Looking back, I have to say that Leonard Crow Dog, in his own strange way, is a great man. He has somehow created a pan-Indian belief. You could call it a religion in which it no longer matters whether you run a meeting the moon-fire or cross-fire way, whether you believe in the White Buffalo Calf Woman or the Corn Maiden, whether you perform the Pueblo cloud dance or the Sioux sun dance. Of course, he is always the traditional Lakota medicine man, doing the ancient Sioux ceremonies exactly how they should be done, but he has been a uniting force for all Native Americans and you can’t take that away from him. He has influenced legislation on both the federal and state levels and has made the acceptance of Indian religion a simple fact. That goes not only for the peyote church, but for all Native American beliefs. He helped get Indian prisoners in penitentiaries the right to receive the support and consolation of a tribal medicine man just as white prisoners can have their priest, minister, or rabbi. It is thanks to him that you can have a sweat or a pipe ceremony inside prison walls. And he has achieved this not with a gun, but with his spiritual power. So when I say he is a great man, you’d better believe it.
Many months after I left Crow Dog I met Rudi, the man to whom I am married now. He proudly calls himself a Chicano. He is descended from Mexican Indians, from Zapotecs, possibly also from some Plains Indians. He is gentle, and he is good to me. I wanted to go back to the church, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I used to be a water woman, but I wasn’t sure how people would feel about me being at meetings now that I was no longer a part of Crow Dog’s life. But I got an invitation from Joanne, a real good friend of mine who always had something nice to say about me in the meetings. She’d come to the house and visit, but she died not long ago. There was a memorial meeting for her son who got trampled by some horses, and that’s when I rejoined the church. I wanted to take Rudi along and introduce him to the Native American Church. So I took him to the meeting and I introduced him to Auntie Dee, Uncle Barney, and the Reverend Burnette Iron Shell. I told them that we were getting married soon, and I called Barney “Uncle.” He said: “That makes me feel good. I’ve known you for a long time, and when you were young I always understood that you had a lot of patience and understanding, and a good heart.” By the time we went into the meeting the prayers had already begun. The medicine was going around, and then the singing started. It was late, too—I chink it was after midnight. They had already changed the fire. Later, after Rudi had taken a lot of medicine, he reached over and pinched me in the butt. He didn’t mean anything by it but I got real mad. He felt bad about it. He didn’t mean any disrespect and later apologized.
Barney had said that it was a special meeting, and a very serious one. Uncle Barney said: “It’s a memorial meeting, so don’t go outside when you take this medicine.” But then Rudi had to go to the bathroom. He’d drunk a lot of peyote tea, and he had to go. I said: “Oh, man, can’t you hold it in?” So he was a good boy and sat there all night. Because he’d already had medicine he didn’t know it was peyote tea and thought it was water, so he was drinking full cups. Then toward the early morning, the fire started burning his chin, and he could see the smoke coming toward him. Even with his eyes shut he could see the smoke. I thought for a minute he was going to get sick, but he turned on his side and got a couple of breaths of air, and that’s when I poked him and said: “Sit up.” As soon as he sat up and started praying again he was all right.
That was the first time Rudi had experienced the medicine. He had been to meetings before but never took medicine, because at that time he was messing with drugs and didn’t think he was purified enough to partake of the sacrament. But I had been drinking a lot and decided that we had to go back to the church in order to make it. We need the medicine in our lives.
