A Brief Guide to Native American Myths and Legends (31 page)

The religion of the Sioux, like other nomads of the Plains, centred on an omniscient Sky God, Watan Tanka, who watched and directed the animals of the earth, not least the buffalo on which the livelihood of the prairie tribes depended. Watan Tanka was also, as discussed previously, an all pervasive force. Between the Sky God and Earth there was a realm in which planets and stars, thunder and eagles, rainbows and lightning lived, all of them spirits that could come down to earth in human form. These spirits lived a mirror existence to the Sioux, travelling with their skin-tents (teepees) across the sky. Since the sky spirits could, among other things bring drought or alter the migration of the buffalo, the Sioux sought to propitiate them by offerings of pain, including in the famous Sun Dance.

The Sun Dance was the most important religious ceremony of the Sioux and other Plains Indians of North America, and for the nomads, an occasion when the bands congregated to reaffirm their religious beliefs about the universe and their part in it through ritual and ceremony. Traditionally, a Sun Dance was held by each tribe once a year in late spring when the buffalo themselves gathered after the Plains winter. The festival usually lasted for eight days, and culminated in the building of a symbolic lodge to represent man’s home, at the centre of which was a pole denoting the distance between earth and heaven. Distinguished warriors who vowed their lives to the Sun danced around this pole, to which they were attached by ropes that were skewered through their breasts. The artist and explorer George Catlin witnessed a Sioux Sun Dance in c. 1843:

An inch or more of the flesh on each shoulder, or each breast was taken up between the thumb and finger by the man who held the knife in his right hand; and the knife, which had been ground sharp on both edges, and then hacked and notched with the blade of another, to make it produce as much pain as possible, was forced through the flesh below the fingers, and being withdrawn, was followed with a splint or skewer, from the other, who held a bunch of such in his left hand, and was ready to force them through the wound. There were then two cords lowered down from the top of the lodge, which were fastened to these splints or skewers, and they instantly began to haul him up; he was thus raised until his body was suspended from the ground where he rested, until the knife and a splint were passed through the flesh or integuments in a similar manner on each arm below the shoulder, below the elbow, on the thighs, and below the knees.

In some instances they remained in a reclining position on the ground until this painful operation was finished, which was performed, in all instances, exactly on the same parts of the body and limbs; and which, in its progress, occupied some five or six minutes.

Each one was then instantly raised with the cords, until the weight of his body was suspended by them, and then, while the blood was streaming down their limbs, the bystanders hung upon the splints each man’s appropriate shield, bow and quiver, &c; and in many
instances, the skull of a buffalo with the horns on it, was attached to each lower arm and each lower leg, for the purpose, probably, of preventing by their great weight, the struggling, which might otherwise have taken place to their disadvantage whilst they were hung up.

Fixing their eyes on the sun, the warriors followed its path across the sky all day, slowly circling the pole. If any Sun Dancers succeeded on staying on their feet until sunset they became medicine-men.

The Sun Dance ceremony (Wiwanyag Wachipi) was only one of the seven sacred rites brought the Sioux by the mythical White Buffalo Calf Woman, the others being: the Sweat Lodge Ceremony (Inipi); the Keeping of the Soul Ceremony (Wanagi Yuhapi), the Making of Relatives Ceremony (Hunkapi), Preparing a Girl for Womanhood (Ishnata Awicalowan), the Throwing the Ball ceremony (Tapa Wanka Yap), and the Vision Quest (Hanblecheyapi). She also brought the
canupa
, the sacred red pipe, and taught the Sioux the pipe ceremony to send their prayers to Wakan Tanka.

In this sextet of rites the Vision Quest stands alongside the Sun Dance ceremony for its importance. Although used primarily by healers and shamans, the Vision Quest was not exclusively reserved for them. The purpose of a vision quest was for the participant to receive guidance from the spirit world, by experiencing a dream containing guidance from their particular animal spirit, ancestors, or cultural figures from Sioux mythology. As with all other aspects of Sioux, the Vision Quest was highly formalized, requiring the seeker to venture to an isolated spot, and fast and pray until the vision came.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sioux had little contact with the white man; however, when the Europeans did penetrate the plains by the railroad, buffalo hunters, and pioneer settlers, the Sioux early determined on resistance. The Sioux Wars, which ended at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890 after twenty eight years of fighting, were the bloodiest of the Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. They witnessed too, the greatest defeat inflicted on the US Army by the Native Peoples.

