alternated in my quiet activities. I was hungry and thirsty,
especially thirsty. My body was hot. My heart was heavy. My ears
constantly were listening, listening, to every faint whisper of
Nature. All of the time appeared to be night, the blackest of night.
Suddenly there came a stamp--stamp--stamp. Then:
“Boo-o-o-o! Boo-o-o-o!”
A buffalo bull! The animal snorted, stamped and bellowed again. It
surely would charge upon my lodge and tear it to pieces, I thought. I
did not move, but I prayed earnestly: “Great Medicine, shield me. I
have tried to be a good young man. You have been kind to me in past
times. Be kind to me now.” I heard the threatening beast move away.
It did not return.
Hours, hours, hours. I did not know whether it was day or night. I
heard a horse coming. That was a welcome sound. I was all attention.
“Hey, Wooden Leg!”
“Hey!”
“Two days have passed,” Red Haired Bear informed me. “The sun now is
far toward the west on your third day.”
Again he opened my dark retreat, gradually letting in more and more
light. Again we smoked together. I told him of the buffalo bull. He
listened with evident great interest.
“That is a good sign,” he comforted me. “No buffalo ever will harm
you. You and all other Cheyennes will get plenty of meat and skins
from them. The bull was your friend, telling you all this.”
Another prayer went from the medicine man to the Above and to the
below. After a short allowance of time for me outside, he put me
again into the enclosure and shut tightly the small hole.
“Be brave,” were his parting words.
“Yes,” I replied. But I was not sure.
Hot, thirsty, yet more hot and more thirsty. I prayed particularly
for strength of body and firmness of heart to carry me through to
the end of the trial. I loaded my pipe for a solacing smoke. But
it was not a solace. The heat burned my already parching tongue. I
tried to sleep. Maybe I did sleep. I do not know. I made attempts
to meditate quietly. I do not know whether I actually was thinking
or was following dreams racing through my mind. All I could be sure
about was that I either was sitting down or lying down all the time.
I heard something that cleared my mind at once. My mother brought
wood and stones and placed them out by the buffalo head. She did not
speak nor make any sign of recognition, but I knew it was my mother.
It seemed I could look right through the robes and see her there.
After she had deposited her burden she went away.
Oh, how lonely I was! I loaded and lit my pipe. No, it was not good.
My mouth and throat were burning. Water! Water! But: “The Great
Medicine sees me,” I kept thinking. My thoughts whirled and chased
each other rapidly in circles. I dreamt that I heard the footsteps of
a horse.
“Hey, Wooden Leg!”
“Hey!”
“This is the day.”
Happiness almost filled my heart. The only hindrance was in the
thirst and the hot body. After I had been let out we smoked together.
It was a torture to my tongue, but I did not complain. We went then
to my father’s lodge in the camp. My father called out invitations to
old men friends. They came and sat in a circle upon the robes spread
over the lodge’s floor. I sat with them, by the side of my father. My
mother brought a bucketful of water and set it off a little distance
in front of me. I suppressed a strong desire to plunge my face into
it, but I could not keep my eyes from staring at it. The medicine
man sprinkled red powder upon the surface of the water, four small
scatterings in four separate places. He passed his hands to and fro
over it and prayed. It seemed I never in my life had heard so long a
prayer. When it was ended he said to me:
“Wooden Leg, you have been four days without water. Now you may drink
four sups.”
I seized the sides of the bucket. The four sups were four long-drawn
mouthfuls. The water rumbled through my bowels. After a few minutes
I was told, “Now you may have more, but do not take all you want.”
I drank slowly, but I drew in big mouthfuls and took many of them.
Not long afterward I was allowed to apply myself a third time at the
bucket.
My mother brought a potful of buffalo meat she had been boiling. All
of the guests were given portions of it. A piece was put upon a tin
plate and set before me. It looked good enough to grab and swallow
immediately. But I waited for advice. My adviser did not long detain
me.
“Wooden Leg, you have been four days without meat. Take four
sliced-off bites, one for each day of the fast.”
