Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) (7 page)

How far can people remember their childhood? How far back can you remember it? Can you remember being born, being in your mother’s womb? Can you recall a dream that you were in another world? Can you understand it? I remember it. I could not see, but in the eye of the mind, the eye of the heart, I can see it. During a ceremony, or when taking sacred medicine, I reexperience it. I can recall it. When I was born I experienced earth joy, universe joy, happiness of the world. I could feel air filling my lungs, on August 18, 1942. I was born spiritually. With the gourd. The medicine man Horn Chips was shaking it. For a day and a night I could not see, but I heard people
talking, heard a drum and a gourd, heard a song. And when I was so little I remember the joy that I could crawl. I remember the places that I wanted to reach and couldn’t reach. And the first thing I held in my hand was a ball, tapa they call it, and a round stone. During a yuwipi ceremony, in the darkness, when the spirits come, I remember this.

As I grew up they saw that I was different. Tunkashila picked me from among the other boys to become a pejuta wichasha, a spiritual man. When I was about five years old I was walking with some other boys and I saw that my shadow was not like theirs; it was the shadow of a grown man. That was one of the first visions I had. I was a dreamer. And when it was time for me to go to school, my father would not let me, because going to a white man’s school and learning the white man’s way would spoil me for becoming a medicine man. And when the truant officers came to get me, my father chased them off with his shotgun. When I was seven years old my father purified me in the sweat lodge. Four medicine men helped to initiate me. My father made an altar. The spiritual power was in it. It entered all of us. My father taught me the right prayers and songs. We all went into the sweat lodge, inikagapi wokeya, we went in together. Within the circle, inside the sweat lodge, that’s where they gave me the power—the inyan, the Tunka. Tunka, that’s the sacred stone we use, the yuwipi wa sicun, the oldest god.

Then I was given this power. I saw the spirit go by, but I did not hear any voices yet. My father told me, “Before a ceremony, before doing anything important, always purify yourself in the sweat lodge. In the old days a man always purified himself in the sweat lodge after making a kill, after killing an enemy or a royal eagle.”

One of the people who taught me from the earliest days was Good Lance. He was one of the few who still at that time wore their hair in long braids. He was a famous spiritual man among my people. He taught me the sacred ways, the prayers. I remember clearly, when I was about five years old, my Grandpa John,
my father, and Good Lance showed to me, and explained, the four wopiyes, the four medicine bags that are kept by the Crow Dog family. One had belonged to Black Crow, Jerome Crow Dog’s friend. And this wopiye he gave to Good Lance, saying, “You are the only one I trust. This sacred bundle is looking to be kept in the Crow Dog tiyoshpaye.” Good Lance was a Crow Dog, but a vision had given him a spiritual name. One of these bundles got seven hoops. In another were eighty sticks with porcupine quill designs on them. My elders introduced me to these four wopiyes. They opened them up and taught me the meaning of all the things inside them. “Remember this,” they told me, “it is sacred. In the future your grandsons will inherit this.”

My older sister Christine told me that I was not like other babies. It seemed to her that I knew more than a baby should know, that I grew up right away. I was thirteen years old when I became what the whites call a medicine man, a wichasha wakan. It is not often that boys start out that young, but it happens. There are others besides me who were kept out of school, as I was, and who became spiritual people when still very young, especially those who perform the yuwipi, the tying-up ceremony, which I do.

At thirteen I went to the sweat lodge, the initipi, and had my first grown-up sweat. For four times a day for four days I did it. I came out very light-headed and I told my mother, “Mom, somebody spoke to me. They talked to me. They told me to prepare a place to communicate with them.” So my mother said, “Son, that’s sacred. You’re going where, a long time ago, your grandfather was. You are going into manhood now. You’ve got to do what your voices tell you.”