In June 1876 Sitting Bull, already a medicine-man, subjected himself to a Sun Dance. During the ritual the Huncpapa leader saw a vision of a great number of white soldiers falling from the sky upside down. And so predicted a great victory by his people over the blue coats.

On 25–26 June of that year, the victory duly came when the Lakota, allied with Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne, defeated the US 7th Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn – or to the Indians, Greasy Grass. Custer and his entire command of 264 men were killed.

But it was a pyrrhic victory for the Native People. An enraged American nation demanded vengeance. All reservations on the northern plains were placed under military control, while Congress passed a law compelling the free Sioux to hand over their Black Hills, plus the Powder River and Big Horn ranges and move onto reservations. The Black Hills were a sacred site; in some Sioux creation myths, it was on the Black Hill that the only human survivor of the great flood, a girl, was taken by the rescuing eagle Wanblee. Her twin children by Wanblee became the Sioux nation.

Throughout the remainder of 1876 the Indians still at large on the plains were harassed by the US Army’s most redoubtable Indian-fighting officers, Crook, Mackenzie and Miles. Over the next twelve months small bands of Sioux and Cheyenne limped into US forts and agencies, until only the Huncpapa Sioux bands of Sitting Bull and Gall were left roaming free. To evade the US Army they slipped over the border to Canada. While they hoped to find sanctuary, they found only starvation and disease. Crossing back into the USA, they too surrendered. At midday on 19 July 1881, starving and dressed in rags, Sitting Bull rode into Fort Burford in Dakota. With him were just 143 followers.

It was another medicine man who prompted the last spasm of violence between the Sioux and the Army. Just before dawn on New Year’s Day 1889 a Paiute shaman, Wovoka, dreamed that he visited the Great Spirit in heaven, who told him that a time was coming when dead tribesmen would be resurrected and the buffalo restored to the plains, and the Great Spirit return. If the Indians were
virtuous and performed the proper ritual dance – the Ghost Dance – they could hasten the coming of the new order. This was not the first outbreak of the Ghost Dance; it had originated in California/Nevada c. 1870, following a vision by the Paiute prophet Wodziwob, but led by Wovoka (the son of Wodziwob’s assistant) it found mass Indian appeal – especially amongst the disillusioned Sioux, who adapted the Ghost Dance to their Sun Dance. They also added two dangerous twists to Wovoka’s essentially peaceful message, adding the belief that the dances would bring about a landslide that would destroy the white men, while the ‘Ghost Shirts’ worn by the dancers would repel bullets. By mid-autumn 1890 the Sioux were in something akin to religious frenzy, with thousands of them participating in Ghost Dances, shuffling round in great circles until, exhausted, they reached a delirium where they saw the dead come to life. The movement culminated in the massacre of the Sioux by alarmed US soldiers at Wounded Knee on 29 December 1890.

¹
See p. 65, ‘The Soul’s Journey’.

The Caddoan stock, the principal representatives of which are the Pawnees, are now settled in Oklahoma and North Dakota. From the earliest period they seem to have been cultivators of the soil, as well as hunters, and skilled in the arts of weaving and pottery-making. They possessed an elaborate form of religious ceremonial. The following myths well exemplify how strongly the Pawnee was gifted with the religious sense.

A certain young man was very vain of his personal appearance, and always wore the finest clothes and richest adornments he could procure. Among other possessions he had a down feather of an eagle, which he wore on his head when he went to war, and which possessed magical properties. He was unmarried, and cared nothing for women, though doubtless there was more than one maiden of the village who would not
have disdained the hand of the young hunter, for he was as brave and good-natured as he was handsome.

