He brought with him the sacred bundle which we were to take with us.
At night when it was all still, after every one was asleep, the
ceremonies were performed. We smoked and worshiped to the east and
west, and to the north and south, and prayed for success.
"On that night we started, and went as far as we could; and the next
day, toward evening, when we stopped, we dug out a fire-place, like
the one in a lodge, and we two leaders sat by it, facing the east,
while before us were the sacred things. The leader has to be a good
orator, he has to speak to his young men, and advise them well,
encouraging them to be strong-hearted. He would speak to them and say,
'We have but a short time to live, so while we are on this trip let us
determine to be single-minded. Let us all look to _Ti-ra´-wa_, who is
the ruler over all things, and ask him to take pity on us, and bless
our warpath. We must respect the animals that the ruler has made and
not kill any of them; no birds, nor wolves, nor any creeping things.'
Not a night passed but that, after we were seated in a circle, I would
talk to the party, and pray, and hope that _Ti-ra´-wa_ would bless us
and take pity on us, and that we might be the party that would have
good success. On my war parties I had to watch at all times, even when
I was resting, to see that my young men should, before they slept,
pray to _Ti-ra´-wa_ that they might dream something good, and that it
might come to pass.
"The old priest who had performed the ceremonies, and had let me take
the sacred things, had told me to kill a particular kind of animal, a
deer, and sacrifice it. I sent some spies ahead to look over the
country, and a messenger came back from them, saying that they had
seen some animals. He did not describe them, and I ordered the
messenger to have the hunter kill them. I heard the report of a gun.
The hunter with two shots killed three. They were antelope. When the
hunter came to me he told me what he had done, and described the
animals which he had killed. They were not the animals I had been
directed to kill for the sacrifice. I hesitated, for I did not know
what to do. I did not wish to eat these animals before the sacrifice
had been made. To do this is bad. It troubled me. I was troubled,
because if we ate them it would look as if we cared nothing for
_Ti-ra´-wa_. Finally we ate what had been killed, and made no
sacrifice. Afterward we killed two more and ate them, and still made
no sacrifice.
"One night I dreamed that the hunter had shot a buffalo. It fell, but
as we went up to it, it got up and ran off. We went on for eight days,
and had made no sacrifice to _Ti-ra´-wa_. One day my scouts saw a man
sitting on a hill. Some of them wanted to shoot at him, but the others
said 'no.' They came back to tell me about it, and when they had
returned to the place where they had seen him, the man was gone. The
man had seen my spies. Not far off was a village, and the warriors in
it came to look for us, but we ran away. They hunted for us, but we
had got out of their sight. After this we came back home."
* * * * *
Curly Chief, second chief of the Kit-ke-hahk´-i band, is the last, and
he tells how he sacrificed a scalp:
"It was in the fall, before the winter buffalo hunt was made, that I
thought I would go on the warpath. Every little while I would call a
few men to sit down with me, and would tell them that I had it in mind
to go on the warpath.
"The people went out on the winter hunt and killed buffalo, and while
they were on their way back to the village, I started on the warpath
with a number of young men. From the camp we went south to the
Arkansas River. When we reached that river, it began to snow, and the
snow fell six feet deep. We stopped in one place eleven days, till the
snow got less deep. From there we went on to the sandhills by the
North Canadian. One day as we were going along, we saw far off three
Indians on foot. They were Kiowas. Probably they had been on the
warpath and had lost their horses. We attacked and killed them. They
did not fight. We killed them like women. Then, indeed, we divided the
scalps, and made many of them. From there we started home, and found
the tribe camped on the Solomon River. When we reached home there was
great joy, and we danced the scalp dance.
[Illustration: CURLY CHIEF--KIT-KE-HAHK´-I.]
"I sacrificed a scalp to _Ti-ra´-wa_. I felt that he had given me the
victory over my enemies, and for this reason I wanted to give him
something, I wanted to make an acknowledgment of his goodness to me.
He had taken pity on me and helped me. It was a sacrifice greater than
the sacrifice of the buffalo meat. Not many men have made it, but once
in a while you see some one who has been noticed by the Ruler. It is
our aim, after we have been helped, to give thanks."
[Illustration: PAWNEE DIRT LODGE.]
RELIGION.
I. BELIEFS.
It is generally believed that, among the Indians of North America, the
priests and the shamans, "medicine men," or doctors, are the same.
This is not the case with the Pawnees. Among them the priestly office
was entirely distinct from that of the doctor, and had nothing in
common with it. The priest was in a sense the medium of communication
with _Ti-ra´-wa_; he prayed to the deity more efficaciously than could
a common person, acted, in fact, as an intercessor; he knew the
secrets of the sacred bundles, and when he asked anything good for the
tribe, or for an individual, it was likely to be granted. His
education and the power given him from above brought him into
specially close relations with _Ti-ra´-wa_, who seemed to watch over
him and to listen to him when he interceded for the tribe. He was an
intermediary between _Ti-ra´-wa_ and the people, and held a relation
to the Pawnees and their deity not unlike that occupied by Moses to
Jehovah and the Israelites.