At about that time I also went on my first hanbleceya, my first vision quest. I stayed on our vision hill for four days and nights. I neither ate nor drank. A big shadow again stood behind me. On the third day he spoke to me: “I am the life of the generation, and I am the tree. I am the medicine, I am the things you experience. I will always speak to you. I will give you an altar. When you put up
this altar, you must remember me. You must use the pipe and the four winds of the earth. So this is the message I am carrying to you. From now on you will be an interpreter for your people. Open your heart to them. Your grandfather is speaking to you now. I will be in you, and my spiritual words will grow inside you. That is the message.”

From the age of twelve to eighteen that spirit power continued. A voice kept on saying, “My name is Sitting Rock. This is your Indian altar I am giving you. You will speak to each other through the eagle and you will speak to the eagle. Now you have come far enough to handle the two center feathers. I am Flying Eagle. I will interpret for you.”

At the age of twenty-four I went on another vision quest and again a spirit man spoke to me: “I am Stand on the Earth Man. I have been chosen to teach you medicine. To give you herb power. That’s why I am here.”

At the age of twenty-nine, I went crying for a dream once more and again the spirit talked to me: “I am Lightning Man. I am speaking to you within the lightning power of the spirit. So that’s the power I am giving to you, a new understanding.” When I heard this my hair stood up and I heard a sound like knocking two flintstones together.

When I was thirty-two I again went up the hill. That time the voice said, “I am the spirit man. I am going to teach you understanding of human beings.” From time to time I still hear the voice.

On the nonspiritual side, in everyday life, when I was five years old, I remember my father going through the valley, through the woods. Before he left, we always had breakfast, but before we ate, he always went out and prayed to Tunkashila, the Grandfather Spirit. And he always put out a morsel of food and spilled some coffee for the spirits of dead friends and relatives, to give them something to eat too. After that my father said, “Son, come along, hiyupo!” So I always went with him. We had horses and a wagon. Hardly anybody had a car in those days. I
liked to ride in the wagon, beside my father. Later I learned to drive it. From early on I helped him get wood. We got a wagon load every day. Dad sold firewood. That was a part of how he made a living. He taught me how to gather up dry wood. “Oak is the good one, and you can burn it for ash. But you can’t burn red elm or white elm. And look for good, dry pine.”

He told me, “In this valley here, your great-grandfather, your relatives used to live. In different places. But when Grandfather Jerome killed Spotted Tail, they thought they should change their camp. So they sold everything and scattered. Everybody moved. But remember this valley. It’s part of us. It speaks to us.”

Then we’d bring the wood back, unload it, and have lunch. Dad cut logs for people, and tipi poles. Old Walking Crow had a sawmill. Dad helped him cutting boards. He and I also cut fence posts. He cut about a hundred fifty a day and I cut seventy-five. We’d sell the poles and with the money buy food and on Saturday we’d go to a ceremony and help put it on. We lived like that.

Dad wanted to show his appreciation for my helping him with the wood. So he made me a ball out of an old inner tube and a kind of catcher’s mitt from a scrap of deer hide. He taught me how to play throw and catch. He also showed me how to play marbles with oak nuts. In wintertime he carved toys for me out of yellow wood.

Then Dad also taught me how to fix up a bow and arrow. For a bowstring he used rawhide from a female deer. It’s so stretchy you can’t break it. He used ash for the arrows. “These things,” he said, “they used them way back years ago. They don’t use bows and arrows anymore, but you could teach yourself how to play with them.” But he told me, “You should never handle a gun, because your hands are still red with blood.” By this he meant that Spotted Tail’s blood was still dripping on us in the fourth generation. My sons will be free from that guilt.