It was a good meeting. Cleveland Never Misses a Shot was drumming. And he plays and sings beautifully. It was an honor for Rudi to go to that meeting, and the people really welcomed him. Uncle Barney was talking to him, and he said: “I’ve always been a good judge of character, and I can see that you’ve got a good heart. I’m glad you’re with Mary. Take care of her, and stay close to the medicine, and you’ll have a long marriage and a happy one.” I told him that Rudi had been in prison, but Barney was very understanding. He said that we were back on the right road, and that it was good to come to the medicine. After the meeting ended, I was really proud of Rudi and told him that he had handled the medicine well. He did not realize how much it had affected him until the meeting was over. We went outside and saw the sun rise in a great red ball above the grass-covered hills. Everything was all right. I was at peace with myself and the world.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wrapped in a Hot, White Cloud
Our oldest ceremony was taught to us by Ptesan Win, the White Buffalo Calf Woman. I am talking about inikagapi, or inipi, about taking a sweatbath, or “sweat” for short. The sweatbath is a prayer, a song, a healing, a purification, a communing with the spirits. There can be no Lakota ritual—be it a sun dance, a vision quest, or a yuwipi ceremony—without the participant having a sweat first. But a sweatbath is also a solemn rite all by itself. Having lived for so many years with one of our tribe’s foremost medicine men, and having assisted in so many of our old rituals, I finally came to the point in my life when I was allowed to run women’s sweats.
I ran my first sweat at Big Mountain, in Navajo and Hopi country. Nobody wanted to run the sweat for white women. The women went around trying to find somebody who’d run the sweat for them, and I guess I was the last resort. It was really confusing for me, because they were running it different from me, doing things differently. They just dropped their towels and crawled in naked. There were all these men around. And I got after them, saying: “This is sacred ground. Have a little modesty. Respect yourself. It’s an embarrassment for us, to show your body like that.” That happened more than once, and they’d roll around, and come out dirtier than when they went in. Some of them cried to get out, but some of them were really strong.
Men and women sweat separately. In the old days they sometimes sweated together, but no more. There was a heavy influx of white outsiders who did not know our customs. There were some incidents where some of these visitors, in the total darkness inside the lodge, copped a feel of the women next to them, saying: “It was a spirit.” So we have become very strict in the way we run our sweats, not mixing the sexes and making visitors behave, reminding them that this is not a white man’s sauna, but a meaningful, religious purification. But, when there are no outsiders, there are still some mixed sweats.
When I run a sweat, white women sometimes treat me like a medicine woman with knowledge of all things. They flatter me and shower me with gifts. That does not go over well with me. It makes me feel out of place. I tell them: “I’m just a woman like you.” When I take them into sweats, I start talking to the person next to the door, and I go around and welcome everybody in the sweat lodge. Before they come in I warn them that once they come in they aren’t allowed to leave, and if it gets too hot for them, to think of people in this world who are suffering, and need help, and to put other people’s pain or problems in prayer. I tell them that we’re all equal in the circle, and if one is weak, to try to give her strength and try to help each other. I always want to make the point with the women who come around that I am no better than they are. And that they aren’t any better than I, even though they might drive a fancy car. They might be better off than I am, but in the traditional sense we’re all the same. In the sweats we pray for the men to understand us better, too. When they enter the lodge on all fours, I tell them it should remind them to be humble, that we are no better than our four-legged relatives. When we huddle close together, our bodies touching, the darkness uniting us, I remind them that in the dark we cannot see our faces, or the color of our skins, that in the sweat lodge we are all the same and we cannot see whether we are Indian, white, or black. I tell them that our little lodge has become our universe, our galaxy. I remind them to turn inward
into the vastness of their own minds. I sing to Kate Wiohpeyata, to the Spirit of the West. I sing so that the supernaturals will come in and take part in our purification and bless us. I ask for a sign. When they can’t stand the scorching heat, I teach them to say: “Mitakuye oyasin"—"all my relations"—the signal for the doorkeeper outside to open the flap and let the cool air in, to give them some relief.
I love to sweat at night, under the stars, when you can see the steam rising from the lodge like a ghostly, magic mist. Whenever we had a sun dance at the Paradise, I’d pick a night to run a sweat. I’d always warn the women: “You don’t have to come, because it’s going to be hot, and I don’t want to hear you scream, ‘Let me out, I can’t handle it!’ “ And I’d tell them: “I’m just running the sweat. I’m not a leader. I’m just part of the circle. There are no leaders here, just women supporting each other.”
