AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  At last the young eagles were big enough to practice flying. “What will become of me now?” thought the young man. “Once the fledglings have flown the nest, the old birds won’t bring any more food.” Then he had an inspiration, and told himself, “Perhaps I’ll die. Very likely I will. But I won’t just sit here and give up.”

  Spotted Eagle took his little pipe out of his medicine bundle, lifted it up to the sky, and prayed: “Wakan Tanka, onshimala ye: Great Spirit, pity me. You have created man and his brother, the eagle. You have given me the eagle’s name. Now I will try to let the eagles carry me to the ground. Let the eagles help me; let me succeed.”

  He smoked and felt a surge of confidence. Then he grabbed hold of the legs of the two young eagles. “Brothers,” he told them, “you have accepted me as one of your own. Now we will live together, or die together. Hoka-hey!” and he jumped off the ledge.

  He expected to be shattered on the ground below, but with a mighty flapping of wings, the two young eagles broke his fall and the three landed safely. Spotted Eagle said a prayer of thanks to the ones above. Then he thanked the eagles and told them that one day he would be back with gifts and have a giveaway in their honor.

  Spotted Eagle returned to his village. The excitement was great. He had been dead and had come back to life. Everybody asked him how it happened that he was not dead, but he wouldn’t tell them. “I escaped,” he said, “that’s all.” He saw his love married to his treacherous friend and bore it in silence. He was not one to bring strife and enmity to his people, to set one family against the other. Besides, what had happened could not be changed. Thus he accepted his fate.

  A year or so later, a great war party of the Pahani attacked his village. The enemy outnumbered the Sioux tenfold, and Spotted Eagle’s band had no chance for victory. All the warriors could do was fight a slow rear-guard action to give the aged, the women, and the children time to escape across the river. Guarding their people this way, the handful of Sioux fought bravely, charging the enemy again and again, forcing the Pahani to halt and regroup. Each time, the Sioux retreated a little, taking up a new position on a hill or across a gully. In this way they could save their families.

  Showing the greatest courage, exposing their bodies freely, were Spotted Eagle and Black Crow. In the end they alone faced the enemy. Then, suddenly, Black Crow’s horse was hit by several arrows and collapsed under him. “Brother, forgive me for what I have done,” he cried to Spotted Eagle, “let me jump on your horse behind you.”

  Spotted Eagle answered: “You are a Kit Fox member, a sash wearer. Pin your sash as a sign that you will fight to the finish. Then, if you survive, I will forgive you; and if you die, I will forgive you also.”

  Black Crow answered: “I am a Fox. I shall pin my sash. I will win here or die here.” He sang his death song. He fought stoutly. There was no one to release him by unpinning him and taking him up on a horse. He was hit by lances and arrows and died a warrior’s death. Many Pahani died with him.

  Spotted Eagle had been the only one to watch Black Crow’s last fight. At last he joined his people, safe across the river, where the Pahani did not follow them. “Your husband died well,” Spotted Eagle told Red Bird.

  After some time had passed, Spotted Eagle married Red Bird. And much, much later he told his parents, and no one else, how Black Crow had betrayed him. “I forgive him now,” he said, “because once, long ago, he was my friend, and because he died as a warrior should, fighting for his people, and also because Red Bird and I are happy now.”

  After a long winter, Spotted Eagle told his wife when spring came again: “I must go away for a few days to fulfill a promise. And I have to go alone.” He rode off by himself to that cliff and stood again at its foot, below the ledge where the eagles’ nest had been. He pointed his sacred pipe to the four directions, then down to Grandmother Earth and up to the Grandfather, letting the smoke ascend to the sky, calling out: “Wanblee, Mishunkala, little Eagle Brothers, hear me.”

