The Native American Church has always had to fight for its right to exist. The use of our holy sacrament has always been suppressed by whites, by the priests, and by federal and state governments throughout the United States. The missionaries preached against it because it kept Indians from joining their particular churches. This oppression persists despite the fact that James Mooney, a sympathetic anthropologist, had helped Quanah Parker make the peyote religion widely acceptable, and the Native American Church was legally incorporated at Rosebud as early as 1924.
In the 1920s, the great apostle of Prohibition, William Pussyfoot Johnson, ranted and raved not only against “demon rum.” He also wanted peyote included in the Prohibition legislation because it “induced Indians to become drunkards.” This in spite of the Native American Church forbidding the use of alcohol. Though the use of our medicine has been legalized everywhere when taken by Native Americans in a religious setting, efforts to suppress and outlaw it continue. As recently as 1991, the Supreme Court upheld a Washington State ruling outlawing peyote. Freedom of religion, as I said before, seems to apply only to whites.
For years Leonard Crow Dog has traveled across the country testifying in cases involving the Native American Church, and quite recently he testified before Congress. In 1978, our whole family, including Leonard’s usual entourage, drove halfway across the country to the Colville Reservation in Washington State. This state still outlaws peyote, even in religious ceremonies, and two of our friends and relatives, Roger Eagle Elk and Ken Little Brave, were arrested for possession of sacred medicine on a visit to the Colville Tribe. They were held under the outdated Drug Abuse Control Act of 1965. On that occasion Leonard testified for the defendants and helped run a Sioux-style meeting, appointing Ed Eagle Elk, Roger’s father, to be the road chief. Roger and Ken were eventually released, but the antipeyote laws in that state are still on the books. I can’t even remember all the places we went to testify on behalf of the Native American Church--Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Texas, Arizona--just about everywhere.
The Native American Church has a state charter. There is a chairman and a vice-chairman, a secretary and a treasurer, a sergeant-at-arms and a custodian, who takes care of the medicine. In the past different people have misused and abused the peyote. Now it’s well taken care of by the custodian and the church members. You can have medicine in your house as long as you abide by the rules. Uncle Leslie is the custodian. He goes down to the peyote gardens about twice a year to collect medicine for meetings.
Done in the right way, a peyote meeting is beautiful. It is very precisely structured, spiritually and symbolically, just like a Catholic mass. It is a solemn ritual. The three main things needed for a meeting are the peyote, the fire, and the tipi. And of course the food. Then you have like a ten o’clock brunch in the morning. Also they usually have a big dinner. So it can run five hundred or six hundred dollars to put on a meeting. People have meetings for different reasons--birthdays, memorials, Thanksgiving, different things.
Years ago, when I first went to meetings, the Christian element was very strong. Now you have some meetings with little or no reference to Christianity, the result of the Indian civil rights struggle, the return of ancient beliefs, and the rejection of European ideas of spirituality. The nature of the meeting depends on where it takes place and who runs it. To the end of his days, Old Henry Crow Dog had a Bible in his meetings and chanted songs like: “Jesus, light of the world,” or “Jesus, unsimalayelo, nita canku wanyanka makiye lo”--“Jesus, pity me. Lead me on your road.” When I was seventeen and eighteen, in my early white-hating days, that would have made me squirm. But now I know better. I have become aware that real “Indianness” means being tolerant of my brothers’ and sisters’ beliefs. Now it doesn’t matter to me whether it is a cross-fire or a moon-fire meeting, whether there is a Bible or not, whether the meeting is run southwestern style, with cornhusk cigarettes and Bull Durham, or with the red-bowled pipe and kinnikinnick. It does not matter whether the meeting is held in a house or a tipi. It is the feeling of being Indian, of being in the power, of being as one with all other tribes that matters. And it is not important if you call the Great Spirit Wakan Tanka or Maheo, Masaau or Manitou, or whether you conceive him as a woman, or both male and female. You still pray to the same Creator or creative spirit. You are born in this religion. You are married in it. You die in it.