I’ve sweated with women of all colors—with Asian women, with people who have been facing down tanks in Tiananmen Square. I’ve sweated with South African women from the antiapartheid movement, with women from San Salvador and Guatemala who are Indians like myself. I tell them all: “I can relate to you, because I’ve been where you are. Whether at Wounded Knee or Soweto, or at Tiananmen Square, it’s the same. This sweat is for freedom.” And I also sweat for our men to be strong, for the children to be strong against the things that destroy our people.
I usually use fifty rocks in my sweats. That’s pretty hot. I like to sweat with women because we support each other and exchange our spiritual thoughts. Some women cry during a sweat, because some family members are in prison, or doing drugs, or live on the street, or drink too much. Some women are real hardship cases, and they come to pray for a better life. But there is laughter too. aIt is good to keep your sense of humor, to laugh through your tears. That’s what a heyoka is for, a sacred fool, a clown. People who suffer as much as we do need laughter. These sweats get very emotional. We’ll talk about the purification process. Women purify themselves every month, so they don’t really have to sweat, but it is good to talk together, to exchange our troubles, swap our tragedies. We need that. One woman came to the inipi because she had lost her mother. She felt so bad when she went in, but she prayed hard, and after some cedaring she felt better. She was happy after the Fourth Door. She was sitting way back and I kept on pouring the water and she seemed to float in that white cloud. The spiritual part is just being able to understand yourself. That’s something that is strong in Indian beliefs. It does not even have to be a ceremony. You can get up at dawn and pray to the morning star. Or you can burn some cedar or sage. I use the medicine or go to a ceremony or sweat whenever I start going off track. I want to keep up with it because this way I pray for my children, pray for them to have a future. I’ve sweated with Navajos, Apaches, Utes, and Arapahos, all over the West. That was another good thing for me. I met a lot of elders. I watched their different ways, heard different tongues.
Sometimes you have women in a sweat who have never done it before, particularly white women who have come for the wrong reason, maybe out of curiosity, so they can brag later: “I’ve been in a ceremony with real Indians.” You’ve got to keep a tight rein on them. You’ve got to run it to them, make them behave. I ran a sweat, and we were praying, but one white woman paid no attention to it and got caught up in her own ego trip, getting macho, talking about “kicking some ass.” I told her: “Watch your language when you come in here. You don’t sweat in order to make speeches. You’re here to learn something, and get some understanding, to have a good look at yourself. So keep your mouth shut and try some silent praying. Just be quiet and observe.”
When I was in Phoenix, there was a guy from White River named Bob who had a white girlfriend. We all ended up taking a trip to Bakersfield. Well, in a sweat one of our Rosebud men, Art, was sitting next to that white woman. In the darkness she grabbed Art’s thing, his manhood, whispering: “Oh, Bob, oh, Bob!” He told her: “No, damn it, this is Art. You’ve got the wrong address.” She had the surprise of her life. An was mad as hell. There he was praying, trying to cleanse and purify himself, while this white woman acted like a bitch in heat. You are supposed to have only spiritual thoughts inside a sweat lodge. That woman ruined the whole inipi for us.
In the old days, after a winter sweat, men and women would take a plunge into the icy waters, sometimes even breaking the ice in order to do it. I wish we could have done chat after the Phoenix sweat. It would have cooled that woman down. During a sweat you must have only pure thoughts, sing with the spirits, experience the beauty of being united with all living things on this earth. You must think of the White Buffalo Calf Woman who came to us singing: “With visible breath I come walking.” Visible breath, to me that means the white hot cloud rising from the sweatlodge. For me Lakota ceremonies are my way of living in balance, of recognizing myself as an Indian. They are the drumbeats of my heart. They open a magical door for me. I walk through it and, on the other side, see a different reality, the true image if the universe. This power dwells in the secret valley of my heart.