  High above in the clouds appeared two black dots, circling. These were the eagles who had saved his life. They came at his call, their huge wings spread royally. Swooping down, uttering a shrill cry of joy and recognition, they alighted at his feet. He stroked them with his feather fan, thanked them many times, and fed them choice morsels of buffalo meat. He fastened small medicine bundles around their legs as a sign of friendship, and spread sacred tobacco offerings around the foot of the cliff. Thus he made a pact of friendship and brotherhood between Wanblee Oyate—the eagle nation—and his own people. Afterwards the stately birds soared up again into the sky, circling motionless, carried by the wind, disappearing into the clouds. Spotted Eagle turned his horse’s head homeward, going back to Red Bird with deep content.

  —Told by Jenny Leading Cloud in White River, Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1967.

  Recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  [CHEYENNE]

  In the summer of 1876, the two greatest battles between soldiers and Indians were fought on the plains of Montana. The first fight was called the Battle of the Rosebud. The second, which was fought a week later, was called the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General Custer was defeated and killed. The Cheyennes call the Battle of the Rosebud the Fight Where the girl Saved Her Brother. Let me tell you why.

  Well, a hundred years ago, the white men wanted the Indians to go into prisons called “reservations,” to give up their freedom to roam and hunt buffalo, to give up being Indians. Some tamely submitted and settled down behind the barbed wire of the agencies, but others did not.

  Those who went to the reservations to live like white men were called “friendlies.” Those who would not go were called “hostiles.” They weren’t hostile, really. They didn’t want to fight; all they wanted was to be left alone to live the Indian way, which was a good way. But the soldiers would not leave them alone. They decided to have a great roundup and catch all “hostiles,” kill those who resisted, and bring the others back to the agencies as prisoners.

  Three columns of soldiers entered the last stretch of land left to the red man. They were led by Generals Crook, Terry, and Custer. Crook had the most men with him, about two thousand. He also had cannon and Indian scouts to guide him. At the Rosebud he met the united Sioux and Cheyenne warriors.

  The Indians had danced the sacred sun dance. The great Sioux chief and holy man, Sitting Bull, had been granted a vision telling him that the soldiers would be defeated. The warriors were in high spirits. Some men belonging to famous warrior societies had vowed to fight until they were killed, singing their death songs, throwing their lives away, as it was called. They painted their faces for war. They put on their finest outfits so that if they were killed, their enemies would say: “This must have been a great chief. See how nobly he lies there.”

  The old chiefs instructed the young men how to act. The medicine men prepared protective charms for the fighters, putting gopher dust on their hair or painting their horses with hailstone designs. This was to render them invisible to their foes, or to make them bulletproof. Brave Wolf had the most admired medicine—a mounted hawk that he fastened to the back of his head. He always rode into battle blowing his eagle-bone whistle—and once the fight started, the hawk came alive and whistled too.

  Many proud tribes were there besides the Cheyenne—the Hunkpapa, the Minniconjou, the Oglala, the Burned Thighs, the Two Kettles. Many brave chiefs and warriors came, including Two Moons, White Bull, Dirty Moccasins, Little Hawk, Yellow Eagle, and Lame White Man. Among the Sioux was the great Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull—their holy man, still weak from his flesh offerings made at the sun dance—and the fierce Rain-in-the-Face. Who can count them all! What a fine sight they were!

  Those who had earned the right to wear warbonnets were singing, lifting them up. Three times they stopped in their singing, and the fourth time they put the bonnets on their heads, letting the streamers fly and trail behind them. How good it must have been to see this!

  Crazy
Horse of the Oglala shouted his famous war cry: “A good day to die, and a good day to fight! Cowards to the rear, brave hearts—follow me!”

  The fight started. Many brave deeds were done, many coups counted. The battle swayed to and fro. More than anybody else’s, this was the Cheyenne’s fight. This was their day. Among them was a brave young girl, Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman, who rode proudly beside her husband, Black Coyote. Her brother, Chief Comes-in-Sight, was in the battle too. She looked for him and at last saw him surrounded, his horse killed from under him. Soldiers were aiming their rifles at him, while their Crow scouts circled around him and waited for an opportunity to count coups. But he fought them off with courage and skill.

  Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman uttered a shrill, high-pitched war cry. She raced her pony into the midst of the battle, into the midst of the enemy. She made the spine-chilling, trilling, trembling sound of the Indian woman encouraging her man during a fight. Chief Comes-in-Sight jumped up on her horse behind her. Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman laughed with joy and the excitement of battle, and all the while she sang. The soldiers were firing at her, and their Crow scouts were shooting arrows at her horse, but it moved too fast for her and her brother to be hit. Then she turned her horse and raced up the hill from which the old chiefs and the medicine men were watching the battle.

  The Sioux and Cheyenne saw what she was doing, and then the white soldiers saw it too. They all stopped fighting and watched the brave girl saving her brother’s life. The warriors raised their arms and set up a mighty shout—a long undulating war cry that made one’s hair stand up on end. And even some of the soldiers threw their caps in the air and shouted “Hurrah!” in honor of Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman.

  The battle was still young. Not many men had been killed on either side, but the white general was thinking: “If their women fight like this, what will their warriors be like? Even if I win, I will lose half my men.” And so General Crook retreated a hundred miles or so. He was to have joined up with Custer, Old Yellow Hair; but when Custer had to fight the same Cheyenne and Sioux a week later, Crook was far away and Custer’s regiment was wiped out. So in a way, Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman contributed to that battle too.

  Many who saw what she had done thought that she had counted the biggest coup of all—not taking life, but giving it. That’s why the Indians call the Battle of the Rosebud the Fight Where the girl Saved Her Brother.

  The spot where Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman counted her coup has long since been plowed under. A ranch now covers it. But the memory of her deed will last as long as there are Indians. This is not a fairy tale, but it sure is a legend.

  —Told by Rachel Strange Owl, Birney, Montana, with the assistance of two or three others.

  Recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  TATANKA IYOTAKE’S

  DANCING HORSE

  [BRULE SIOUX]

  As the teller of this tale puts it, “By dancing and singing the right songs, the Lakota people thought that they could bring back the good old buffalo-hunting days, the days before the whites came, the days before smallpox, reservations, and too little to eat. So they danced.”

  The ghost dance was peaceful, but the whites thought of it as the signal for a great Indian uprising. They asked the army for help, and in the end many unarmed ghost dancers, mostly women and children, were killed at Wounded Knee. We Indians think that the white people were afraid of the ghost dance because they had a bad conscience, having taken away half of the remaining Indian land just a few years before. People with bad consciences live in fear, and they hate most those whom they have wronged. Thus it was with the ghost dance.

  At the time, Sitting Bull lived on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota with his Hunkpapa people. He was not, as some people think, the war leader who had defeated Custer on the Little Big Horn. He was a holy man, the spiritual leader of the Sioux nation. He got along well with some whites, even had a few white friends, but he always said: “I want the white man beside me, not above me.” Sitting Bull, or Tatanka Iyotake, as he is called in Sioux, was a proud and dignified man, and nobody’s slave.

  Now, at some time before 1890, Sitting Bull had joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He had traveled all over the country. In New York he could often be seen sitting on a doorstep on Broadway, giving nickels to poor street urchins and saying that white folks did not know how to take care of their children. He also said that all children—red, white, black, yellow—were alike in their innocence, and that if grown-ups could remain children in their hearts, all would be well. Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill became friends. When the circus show was over, Buffalo Bill presented his friend Tatanka Iyotake with a fine sombrero, which the Indian holy man wore from then on. Buffalo Bill Cody also gave Sitting Bull his favorite circus horse. It was white and could do many tricks.

  At that time the Great White Father in Washington, and the white agents who ruled the reservations, thought that the solution to what they called the “Indian problem” was for Indians to behave like whites: to speak and dress like whites, to become Christians and worship like whites, to own property and work like whites, to marry whites, and to be swallowed up by white society. The “problem” would be solved by simply having no more Indians, by letting them disappear into the great American melting pot.

