related. The hunka lowanpi is a part of this life philosophy.
The hunka lowanpi is very old. I was told that about two hundred years ago Bull Bear put all the elements of this ceremony together. I learned to perform it from the old people. They were natural professors, natural historians, word-of-mouth scientists. As in most other ceremonies, you need a holy man, a wichasha wakan, to perform the hunka lowanpi. Usually, when you require the help of such a man you send him a loaded pipe, but for this ceremony you sent a bag made from a buffalo calf’s bladder, filled with tobacco offerings. If he opened the bag it meant that he would perform the ceremony. If he did not, you had to find another holy man to do it. We do not do it exactly this way anymore. For one thing, a bag made from an unborn buffalo calf’s bladder is hard to come by. But I still perform the hunka lowanpi, in my own traditional way.
For the hunka ritual you set up a ceremonial double tipi—that is, two tipis joined together. You cover the ground inside the tipi with sage. This sacred herb makes good spirits come in and chases bad spirits away. You also need two staffs with hair from a horse’s tail dangling from them. The strands of hair are painted red. These wands are called hunka chanupa, meaning hunka pipes, but they are really wooden wands. They represent the White Buffalo Woman. You also need a stick on which a perfect ear of corn is stuck. We are not corn planters, but maybe a long time ago, when we were still living near the Great Lakes, we raised corn. This plant represents survival and Mother Earth. You also need eagle plumes and two wagmuha, two rattles, made from a buffalo’s scrotum and painted red, as well as two dried buffalo chips and glowing coals to light the pipe. You need red face paint, sweet grass, Indian tobacco, a pipe rack, and the pipe itself. Finally you need a buffalo skull for an altar. All these things have to be smoked up with sweet grass.
The tipi’s door looks toward the sunrise. Opposite, at the west side, in back of the tipi, is the seat of honor. From there the holy man conducts the ceremony. In front of him is an altar made of earth smoothed with an eagle wing or wooden staff. The wichasha wakan has some helpers near him. On his left sits the ate hunka, the older of the two people making the bond. All the relatives of the two hunka are there, the women on the left, the men on the right. There are usually some hunka present, those who have “made relations” before. Also there are two drummers.
In the old days they pretended that the mihunka, the younger person, was a captive. Somebody would say, “I think there is an enemy nearby. Let’s kill him!” Then some men would “capture” the mihunka and bring him into the tipi. Someone would then say, “Maybe somebody wants to rescue this captive by adopting him.” The ate hunka stood up and said, “I will adopt this one as my mihunka. I will save him. I adopt him as my brother.” Or he might adopt him as his son.
Adoptions of captives happened in real life. Around 1857 the Lakota were at war with the Hohé, the Assiniboin. The Lakota came across a small party of Hohé and killed them all, except a young boy about eleven or twelve years old, and they were about to kill him, too. This young boy was brave. He stood his ground and did not cry. He had a little bow, more a toy than a weapon. He aimed his arrows at our warriors. At this moment Sitting Bull came riding up. He cried, “This boy is too brave to kill. Don’t shoot him! I’ll adopt him as my brother!” They took the Hohé boy back to camp and there they had a ceremony in which the Hohé boy became Sitting Bull’s mihunka. His name was Jumping Bull. In every one of Sitting Bull’s battles Jumping Bull fought at his side. When, many years later, some forty tribal police members surrounded Sitting Bull’s one-room log cabin to arrest and kill the great chief, there was a big shootout. When this fight ended, six of the tribal police members and six of Sitting Bull’s friends were lying dead on the ground, among them Jumping Bull, who went to the spirit world with his ate hunka. He died like a hunka should, faithful to the end. So, adopting a captive is one of our customs.
Inside the tipi the mihunka sits next to his ate hunka. Two helpers then wave the two wands with the strands of horsehair over them. This wand waving, called hunkakazopi, is a chief part of the hunka lowanpi. Some old people told me that this symbolizes the capture of the mihunka. It also stands for strength and power. The horsetails mean that the two hunka will always have fast horses. An eagle plume fastened in the mihunka’s hair stands for bravery. They also wave the stick with the corn over the two hunkapi. The wichasha wakan then paints their faces with red stripes, leading down from the forehead to the chin. By these stripes the spirits will know and respect them.