CHAPTER NINE
Ceremonies
I want to talk farther of the meaning our ancient beliefs have in our daily life, not as a medicine person, which I am not, but simply as a tribal woman. I do not want to “teach Indian religion.” I don’t want to give away any secrets because I do not have secrets of the sort that whites expect to get from Native Americans, secrets to “give them power,” or to “enable them to have an extrasensory experience.” I have no medicine to sell. I am talking of basic concepts, of everyday living. Indian religion—I use the English word religion for want of a better one—is an all-the-time thing. Whether you eat breakfast, or sweep the floor, or get the kids to school, it is always with you. We are not like the many white people who go to church on a Sunday for two hours and that is the sum total of their weekly religious experience. And we are not like Catholics who, once in a while, go to confession and come out of it bathed in innocence like newborn babies. The concept of what the white man calls sin, particularly “original sin,” is utterly alien to us. As for the devil, as one of our old medicine men put it: “You whites invented him, you can keep him.” I also agree with our elders that there are some things one should never talk about with outsiders.
People who believe in the religion will burn cedar in the morning, and drink water with a prayer, and bless the house and the surroundings. They’ll pray for their family and their loved ones. If a relative has passed away, you’ll remember them in your prayers that day. That’s a daily thing. It affects your whole life. You start out with a prayer in the morning, and in the night before you go to bed, you end with a prayer. Even during the day, you think of the great Creator. You more or less fill your whole life with prayer. I pray whenever I see a waterbird, or an eagle circling above me. I pray when I am making tobacco offerings. Sometimes you put a spirit plate out during a meal. Some people do this every day. They say that then there’ll always be food on the table. Even my sister Poco did it on Easter. She said: “I wanted to put a spirit plate out for Grandma.” I’ve seen it done a lot of times after ceremonies and even after a peyote meeting. In the same way, some people, if they’re going to drink a bottle of liquor, will spill a capful. Or they’ll break a cigarette in half. I knew an aged alcoholic who always spilled a few drops of Jack Daniel’s on the ground, saying, “Here, old departed wino brother, is something for you. Wichosani. Enjoy it,” after which he said a short prayer.
It is easy to relate to Indian religion. You don’t need a church or Sunday clothes to communicate with Grandfather. A certain rock or tree could be your church, a buffalo skull your altar, your pipe a bridge to the powers above. You can come into the sweat lodge and purify yourself, pray, and find comfort from the rocks, the water, and the sage. You can go up on a hill and be a church all by yourself. You don’t need a priest between yourself and the Grandfather Spirit. Most of our older full-bloods trust a medicine man more than a missionary or whi
te medical doctor.
We believe in herbs rather than pills. My mom still uses an herb that grows near where we live. You take the root of this plant, boil it, and use it for your eyes. And for chest and lung troubles Grandma made a tea out of the bark of a chokecherry tree. When your stomach’s upset you can use sage tea. I never studied herbs until I was with Leonard. Then he’d show me their uses—not just for me, but for other people, too. Like if somebody came for doctoring, we’d go into the sweat lodge, and there he’d understand what kind of medicine they’d need. So we’d go up in the hills, just him and me sometimes, and we’d go and he’d say: “This medicine here is for kidneys.” And he’d show me how it looked. One time he used this one plant for somebody—I can’t remember what the illness was—but it was just a little plant with a certain kind of flower on it, but when you dug it up the root was huge. He told me: “Learn to recognize these plants. Someday I won’t be here. Somebody might need your help.” And Old Henry was the same way.
There are certain phenomena we take for granted, that we are comfortable with, though the white man is not. I went to the wopila, the memorial service, for Delphine, Crow Dog’s sister, who had been killed by a drunken tribal policeman. That’s when Leonard smoked the pipe with her killer, and forgave him. Her killer admitted that he had done it. That was pretty intense. But the night before, the family—Leonard, his mom and dad, his sisters, and I—took spiritual food up to the graveyard, and then talked to Delphine. I was standing there when they started talking to her and I could hear things, and I looked around and I saw all the spirits standing by their graves. Nearby was the grave of Estes Stewart’s wife, Eunice, and her spirit was standing there making a high-pitched cry. The spirits were everywhere. I wasn’t afraid. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be able to contact spirits through the spiritual food, with medicine, water, corn, meat, and fruit and I think a little bit of the ashes. And we offered that like at a meeting.
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