I selected a long chunk from the plate. I stuck the end of it far
into my mouth, and with a sheathknife I cut it off. The chewing was
vigorous, and I soon had it swallowed. The chunk was pushed a second
time into my mouth and its end cut off there. A third and a fourth
mouthful were taken in the same manner. After a few minutes, more
meat was allowed to me. Then still more, all I cared to eat. It was
the best meat I ever tasted.
The old men joined in asking me:
“Tell us of your experience.”
I told them--told them particularly of the coming of the buffalo
bull. They complimented me, said I was brave, said the Great Medicine
was my friend, assured me that no buffalo ever would harm me. Their
approval and their assurances made me glad. My heart was like the sun
coming up on a summer morning.
All of these old men, some of their wives, my father and mother and
the medicine man went with me to my medicine lodge. We were to have a
sweat bath worship together. My mother carried a bucketful of water
for sprinkling upon the hot stones inside the lodge. The medicine man
piled the stones into a cone heap. He leaned sticks of wood up the
sides of this stone structure and set a fire to going among them.
The other men stripped themselves to breechcloth and crept into the
lodge. When the stones had become well heated by the wood fire over
them the medicine man passed them to one of the men inside. They were
handled with forked sticks and were piled into a pit some of the men
had made in the center of the lodge’s earth floor. When the pit was
filled with the hot stones the medicine man set inside the bucketful
of water. He himself then crept in, on hands and knees as we all had
done. One man remained outside to close the opening, to ventilate
temporarily when we might require, to wait upon us in whatever way
our needs might demand. Not any of the women went into the lodge.
Twelve men were in there.
At the left inside of the entrance sat the medicine man. I was next
at his left side. My father was third, at my left. The other men
were seated on beyond, the row extending around the circle. All had
backs to the wall. We had smoked together while the stones were being
heated, but the pipe now had been placed outside. Its bowl rested on
the ground beside the buffalo head and its stem projected upward past
the nose and eyes of the hallowed object. A good spirit influence was
coming from the nostrils of the head straight along the clean path
and into the lodge. No knowing and worshipful Indian ever crossed
that path. Such act would cut off the steady flow of healing virtue.
The medicine man opened the interior proceedings with another prayer
for my welfare. Once more he pleaded with the Great Medicine to make
me good and generous, to give me success in hunting, to protect me
from enemies and to enable me to kill them. Once more he asked that I
might get a good wife, might have many children, and that myself and
all of my family might keep good health and live to advanced years.
He beseeched again that I might gather together many horses and not
lose any of them. I believed his prayers would be heard. My hopes
were high. My trust in the Being Above was strong.
Water was squirted upon the hot stones in the central pit. The
medicine man first gave each one in the lodge a drink of water.
He took into his own mouth a chew of herb. After its mastication
he supped and squirted four successive mouthfuls of water. Between
the acts were short prayers. Thus he released from the stones the
vitality put into them by the burning wood that had got it from the
sun, the material representative of the Great Medicine. The stones
hissed their protests as the water compelled them to release into
the air the spiritual curative forces. Our bodies were enveloped
by the steam wherein floated the vital energy. The vivifying and
purifying influence soaked into our skins. Bad spirits were driven
out of us and drowned in the water that dripped from us. The medicine
man repeated from time to time the sprinkling of water upon the
protesting stones.
The soft whisperings of an eagle wing bone flute came into my ears.
The sound seemed to come from the roof and from other points in the
utterly dark interior of the lodge. After a few of the gentle blasts,
I felt the instrument being placed in my hands. My father put it
there. It now was mine, to keep. It was to be worn about my neck,
suspended at the mid-breast by a buckskin thong, during all times of
danger. If I were threatened with imminent harm I had but to put it
to my lips and cause it to send out its soothing notes. That would
ward off every evil design upon me. It was my mystic protector. It
was my medicine.
After an hour or more together in the devotional dome, all of us went
to our respective lodge homes. There my father presented me also with
a shield of rawhide taken from the rump of a buffalo bull. The hair
had been removed and the piece of skin had been dried rapidly before
a fire, to make it extremely tough. It was covered with antelope
buckskin sewed in place. The cover had medicine designs drawn in
color upon its surface. This shield would turn off any bullet or
arrow or other missile coming toward me. My father made it. He
delivered it into my left hand.
