American Indian life. Various
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appeal. That morning the boy died.
In the afternoon the body was wrapped in a robe and placed in a tree near our camp. As he died in the tepee, we could not use it again so we placed it at the foot of the tree. I cropped my hair and mourned many days. Now I was poor. All my horses went to the doctors. My woman’s tepee was gone and once again we lived with our poor old grandmother in her little ragged tepee; but in a few days my woman’s relatives gave her another tepee and after a time we again accumulated horses.
About this time Medicine-bear became a beaver bundle owner. My misfortunes turned my mind more and more to the mysteries of the powers around us and I began to learn the songs and the teachings of the beaver men. The ritual for the beaver bundle is long and difficult. There are more than three hundred songs to be learned before one can lead the ceremony of the beaver. In the bundle are the skins of beavers, otters, and many kinds of birds and water animals. With each of these there are songs, for each brought some power to the man who first saw it in a vision. My people did not plant corn, as did the Mud-houses (Mandan and Hidatsa), but the beaver men planted tobacco. At the planting and the gathering of the tobacco, the beaver bundle is opened and the ritual sung. The garden and the plants are sacred, for tobacco must be offered to all the powers of the earth, and of the water. A beaver man must keep count of the days, the moons, and the winters. For this he keeps a set of sticks like those sometimes found in a beaver’s house. At all times he must be ready to tell the moon and the day; he must say when it is time to go on the spring hunt, to hold the sun dance, etc. Then he must watch the sun, moon, stars, winds, and clouds so that he may know what the weather will be. If he is holy and good, he will have visions and dreams of power and so become a shaman.
So after my son died I often sat with the beaver men. In time I learned many of the beaver songs and became chief assistant to Medicine-bear in the ceremonies. When I was an old man, Medicine-bear died; it was the year before I sold out of the Bull society (the year we saw the first steamboat). Then I became the leading beaver man, as I am still.
When I first began to study the beaver medicine, I spent hours on the hilltops and near the waters, meditating and watching the birds, animals, and the heavens. Yet such solemn thoughts did not occupy all my time as a young married man.
There was much sport in the winter camps. Many men played the wheel and arrow game and again the hand game. These were the favorite gambling games. The first was for two players, but the latter permitted team playing. Some men gambled away all their belongings and even their women. I never went so far. Once I remember two young men played the wheel game until one lost all his possessions except his moccasins and his breechcloth, finally losing these, to the great merriment of the whole camp.
My band had a great reputation for jokes. In this I was a leader. Once in the spring we fooled a man named Bow-string. This man had a favorite race horse which he guarded very carefully, picketing him outside his tepee. One day I dressed myself to look like a Crow, and while Bow-string was inside playing the hand game, untied his horse and led him off up the hills across the creek. Then a confederate gave the alarm. All ran out to see a Crow going off with the horse in broad day. Of course, everyone knew the trick, but Bow-string. Care had been taken to send all the other horses of the camp out to pasture with a herder. So Bow-string took a gun and set out with a pursuing party, afoot. Everybody in camp appeared to be greatly frightened, women screamed, and all the dogs began to bark. As the supposed Crow, I sprang upon the horse, waved a defiance and dashed over the hill.
Once out of sight I rode quickly around the hills and got back to camp after the pursuers had passed over the ridge. After a fruitless search for the trail, the party came back, Bow-string looking very sad. But there stood his horse tied as before! Then there was great uproar and jesting.
A favorite trick of mine was often played upon visiting strangers, especially upon dignified old men. I would invite the guest to my tepee to feast with a few of my friends. Then I would pretend to quarrel with my woman and we would fall to fighting. The others would try to separate us and so all begin to struggle, taking care to fall upon and thoroughly muss up the puzzled visitor.
Our people were fond of liquor, which could be had when we went to the trading posts in summer. At such times there was much fighting. We all wanted liquor because we believed that some mysterious power could be had in that way. Some men had visions while drunk, that made them shamans or doctors according to the powers that were given them. Sometimes I drank liquor too. Once when my woman was drunk also, we quarreled and I threatened to tomahawk her smallest child, but she snatched a burning stick from the fire and thrust the glowing end against my neck; you see the scar. After that I did not drink much. I was glad when the Great Father stopped the trading of liquor, it did us much harm.
Once a year in summer all the bands of our tribe camped together. A great circle of tepees was formed and the societies had charge of the camp. At this time the sun dance was held. It was very sacred and lasted many days. No man was wise enough to know how all parts of it were conducted, so many medicine men were needed for the different rituals. Some men would vow to torture themselves at this time. I once gave a finger to the sun, but that is not the real sacrifice. Those who made the vow have holes cut in the skin of their breasts and shoulders, through which sticks are thrust and cords attached. The ends of these cords are fastened to the center pole in the sun dance lodge, where these devotees dance and cry for power until they tear themselves free or fall in a swoon: I never made this sacrifice. I was afraid, for it is very holy. Yet many times have I given bits of my skin to Natos (the sun) as the scars upon my body show. These were not given in the sun dance, but when I was fasting alone in the hills.
A good and virtuous woman may often save the lives of her relatives by making a vow to take the tongues at the sun dance. My woman did this in the year known as “Gambler-died-winter” (about 1845, according to most tribal counts). Her brother was about to die. So she went outside, looked up at the sun, and said, “I will take the tongue at the sun dance.” Her brother got well. If she had not been a pure and good woman, he would have died. In due time old Medicine-bear, the beaver bundle man, was given a horse and called in to prepare her for the ordeal. During the spring a hundred buffalo tongues were sliced and dried. Only true women are permitted to slice them. If a woman cuts her finger or cuts a hole in her slice, she is turned out because she has not been true to her husband. At the proper time in the sun dance, as the sun is setting, the women who have vowed to take the tongues go forward and in turn, take up a piece of tongue and holding it up to the sun, declare their purity. It is the duty of any man, who knows the claim to be false to come forward with a challenge. My woman was not challenged. Everyone knew her to be pure and good.
Once she was the holy woman to give the sun dance. It was in the deep snow winter (about 1851) that she became ill. Many people were starving, for the buffalo had drifted far before the snowstorms. Then my woman addressed the sun, saying that she would give the sun dance, next year. Soon the people found buffalo and she got well.
A woman cannot give the sun dance alone, her man must also be good and brave. Both must fast four days and sit in the holy tepee. The holy natoas bundle must be opened and the woman wear its sacred headdress, with the prairie turnip and carry the digging-stick used by the Woman-who-married-a-star. That winter we were camped on the Missouri. The following summer we went to Yellow River to give the sun dance.
Now, it is our way, that the woman who vows to give the sun dance must buy a natoas bundle. The power and right to the ritual thus come to her. For this, many horses, robes, and dried meat must be given. When we came to bring our bundle all the people of our band and our relatives in other bands were called upon to help us by gifts. After the sun dance we kept the natoas bundle in our tepee and cared for it as the ritual required. My woman was now a medicine woman. She did not sell her bundle. In the Blood-fought-among-themselves winter she died (about 1858). I put the bundle in her robe, set up her tepee on a high hill and left her there. That is our custom.
She was a good and true woman. After that I went to live with my son, as you now see. I never took another woman because the Smoking-star appeared to me in a dream and forbade it.
In the course of time everyone came to look upon me as a shaman. No one will now walk before me as I sit in a tepee. In my presence all are dignified and orderly and avoid frivolous talk. Four times