I had few friends, because I didn’t go to school, and we lived pretty far from the nearest settlement. The only friends I remember
playing with as a child were two boys, named Abel Good Lance and William Centers. They lived with us for about a year and a half. I was about six years old then. They were orphans and my father brought them over from Pine Ridge. I learned from them to carve little ponies and buffalo from old cow bones. We also took yellow wood, which is easy to carve, and all winter long made our own toys. I still have some of my Indian toys from those days. It was not until I was ten years old that I got my first store-bought toy—a little car. Later on Dad bought me some real marbles. That was a big event for me. Later I made shooters, something like a slingshot, out of old Model A tire tubes. I never shot at birds or living things, just at targets. As I got older I made my own bows and arrows. Then we were joined by another boy, Vine Goodshield. We also played Sioux fighting Crow or Pawnee. I always wanted to be a Sioux. With time we got less isolated, maybe because some families got old beat-up cars, what we now call Indian cars, not secondhand, but maybe fourth- or fifth-hand. So then we played baseball. At age ten I had my own horse. Its name was Nick and I rode him all summer. The thing I liked best of all was swimming, and I was really good at it.

The only pet I had was a wild skunk. I had been playing in the woods and heard some noise from out of the bushes. I went to investigate and found a little baby skunk, so small he didn’t have teeth yet. When he was about three months old, my father descented him. He was a good little pet, but somehow his scent bag came back and my father said it was time to let him go. But he kept coming back to eat, and then would leave again. Finally he came with his family for a handout. That went on for quite a while but finally they stopped coming.

My dad always hunted, because we were so often out of food. He never used a gun, in order not to offend Spotted Tail’s spirit. He taught us how to smoke out rabbits up on the hills. We’d take some kindling and go looking for rabbit holes. Then we’d smoke them out and stand by with a stick, and when they came out of
their holes we hit them over the head. Then we’d have rabbit stew for dinner.

Dad also taught us how to fish. Sometimes we ate mud turtles and sand turtles. The sand turtles we found along the road and the highway, where there is sand under berry bushes. The mud turtles we found down by the river, near our place. Mud turtles are real big, much bigger than sand turtles. They taste good, like chicken. After Dad cleaned out the shells he gave them to us as toys.

When I got into my teens my father taught me how to ride all kinds of horses—yellow, white, and spotted ones. I never used a saddle; that’s not the Indian way. Mostly I rode a gelded stallion. He became my favorite. Then Dad showed me how to use an ax and a sledgehammer, a wedge and a saw. He showed me how to take care of chickens, hogs, cattle, and horses. It was better than going to school, where we learned nothing.

Sometime between age seven and fourteen I learned to dance from a medicine man—the hoop dance, the gourd dance, the eagle dance, and the rope dance, what we call spin roping. These are not good-time dances to have fun. They are sacred ceremonies, like prayers. The hoop dance represents the sacred hoop, the hoop of the universe, the circle without end, the circle of all living things—people, animals, and plants. Before he started teaching me, the medicine man took me into the sweat lodge to prepare me for becoming a dancer.

By the time I was nine years old I could dance with five hoops. I kept them whirling around my arms and legs, as well as around my waist, dancing very fast to the beat of my father’s drum. I formed the hoops into shapes, into a butterfly or a bird. I could jump through the hoops easily, because I was still small and thin. Soon I had the confidence to dance with seven hoops. My father took me to powwows and I won many prizes. But I never forgot that dancing was a prayer and that the hoop was an altar, that it “had a face,” as my father said.

When I was eleven years old, every time I danced I heard the spirit talk to me. It was a sound like clicking two stones together, and a whistling like from a bird. I was learning all the time. I could make more and more difficult movements—the eagle hoop, the chair hoop, throwing up hoops into the air while jumping through them. This last figure was called the lightning hoop. I could keep two hoops in my mouth and three whirling around my arms, and one going clockwise around my neck. At the same time I was stepping into a spare hoop, drawing it quickly over my body in a nonstop motion.

As I got older, I added more and more hoops, around my ankles, between ankles and knees, and around my chest. By the time I was twelve years old I danced with sixteen hoops at the same time. When I was fourteen I went to a big powwow with my dad and mom. As I was fixing up my costume I saw a big cloud come up over me and out of it I had a vision and heard a voice like a bird’s, but I could understand it. It told me, “Hokshila, boy, this is the moment, the year, the place where you will get a new understanding and a new power.” I told my father about it and he said, “The hoops were your preparation, a way to get ready. From now on you will learn to be a healer and learn how to help your people.”