The wichasha wakan goes to the buffalo skull altar. The skull’s eye sockets are stuffed with balls of sage. The skull is painted with designs according to the holy man’s visions. He approaches the skull howling like a wolf. He smokes up the skull with sweet sage. The buffalo spirit also comes to the skull. His presence is felt by all. The holy man burns sacred tobacco and blows the smoke into the skull’s nostrils. The drums and the rattles are going. Hunka songs are being sung. One of the older hunka who have come to take part in this ceremony stands up and makes a speech, instructing the two new hunka in their duties. He might tell them, “Your hunka’s friends are your friends. His enemies are your enemies. Should he become a captive you must not rest until you have freed him. Should he die in battle you must avenge him. You must never be stingy. You must always be generous.”
Toward the end of the ceremony the holy man covers the two hunkapi with a large buffalo robe. When the robe is lifted, it will be seen that the two are tied to each other with rawhide thongs. The left arm of the ate hunka is tied to the right arm of the mihunka. In the same way their legs are tied together. The holy man tells them, “You are now tied together forever. You are inseparable. You are as one.” There is a rack in the tipi with roasted buffalo meat. The mihunka cuts a chunk off and puts it in his mouth. The holy man says, “I am hungry, but I have no food.” The mihunka takes meat from his mouth and gives it to the holy man. The holy man says, “I am cold, but I have nothing with which to cover myself.” The mihunka gives him the buffalo robe. The holy man says, “I am naked, but I have no clothes.” The mihunka gives him his beautiful decorated buckskin shirt. The holy man says, “My feet are sore and bleeding because I have no moccasins.” The mihunka takes off his moccasins and leggings and hands them over. In this way the wichasha wakan is rewarded for running the ceremony. The mihunka is now stripped down to his breechcloth. He cuts up the rest of the meat and distributes it among those present. The mihunka keeps the horsetail wand and the corn stick. If the mihunka is a woman, she does not strip but just gives presents. At the end of the ceremony there is a feast and a big giveaway.
You start out with your friendship with the land and then you understand the meaning of the hunka ceremony. You have to get along with yourself before you can get along with others. That is hard. It means peace, wolakota. It means choosing a relation rather than inheriting one. The whole tiyospaye is involved, the whole “extended family,” as the white man calls it. So we made the sacred four directions at the center of our lives. Our ceremonies represent the whole life cycle—birth, growing up, parenthood, and death. And then it begins all over again. It represents the hoop without end. We remember things from way back, all the way to our beginnings. We pass it on from generation to generation. Some people have forgotten it. But no matter what, there will always be one man or woman to keep the flame going, a tiny glowing spark deep underneath the ashes, and all of a sudden it will flare up and there will be the sacred fire again that is never extinguished. We have to take care of that light. Let there always be a person who wants the flowers and the rocks to tell him their secrets, who keeps the old people’s wisdom in his heart sack. So many ceremonies have been buried, wiped away like chalk from a blackboard. The horse dance used to bring rain and heal sick minds, but it has not been performed in more than fifty years. They say that there is no one left who knows how to run it. But I know. My father knew, his father told him. Two old holy men told me. This dance is written on
my heart. Someday I will bring it back. Our ancient sacred rites, we are not just part of it, we are all of it.
eighteen
I GAVE MYSELF TO
THE MOVEMENT
AIM is the new warrior class of this
century, bound by the bond of the drum,
who vote with their bodies
instead of their mouths;
their business is hope.
Dennis Banks
It was like in the days of the ghost dance. There was a whispering in the air, a faint drumbeat, a hoof beat. It became a roar carried by the four winds: “A nation is coming, the eagle brought the message.” What was coming called itself AIM, the American Indian Movement.
White people call me a medicine man or spiritual leader. They think that my job is just to pray and to perform ceremonies. But that’s only part of it. A medicine man lives among his people. He has to experience life, all of it. He must be higher than an eagle and, sometimes, lower than a worm. He exists for the people and he has to fight for them if necessary. He must even turn himself into a politician if a politician is what his people need.
Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) Page 15