My second medicine experience took place a month or so after that
first one. Black White Man, a medicine man, took me through it. This
time the plan was for but two days of self denial and worship. I made
the dome lodge according to the same rules as had governed in making
the first one, which was the regular way of making them. Black White
Man painted me in the same way and with the same ceremony used by
Red Haired Bear. I had the same kind of harassing sensations while
alone, but they covered only two days instead of four. The resumption
of water and food was carried out in a manner exactly like had been
done in the previous proceedings. The sweat bath devotions had a
like preparatory programme and followed a course like that of the
other one and of all such affairs entered upon among the Cheyennes.
But during this second time of spiritual upbuilding there was one
intervening incident that marked it as different from all others.
During the last part of my lonely vigil--I learned afterward it
was during my second night--my quietude was broken by the tread of
horses, many horses. I heard men talking. Gabble-gabble-gabble. It
was not Cheyenne talk. It was not Sioux. This being the case, the
horsemen necessarily must be enemies, either whites or Indians. It
seemed now that the bellowing buffalo bull of my previous experience
had been but a tame threat. It appeared I surely would be discovered
or already had been discovered, by the gabbling strangers. It seemed
that death threatened me. My hair raised itself and I could feel it
standing upright. My heart thumped. It throbbed and pounded the inner
wall of my breast. To my senses its noise was so boisterous as to
notify the intruders and all the rest of the world that a human being
frozen by fright awaited the fatal blow. I did not move--perhaps was
not able to move. But I could think. I centered my thoughts upon
whispering over and over, “The Great Medicine sees me.”
“Hi-ye-e-e-e!” The war-cry!
“Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!” Rifle shots.
The horses near me clattered away. One of them bawled as if wounded
by a bullet. The strange voices went out of my hearing. Other voices
shouted. These were Cheyennes. I heard Cheyenne women and children
crying as they ran past my retreat. But I could do nothing but just
sit there with my buffalo robe over my head. The commotion gradually
died down. My pious meditations were much disturbed by the alarming
turmoil. I could not keep myself from wondering what had happened.
I wondered if the Cheyennes had been driven from their camp and had
left me there alone. This thought chilled me. But I stayed, waiting,
waiting. Many hours later Black White Man came.
“They were Crows trying to steal our horses,” he explained. The
raiders had been repulsed, but one of our Cheyennes had been killed.
“It shows that the Crows never can hurt you,” the medicine man
assured me.
For a third season of warrior discipline I went one morning at dawn
to the top of a hill. There I fasted, prayed, meditated and dreamed
all day. During the day I saw the lodges taken down and the whole
camp move away down the valley. But I had to stay. When the sun had
set I started out afoot to follow the trail of my people. I drank
water along the way, but I got no food until my arrival at the home
lodge at the end of my journey of ten or twelve miles.
Another disciplinary means for subduing the flesh was to stand
upright all day, from sunrise to sunset, on a hill. The devotee did
not move during that time except to keep his face turned at all
times toward the sun. He might keep his eyes closed or shaded, but
his countenance had to be presented ever toward the venerated token
of the Great Medicine’s existence. He prayed or otherwise kept his
thoughts fixed on a high plane. This system of self denial was varied
by the attitude taken. One might stand all day or sit in one position
all day or lie down during all of the time. But the attitude assumed
at the beginning must be kept to the end. My all-day supplications
were made while sitting down.
Standing upright in water from sunrise to sunset was one way of
putting the body under the rule of the spirit. The water had to be
up to the neck or the upper breast. Not any drink of it was taken.
It was not permissible to move the body except for keeping the face
toward the sun. The bodily torture incident to the full standard
Great Medicine dance--what the white people call the sun dance--was
the most severe test of hardihood, so it was looked upon as the
highest form of self scourging. I never undertook this extreme step.
Women did not make medicine by feats of endurance. Such was for men
only. Sometimes two men would go together for the all-day hilltop
fast or for some other similar performance. Ordinarily, though, only
one man made up the vigil. I like best the solitary way. I think
it is better to be alone at such times. At any of the occasions
observable it was permissible for onlookers to view the act. Such
scrutiny might aid greatly in spurring on to full compliance with the
rules. Payment to any medicine man helper was due. This might be such
as was agreed upon in advance--often paid in advance--or it might be
in the form of subsequent free gifts to him. The standard fee was a
horse.