Let me describe a typical peyote ceremony as I experienced it a hundred times. The person who runs the meeting is called the roadman or road chief, who leads us on the road of life. He is assisted by the firekeeper, the doorkeeper, the cedar man, the drummer, and the woman who brings in the morning water--the water of life. A meeting always begins at sundown and ends; at daybreak, when the morning star comes out. The ceremony lasts all night. Whoever runs the meeting always has a chief peyote, a large button, sometimes kept for generations as a sacred talisman, handed on from father to son. The chief peyote is placed on a bed of sage in the center of the altar. Though some altars are different, the half-moon altar is the traditional one. In a half-moon, the altar is crescent-shaped and formed out of hard-packed sand. At the very heart of the ceremony is the fireplace, the sacred fire, peta owihankesni--the fire without end, the flame passed from generation to generation. Four times during the night its red-hot, glowing embers are formed into different shapes--a half-moon, a morning star, a four-directions cross, and, at one part of the meeting, into a heart, a glowing heart pulsating to the beat of your own heart and those of all others who have come to pray with the sacred medicine.
The paraphernalia used in the Native American Church are beautiful, full of symbolic meaning. They are the same among all tribes, the same in a cross-fire or moon-fire ceremony. There is the tufted staff, denoting authority, a link between humans and God, or as Leonard used to say. “A hot line to Tunkashila, the Grandfather Spirit.” When you hold the staff you communicate with the supernatural, communicate in a sacred universal language. Then there is the water drum, the heartbeat of the Indian Nation. It is the voice of thunder, the spirit of rain, the murmur of the spirits. It comes with its hardwood drumstick and is formed from a three-legged iron or copper pot covered with buckskin or moosehide. Depending on how wet the buckskin is, the drum can have a deep, rumbling voice or a high, clear one. The beat is very fast. The drum has seven round, marble-sized stones. These are tied into the hide, forming knobs by which the hide can be fastened to the pot with rawhide thongs. When they are putting up the fireplace before the meeting, whoever brings the drum will go into the tipi by himself and tie the drum. He says a prayer for each stone as he ties it into the hide. When this is done, the rope forms a star design at the drum’s bottom.
Then there is the fan made of macaw, magpie, scissortail, hawk, or pheasant feathers. You hold on to it while you are singing. It is said that you can catch songs out of the air with the feather fan. We also have the gourd rattle, which we shake to the beat of the drum. Its handle is finely beaded, Kiowa style, and fringed at the end. The gourd itself is crowned with a tuft of horsehair. The gourd represents the Indian’s head and thoughts. The rattlings of little stones inside it are the voices of the spirits. When shaking the gourd you are communicating in a universal language. The little talking rocks inside are small crystals picked up from anthills. In this way the ants, too, are connected to our religion--tiny relatives of us humans.
Then there is the bag of cedar for incense. They say that by burning cedar in the fireplace you are making a garden, planting seeds, cultivating a soul. When you put cedar on the fire, it pleases the spirits. The cedar is evergreen. It represents life everlasting. We also have the eagle-bone whistle, the eagle’s voice sent to the four directions, and, with us Lakotas, the sacred pipe. We smoke canshasha, Indian tobacco. We pray with it. It will take you on. It will always be there to help you.
The meeting is divided into four parts--four being our sacred number. Four times the medicine goes around, either in the form of buttons or chopped up
like relish. Some people throw up after eating medicine, it has that kind of effect on them. That is no reason to be embarrassed. There will be somebody handing you an empty tin can for that purpose. Nobody minds.
The roadman always sits at the back of the altar. He opens the meeting with a prayer. On his right sits the drummer, on his left the cedar man with his rawhide bag of incense. On the opposite side of the circle, at the tipi’s door, the fire man has his place. Near him sits the woman who acts as the water carrier. The other participants sit wherever they please. The meeting could also take place in a house, in a room, but the arrangements would be the same.
The singing starti as the paraphernalia are handed around clockwise. The singer holds the staff and the fan in his or her left hand and shakes the gourd rattle with the right. Both men and women sing. You don’t have to sing. If you don’t know how you just pass on the paraphernalia to your neighbor on the left. If you want to sing, the drummer will come over and drum for you. The beat is very fast. It races your heart. It makes you feel that your heart beats in rhythm with the drum, but the drum is faster. The drum, the gourd, and the song unite in the same rhythm. When I was pregnant I felt the child inside of me moving to the beat of the dram. Every time it’s your turn, you sing four songs. These are the songs that unite us, that we learn from each other--Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Navajo, Ponca, Arapaho songs--and above all, the songs that have no words, just the sound of a universal Indian language that makes us one. I learned peyote songs just by listening. I learned some from friends and some from the peyote spirit when I was in the power--precious gifts to be treasured.