The office of the "medicine man," shaman or doctor, had to do only
with sickness or injury. He was the healer. Disease was caused by bad
spirits, and it was the doctor's part to drive off these evil
influences.
In the lodge or house of every Pawnee of influence, hanging on the
west side, and so opposite the door, is the sacred bundle neatly
wrapped in buckskin, and black with smoke and age. What these bundles
contain we do not know. Sometimes, from the ends, protrude bits of
scalps, and the tips of pipe stems and slender sticks, but the whole
contents of the bundle are known only to the priests and to its
owner--perhaps, not always even to him. The sacred bundles are kept on
the west side of the lodge, because, being thus furthest from the
door, fewer people will pass by them than if they were hung in any
other part of the lodge. Various superstitions attach to these
bundles. In the lodges where certain of them are kept it is forbidden
to put a knife in the fire; in others, a knife may not be thrown; in
others, it is not permitted to enter the lodge with the face painted;
or again, a man cannot go in if he has feathers tied in his head.
On certain sacred occasions the bundles are opened, and their contents
form part of the ceremonial of worship.
No one knows whence the bundles came. Many of them are very old; too
old even to have a history. Their origin is lost in the haze of the
long ago. They say, "The sacred bundles were given us long ago. No one
knows when they came to us." Secret Pipe Chief, one of the very oldest
men in the tribe, and its High Priest, said to me:
"All the sacred bundles are from the far off country in the southwest,
from which we came long ago. They were handed down to the people
before they started on their journey. Then they had never seen
anything like iron, but they had discovered how to make the flint
knives and arrow points. There was nothing that came to us through the
whites. It all came to us through the power of _Ti-ra´-wa_. Through
his power we were taught how to make bows and stone knives and arrow
heads.
"It was through the Ruler of the universe that the sacred bundles
were given to us. We look to them, because, through them and the
buffalo and the corn, we worship _Ti-ra´-wa_. We all, even the chiefs,
respect the sacred bundles. When a man goes on the warpath, and has
led many scouts and brought the scalps, he has done it through the
sacred bundles. There were many different ceremonies that they used to
go through. The high priest performs these ceremonies.
"The high priestship was founded in this way: The black eagle spoke to
a person, and said to him, 'I am one of those nearest to _Ti-ra´-wa_,
and you must look to me to be helped; to the birds and the
animals--look to me, the black eagle, to the white-headed eagle, to
the otter and the buffalo.'
"The black eagle sent the buzzard as a messenger to this person, and
he gave him the corn. The secrets of the high priestship and the other
secrets were handed down at the same time. The buzzard, because he is
bald, stands for the old men who have little hair. The white-headed
eagle also represents the old men, those whose hair is white. These
are the messengers through whom _Ti-ra´-wa_ sends his words to the
people. The Wichitas also had these secrets, and so have the Rees."
The Pawnees believe that they were created by _Ti-ra´-wa_, but that
there had been people on the earth before them. They say, "The first
men who lived on the earth were very large Indians. They were giants;
very big and very strong. The animals that lived then were the same
that we know now, and of the same size. These giants used to hunt the
buffalo on foot. They were so swift and strong that a man could run
down a buffalo, and kill it with a great stone, or a club, or even
with his flint knife. Then, when he had killed it, if it was a big
buffalo bull, he would tie it up, throw it over his back, and carry it
into camp, just as a man to-day would carry in an antelope. When one
killed a yearling, he would push its head up under his belt, and let
its body swing by his side, just as we would carry a rabbit.
"These people did not believe in _Ti-ra´-wa_. When it would thunder
and rain, they would shake their fists at the sky and call out bad
words. In these days all people, wherever they live--all Indians, all
white men, all Mexicans and all black men--when they smoke up, speak
to _A-ti´-us Ti-ra´-wa_, and ask that he will give them the right kind
of a mind, and that he will bless them, so that they may have plenty
to eat, and may be successful in war, and may be made chiefs and head
men. When we smoke toward the earth we say, 'Father of the dead, you
see us.' This means that this is _Ti-ra´-wa's_ ground. It belongs to
him, and we ask him that he will let us walk on it, and will let us be
buried in it. We believe that after we are dead we will live again
with _Ti-ra´-wa_ up in the sky. We fear nothing after death worse than
we know now. All will live again with _Ti-ra´-wa_ and be happy. A
thief, one who steals from others in the camp, one who is bad, dies,
and that is the end of him. He goes into the ground, and does not live
again. One reason why we believe that there is a life after death is
that sometimes, when asleep, we dream and see these things. We see
ourselves living with _Ti-ra´-wa_. Then, too, we often dream of our
people whom we have known, and who have died. We dream of being dead
ourselves, and of meeting these people and talking with them, and
going to war with them.