  Sitting Bull opposed this. He did not want the Indians to die out. He wanted them to remain true to their old ways, to go on worshiping the Great Spirit, to continue speaking their own language and singing their old Sioux songs. And because Sitting Bull was a Wichasha Wakan, a medicine man, the most respected one among the Lakota people, many Indians rallied around him. Thus he became the center of the resistance to being swallowed up by the culture of the whites. And thus he became the enemy of those who wanted to make the Indians into white men.

  They said that he stood in the path of progress, and the ghost dance trouble seemed a good opportunity to get rid of the old chief. He was accused of siding with the dancers and protecting them. The white reservation chief sent out the Indian police, forty-three of them, to arrest Sitting Bull. If he resisted and was killed, so much the better. The police force was made up of what we now call “apples,” men who are red outside and white inside. They were led by Lieutenants Shave Head and Bull Head.

  The police came to arrest the great leader before dawn on an icy winter morning. The ground was covered with snow. They burst into his one-room log cabin with their six-shooters drawn. They dragged him naked from beneath his buffalo robe and pushed him outside; they would not even let him dress properly. They kept pushing at him as they put handcuffs on. The commotion awoke Sitting Bull’s friends and relatives in the cabins nearby. Led by the old chief’s friend and adopted brother Chase-the-Bear, they came boiling out of their huts and tipis. A woman’s voice rose in a song:

  Sitting Bull,

  You were a warrior once,

  What are you going to do now?

  The old chief stopped abruptly. He pushed the policemen away, saying: “I won’t go!”

  Immediately one of the police chiefs shot him through the body, and an all-out fight to the death began. It is always said that a fight between Indians and whites is one thing, but when Sioux fights Sioux, watch out! The police tried to act like whites, but once the fight started, they became Indian warriors again. And among Sitting Bull’s friends were some of the bravest warriors, who had fought in many famous battles. When it was over, fifteen people lay dead or dying in the snow, among them Sitting Bull, Chase-the-Bear, and the two police chiefs.

  When the white horse heard the shooting, it thought it was back in the circus during the Wild West Show. It began dancing and prancing, sitting on its haunches and raising up its front legs, jumping around, bowing, curtsying, doing all the tricks it had been taught. In this way it honored its dead master in the only way it knew. All who saw it said that the horse was possessed, wakan, in the spirit way, because it was unhurt even though it had danced through a hail of bullets. The white horse kept dancing for a while after the fi
ght was over and the bloody scene was silent. Thus Tatanka Iyotake, the great Sitting Bull, and his favorite white horse became part of the legend of our people.

  —Told by George Eagle Elk at Parmelee, Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1969.

  Recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  In 1890 the messianic ghost dance religion swept the Plains tribes. Originating with a vision of the Paiute prophet Wovoka, and heralded by such signs as a frightening eclipse of the sun, the ghost dance was a religion of despair. It gave hope to a people who had been deprived of their ancient hunting grounds and were starving on the reservations. Ghost dancers performed a special round dance, holding hands and singing ghost dance songs. Their shirts, painted with the images of stars, the moon and sun, and magpies, were supposed to make them bulletproof. Dancers swooned and fell down in a trance. Afterwards they declared that they had been in a beautiful land teeming with buffalo, and that they had met their long-dead relatives. The ghost dance, so Wovoka said, would change the world back into what it was before the white man came.

  Like the rituals of war, the rituals of love demand serious attention. Courtship in different Indian tribes may involve ordeals or tests for the beloved, unpleasant or burdensome responsibilities, sacrifices for one’s commitment, or even death itself in the name of love. The tales are by turns tragic, ribald, earthy, and poetic. They tell of contests both exciting and hilarious—great water battles in the Northwest, antics of Coyote and Iktome in the desert. Hair-raising trials of endurance test a vowed commitment, and the rewards are not always as the lovers might have anticipated.