Years ago I was at a meeting down near the Mexican border where we ate fresh green medicine. When the staff came I started to shake the gourd. Leonard gave me an eagle fan, with the black-tipped tail. And when I started to shake the gourd, the medicine started to work on me. I could hear wind blowing, and through the wind I heard a tune. I started singing the tune that I heard through the wind, and when I did, the eagle feathers started to move around, and each feather had a different tune. They were almost: harmonizing. They were dancing. It was as though the feathers had come alive. Another time, in Minneapolis, we were having a peyote meeting with the Winnebagos, They blessed the staff, and when they passed the drum, I put my hands on it to bless myself, and it was almost like I was inside the drum. And my heart beat very fast in rhythm to the drum. I could hear people’s thoughts. In the morning, when a lady brought in the water and the food, I could hear the music. Sometimes I’ll hear or see things like that through the medicine. My voice has changed from the high, child-like voice of my earlier years to a deeper, more mature voice, but the songs are the same, though new ones are added all the time.
The fire man brings in the water at midnight. This is where nighttime ends and you start toward another day, toward another time in life. So the fire man prays for whatever the meeting is about. He usually says a word of thanks, to greet the relatives there in a good way, and then they’ll pray with the water. The road chief blesses the water again with cedar, or he uses tobacco. They’ll fan off the water. When the water is going around, someone will talk, usually an elder, and if it’s a birthday meeting for a child, they’ll have somebody talk about how it’s good to have your culture and your religion, but to have the best of both worlds you should learn the white man’s ways so you can survive. Then the meeting goes on, and the medicine is sent around again. The roadman will always say a few words. No one ever goes in front of the medicine, or in front of someone who is singing. If you have to leave the tent you do it without walking in front of the roadman. And the cedar man has his purpose there, too. If somebody is enlightened to the spirit, or somebody wants to pray, or rejoice, or worship, the cedar man will burn cedar for them. The meeting goes on throughout the night. Then there is the morning water call, which usually happens when the morning star comes out before the dawn. It’s a belief that when you pray at that moment, your prayers will come true. Praying to the morning star is an old tradition. The roadman’s wife will bring in the water, and she’ll pray. Before she prays she always has the privilege to address the congregation, and thank the sponsors, and thank the roadman, the drummer, the cedar man, the fire man, the door man--basically everyone who worked for the way that night. She’s the one who carries the generation. She’s the water woman, she brings life and she’s honored for that. If she’s not the roadman’s wife, she’s usually his daughter. The Lakotas are real strict about this. Different tribes will borrow water women; if there’s an extra woman around, they’ll let her bring in the water. But not the Lakotas. You have to be family in order to do that. You can’t just pick any woman from the circle. The woman prays with the water, and then she burns the cedar, or sometimes the men will burn the cedar for her, and she’ll use the fan to bless the water and fan toward the four directions.
The water always starts from the doorway and travels in a circle. In a cross-fire ritual, the roadman will wait until the water completes the circle and he gets it last. He blesses the water with his eagle-bone whistle. While the water goes around the sponsor can address the meeting, talk about its purpose, and give thanks to all present. When he’s finished speaking, the roadman allows those in the circle who want to speak to do so, encourages them to say a good word about the meeting.
In a Christian cross-fire ritual the roadman is looked upon as a reverend who can perform baptisms and marriages. The fireplace is laid out in the shape of a horseshoe, representing the hoofprints of Crazy Horse. In such a ceremony the cross stands not only for the four directions, but also for the four angels mentioned in Revelation in the Bible. The cross-fire people are real strict. Members are supposed to be legally married and have one set of children with one spouse only.