Our tribal Great Medicine dance was a ceremony of one, two or three
days, the period depending upon immediate conditions. In times before
mine the full period had been four days, but in my time three days
was the maximum. It was not held at any regular time. Once every
two or three years was the usual custom. It would be held, though,
in successive years if the tribe was having misfortune or if enough
special devotees wanted to undergo the trials. The summer season was
the special time. The prime purpose was to ask the Great Medicine’s
favorable attention to the tribe as a whole, not to any particular
persons. The prayers were for good grass, new colts in the horse
herds, plenty of berries and roots, many children, success in hunting
game and in repelling enemies.
The Cheyennes and the Arapahoes had their two Great Medicine ceremony
dances together on one occasion when I was about twelve years old
(1870). We were south of the mountains beyond the headwaters of
Powder river. The two tribes camped as one, in one great camp circle,
but all of the Cheyenne lodges were at one side of the camp and all
of the Arapaho lodges at the opposite side. Each tribe had its Great
Medicine lodge at its own side of the combined camp. I went back and
forth looking on at both of them. The other people of both tribes did
the same. I was not quite old enough during our free roaming days
to take a part in the important tribal affairs. I merely looked,
listened, kept quiet and thought about them. This double sacred dance
of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes was for only one day. During that
one day all of the participants and many other people took neither
food nor water. After sunset they had a great feast. That was the
regular way--the participants took neither food nor water while the
ceremonies were being carried out, one, two, three or four days.
Special invocation dances were held irregularly, often several times
during one season. One or several or many persons would perform the
rites. At a buffalo dance the intent was to obtain the aid of the
Great Medicine in our efforts at getting the meat and skins of these
animals. Deer dances, elk dances, antelope dances, were engaged
upon by individuals, by parties or by the tribe. The object was to
enlist spiritual forces to help us in gathering meat and skins. Berry
dances, by few or by many people, had a like incentive. Always the
dances were in summer, none of them in winter. Always there was self
denial in various forms, sacrifices were made in various ways. At
times the self denial was carried to the point of bodily torture.
That was our way of paying in advance for the favors asked. That was
all we could do by way of payment.
The spirits of animals joined themselves often to assist or to hinder
human beings. Sometimes one would give its medicine to a man, at
other times some animal would break a man’s medicine, or would try to
do so. At my father’s lodge an old man, Pockmarked Nose, told of a
certain experience that came to him. My father afterward told me.
Pockmarked Nose went one time with a young man to hunt buffalo. They
were on horseback and were leading pack horses to bring back the
meat and skins. They traveled up and down hills and over the level
plains. Finally they found a band of buffalo. They got themselves
ready and charged into the band. The young man had a bow and arrows,
Pockmarked Nose had a flintlock gun. He killed a buffalo. Just
afterward a shot came from somewhere aside and another buffalo went
down. That shot from aside puzzled the two hunters, but they rode
on. Each time the old man or the young man killed a buffalo the shot
from aside brought down another to match it. But, who was doing this
shooting? Was it a friend or an enemy? They could not see anybody.
When six buffalo lay dead on the plain the old man applied himself
at discovering the identity of the third hunter. Far off, on a
slight elevation of the land, stood a dimly outlined human figure.
Pockmarked Nose rode toward it.
Was it the Above Spirit, the Great Medicine? Or was it a below
spirit? Or was some powerful medicine man playing tricks? Pockmarked
Nose did not know, and he never did find out to his satisfaction. The
stranger had a wooden gun. He said: “Come, I give you this medicine
gun. It never fails to kill.” Pockmarked Nose took and kept the
offered gun. I do not know what use he may have made of it.
My father himself saw a marvelous example of the spirit powers
regularly belonging to the deer tribe. When he was a young man he
and a companion were hunting near the medicine water[11] not far
from the present town of Sheridan, Wyoming. They saw bubbles coming
up and bursting upon the water’s surface. They went up close, to
learn what was causing this agitation. As they peered down into the
deep but clear lake they saw there a deer moving about and quietly
grazing along the bottom. While they were watching the animal it
stopped grazing and floated slowly up to the water’s surface. My
father killed it with an arrow. He skinned it, cut the meat from the
bones, wrapped the skin about the meat and loaded the bundle upon his
packhorse. At his home lodge he stood out and called the names of
various friends. He invited them:
“Come, feast with me. Good deer meat.”