One day while he was out hunting with his companions – the Indians hunted on foot in those days – he got separated from the others, and followed some buffaloes for a considerable distance. The animals managed to escape, with the exception of a young cow, which had become stranded in a mud-hole. The youth fitted an arrow to his bow, and was about to fire, when he saw that the buffalo had vanished and only a young and pretty woman was in sight. The hunter was rather perplexed, for he could not understand where the animal had gone to, nor where the woman had come from. However, he talked to the maiden, and found her so agreeable that he proposed to marry her and return with her to his tribe. She consented to marry him, but only on condition that they remained where they were. To this he agreed, and gave her as a wedding gift a string of blue and white beads he wore round his neck.

One evening when he returned home after a day’s hunting he found that his camp was gone, and all round about were the marks of many hoofs. No trace of his wife’s body could he discover, and at last, mourning her bitterly, he returned to his tribe.

Years elapsed, and one summer morning as he was playing the stick game with his friends a little boy came toward him, wearing round his neck a string of blue and white beads.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘mother wants you.’

The hunter was annoyed at the interruption.

‘I am not your father,’ he replied. ‘Go away.’

The boy went away, and the man’s companions laughed at him when they heard him addressed as ‘father’, for they knew he was a woman-hater and unmarried.

However, the boy returned in a little while. He was sent away again by the angry hunter, but one of the players now suggested that he should accompany the child and see what he wanted. All the time the hunter had been wondering where he
had seen the beads before. As he reflected he saw a buffalo cow and calf running across the prairie, and suddenly he remembered.

Taking his bow and arrows, he followed the buffaloes, whom he now recognized as his wife and child. A long and wearisome journey they had. The woman was angry with her husband, and dried up every creek they came to, so that he feared he would die of thirst, but the strategy of his son obtained food and drink for him until they arrived at the home of the buffaloes. The big bulls, the leaders of the herd, were very angry, and threatened to kill him. First, however, they gave him a test, telling him that if he accomplished it he should live. Six cows, all exactly alike, were placed in a row, and he was told that if he could point out his wife his life would be spared. His son helped him secretly, and he succeeded. The old bulls were surprised, and much annoyed, for they had not expected him to distinguish his wife from the other cows. They gave him another test. He was requested to pick out his son from among several calves. Again the young buffalo helped him to perform the feat. Not yet satisfied, they decreed that he must run a race. If he should win they would let him go. They chose their fastest runners, but on the day set for the race a thin coating of ice covered the ground, and the buffaloes could not run at all, while the young Indian ran swiftly and steadily, and won with ease.

The chief bulls were still angry, however, and determined that they would kill him, even though he had passed their tests. So they made him sit on the ground, all the strongest and fiercest bulls round him. Together they rushed at him, and in a little while his feather was seen floating in the air. The chief bulls called on the others to stop, for they were sure that he must be trampled to pieces by this time. But when they drew back there sat the Indian in the centre of the circle, with his feather in his hair.

It was, in fact, his magic feather to which he owed his escape, and a second rush which the buffaloes made had as little effect on him. Seeing that he was possessed of magical powers, the buffaloes made the best of matters and welcomed him into their camp, on condition that he would bring them gifts from his tribe. This he agreed to do.

When the Indian returned with his wife and son to the village people they found that there was no food to be had; but the buffalo-wife produced some meat from under her robe, and they ate of it. Afterward they went back to the herd with gifts, which pleased the buffaloes greatly. The chief bulls, knowing that the people were in want of food, offered to return with the hunter. His son, who also wished to return, arranged to accompany the herd in the form of a buffalo, while his parents went ahead in human shape. The father warned the people that they must not kill his son when they went to hunt buffaloes, for, he said, the yellow calf would always return leading more buffaloes.

By and by the child came to his father saying that he would no more visit the camp in the form of a boy, as he was about to lead the herd eastward. Ere he went he told his father that when the hunters sought the chase they should kill the yellow calf and sacrifice it to Atius Tiráwa, tan its hide, and wrap in the skin an ear of corn and other sacred things. Every year they should look out for another yellow calf, sacrifice it, and keep a piece of its fat to add to the bundle. Then when food was scarce and famine threatened the tribe the chiefs should gather in council and pay a friendly visit to the young buffalo, and he would tell Tiráwa of their need, so that another yellow calf might be sent to lead the herd to the people.