The half-moon fireplace is the traditional, non-Christian one, where they smoke cornhusk cigarettes during the meeting. Their altar represents the moon, the generations. In Lakota it is called peta wichoichage, the generation fireplace. They use the pipe in there, too, depending on how the sponsors want the meeting run. They offer the roadman cornhusk tobacco or the pipe. It’s usually four smokes. That comes from Quanah Parker’s fireplace, the Comanche-Oto fireplace. Philip Eagle Deer was a half-moon man. When his wife, Julie, would bring in water, he’d say: “We’re trying to pray here. Don’t be crying around this fireplace,” because she’d start weeping, asking for forgiveness for her sins.
In the cross fire they form the embers into a moon until mid-night. When the fire chief is going to bring in the water, right before the staff gets back to the roadman, they shape the glowing coals into a heart. That represents Jesus Christ, and love. Toward the third round, when the morning star is coming out, they’ll form up a star. That’s when they have the main prayer. Whatever the purpose of the meeting, the roadman will say the main prayer. After midnight, the roadman goes outside and prays to the four directions around the tipi. Most roadmen will let the staff and the medicine and the prayers continue on while he does this. Some will stop the staff. The last fire will be shaped into a four-pointed cross that represents the four directions, or they’ll make a chief with a bonnet out of the embers.
After sunrise, when the meeting is over, they bring in the sacred food. First, the woman brings in the water of life. Then we have corn and papa, which is jerked meat, and sweet wasna, which is pemmican: dried meat pounded together with kidney fat and lots of dried berries. Also we have wojapi, a sort of pudding made from chokecherries, and we drink chokecherry juice. Later we sit out-side in the open, talk and gossip, and finally end up with something the white man brought us--pejuta sapa, black medicine, our word for coffee.
The church is strict about drinking, but everybody has weak-nesses, and I had mine. They’ll tell you right in the church, “You have to live a good life. You have to be upstanding. You have to stay away from alcohol and drugs. Raise your children in a good way and don’t be led into temptation.” The reason for this is all the death, the tragedy, the domestic violence that i
s caused by alcohol. The church is set against people that do drink. Sometimes people who have a drinking problem will say so in the meeting. The roadman will listen to their problems, and he’ll take some time to pray for this person. He’ll have the cedar man burn some cedar and he’ll bless the person He’ll fan him off. If a person has any problems with drinking, the roadman will talk to them and encourage them.
When I left Leonard I had the awful feeling that I was also leaving the peyote church, because I had been his water carrier and he had been my teacher in the use of the sacred medicine. I did not know how people would take it if 1 went all by myself to a different fireplace, to meetings run by another road chief. When I went to Santa Fe to work with Richard on this book I went to a meeting arranged by old friends of ours, a couple who live in Abiquiu, some fifty miles north of Santa Fe, They are wonderful people and great singers. He is a fine painter who came to pierce at the last sun dance, His wife makes truly remarkable sculptures out of painted clay They raise huge parrots, macaws and cockatoos, and we always get a few large red, blue, or green tail feathers for peyote fans. They have a fireplace, or rather two fireplaces. In summer he has meetings in his tipi, next to his sweat lodge right by the Rio Chama. In wintertime he has meetings inside an ancient round watchtower, probably built by early Hispanic settlers as a refuge from Apache raiders. Leonard acted as the roadman there a few times. After I had my car wreck in March of 1991, these friends arranged a meeting for me run by Charlie, a Navajo medicine man.
Charlie really gave me a talking to about drinking and every-body prayed for me. I cried, and sang, and took a lot of medicine. I loved the way he doctored me. In one way the meeting was terrible. It happened at a time when I was drinking myself to death. I had walked away from my kids and needed help badly and for that reason went to this ceremony. That was good, but I had few illusions that I could redeem myself instantly. It was up to me which way to choose--the bottle, meaning death, or life. I felt like a wild horse being stampeded. There was one moment in that meeting when I really wanted to head straight out the door, but I knew there was nothing out there for me. The roadman gave me a lot of medicine, and it got a little better. All that day his family stayed and talked to me, to see if I felt better. If I didn’t, they were going to have another meeting for me the next night. Charlie told me that if I’d quit drinking he would run a thanksgiving meeting for me, four meetings in a row, similar to what we Sioux call a wopila. I liked the soft chanting of the Navajos, so different from the loud, piercing singing of Leonard and the other Lakota peyote people. It was heavy. It was a powerful meeting. It shook me to my roots.
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