But when he shouted these words the flesh and the skin all jumped
together and formed again the same live deer he had killed. The
animal went running away. It ran back to the medicine water, plunged
into it and disappeared. My father searched for it, but he could not
see it. He told me he did not understand how a deer could do such
things except it were by the help of the Great Medicine.
Three of our medicine men invited some of us young men into a tepee
on one certain occasion when I was about fourteen or fifteen years
old. They said, “We will show you how to make the winter go away
so that the grass may grow, for the good of the young colts coming
to our herds.” Just at that time there was a big snowstorm making
the people and the horses shiver. But the three medicine men went
confidently at their ceremonies.
They sent a young woman out to gather some certain kind of sprigs of
vegetation. It was not tobacco, but pretty soon the medicine men had
it changed into tobacco. They formed a circle with us, loaded the
pipe, and soon it was passing from one to another. To each of us in
turn they said: “Draw in only a little of the smoke, but draw it in
slowly and deeply. Hold it there a short time, then let it flow out
from wide-open lips, not in puffs from firm lips.” We did as they
directed. While the smoking was being done the three old men made
prayers. After a while one of them said: “Look outside.” We looked.
The storm had quit, the sky had cleared, the ground was wet but bare
of snow, green grass was peeping up everywhere.
Every Indian had, or tried to have, some special medicine or spirit
power of his own, to bring him good fortune or to shield him from
harm. He had some object or objects that held this helpful influence,
or he had certain ways of doing certain acts, or he had both of
these aids. I had my special protective possessions and my particular
methods of using them. It was considered not prudent to reveal these
things, and I never have done so, except in some features that I
could not keep secret.
A powerful spirit man during my boyhood was one whose name originally
was Walks Above the Earth. He was known as a man whose mind was at
all times on spiritual things, who gave little or no thought to
ordinary earthly matters. His name got changed, though, in his later
life. This came about because of his choice of a mule for his riding
animal. One time when he and Little Chief were approaching a Sioux
camp somebody remarked, in derision, “Here comes that crazy Cheyenne
on his mule.” That fixed upon him the name Crazy Cheyenne on a Mule.
This afterward was shortened to Crazy Mule.
He had a variety of medicine powers. He put himself through many
trials, so the spirits helped him. One time, when we were in camp
far up the Powder river, he had four Cheyennes go up close to him
and shoot at him, each in successive turn. They sent four bullets
directly at his body. He was standing with his back against a tree.
After the four shots had been fired he stooped forward and pulled off
his moccasins. From them he poured out the four bullets. I saw this.
I was eight years old. I saw him do the same feat at a time when our
tribal camp was pitched on the Rosebud valley, just below where the
present Forsythe road forks to go to Lame Deer and to Ashland. At
another time he showed his powers when the tribe were on upper Lame
Deer creek. This was just before our warriors joined the Ogallala
Sioux to fight the soldiers in the fort[12] at the south of us.
Roman Nose was, I believe, the most admired of all warriors I ever
saw. He was killed when I yet was a boy, but I remember him, and as I
grew older I heard much talk of him as an example for the young men.
The water spirits told him not to marry, so he lived a single and
pure life. At various Great Medicine dances he went bravely through
the bodily tortures as a sacrifice of self for the good of the tribe.
White Bull, sometimes known also as Ice, was his usual medicine man
adviser. In later years White Bull and others told me a great many
stories illustrative of the admirable qualities of Roman Nose.
He made medicine one time when we were camped on Goose creek, a
stream flowing into the upper Tongue river. The medicine water lake
was not far away. At dawn Roman Nose stripped himself, made a raft of
logs and went out upon the lake. He took with him his medicine pipe.
He had a large buffalo robe for a bed and a small one for a pillow.
No food, no water for drinking. He spent the day on his robe bed.
He prayed, “Great Medicine, let me conquer all enemies,” and other
prayers of this kind. He meditated upon the Above.