"Now, these giants did not believe in any of these things. They did
not pray to _Ti-ra´-wa_, and they thought that they were very strong,
and that nothing could overcome them. They grew worse and worse. At
last _Ti-ra´-wa_ got angry, and he made the water rise up level with
the land, and all the ground became soft, and these great people sank
down into the mud and were drowned. The great bones found on the
prairie are the bones of these people, and we have been in deep
cañons, and have seen big bones under ground, which convinces us that
these people did sink into the soft ground.
"After the destruction of the race of giants, _Ti-ra´-wa_ created a
new race of men, small, like those of to-day. He made first a man and
a woman. They lived on the earth and were good. To them was given the
corn. From this man and this woman the Pawnees sprung, and they have
always cultivated the corn from the earliest times."
There can be no doubt as to the belief of the Pawnees in a future
life. The spirits of the dead live after their bodies have become
dust. The stories of the Ghost Bride and the Ghost Wife, already
given, are examples of this belief. Secret Pipe Chief told me of
himself:
"I was dead once. Just as I died, I found my way leading to an Indian
village. I entered it, and went straight to the lodge of my friends
and my relations. I saw them, and when I saw them I knew them again. I
even knew my old relations, whom I had never looked on when I was
alive. I went into a lodge, but I was not offered a seat, and I
thought that I was not welcome. I came out of the lodge, and went out
of the village toward the west. Then I came back to life again. In the
morning I had died, and I came to life in the afternoon. That must be
the reason that I still live, and am getting old. I was not welcome
yet. They did not receive me. From this I am convinced that there is a
life after we are dead."
Sometimes ghosts appear to them, but more often they merely speak to
them; only a voice is heard. They believe that the little whirlwinds
often seen in summer are ghosts. The reason for this is that once a
person shot at a whirlwind with his arrow. The arrow passed through
it, and it all disappeared and came to nothing. Then the man was
convinced that it was a ghost, and that he had killed it.
The different bands of the Pawnees had not all the same beliefs. Thus
the Skidi band offered up the human sacrifice--a captive taken in
war--to the morning star. This is thought to have been a propitiatory
offering to avert the evil influences exerted by that planet. At the
present day the Indians speak of the sacrifice as having been made to
_Ti-ra´-wa_. None of the other tribes had this form of worship, and in
this fact we have another indication that the separation of the Skidi
from the Pawnees had been a long one. The _Ka-wa-ra-kish_ band of the
Pita-hau-erat, are said to have been "the only ones of the Pawnees who
did not worship _Ti-ra´-wa_. They worshiped toward the west."
Mention has been made of the _Nahu´rac_, or animals, which possess
miraculous attributes given them by _Ti-ra´-wa_. The Pawnees know of
five places where these animals meet to hold council--five of these
_Nahu´rac_ lodges. One of these is at _Pa-hük´_, on the south side of
the Platte River, opposite the town of Fremont, in Nebraska. The word
_Pa-hük´_ means "hill island." Another animal home is under an island
in the Platte River, near the town of Central City. It is called by
the Pawnees _La-la-wa-koh-ti-to_, meaning "dark island." The third of
these sacred places is on the Loup Fork, opposite the mouth of the
Cedar River, and under a high, white cut bank. It is called
_Ah-ka-wit-akol_, "white bank." Another is on the Solomon River,
_Kitz-a-witz-ük_, "water on a bank;" it is called _Pa´howa_ sometimes.
This is a mound, shaped like a dirt lodge. At the top of the mound, in
the middle, is a round hole, in which, down below, can be seen water.
At certain times, the people gather there, and throw into this hole
their offerings to _Ti-ra´-wa_, blankets and robes, blue beads,
tobacco, eagle feathers and moccasins. Sometimes, when they are
gathered there, the water rises to the top of the hole, and flows out,
running down the side of the mound into the river. Then the mothers
take their little children and sprinkle the water over them, and pray
to _Ti-ra´-wa_ to bless them. The water running out of the hole often
carries with it the offerings, and the ground is covered with the old
rotten things that have been thrown in. The fifth place is a hard,
smooth, flinty rock, sticking up out of the ground. They call it
_Pa-hûr´_, "hill that points the way." In the side of the hill there
is a great hole, where the _Nahu´rac_ hold councils. This hill is in
Kansas, and can be seen from the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad.
It is known to the whites as Guide Rock.
II. CEREMONIES.
To describe satisfactorily any considerable proportion of the
religious ceremonials of the Pawnees, would require a more extended
space than is here at my command. Several of the special ceremonies,
however, may be mentioned in general terms.
Like some other tribes of the plains Indians, the Pawnees had a
certain special worship at the time of the first thunder in the
spring. This first thunder warned them that winter was at an end and
that the time of the planting was drawing near.
Of this worship a Chau-i said to me: "We all believe in _Ti-ra´-wa_.
We know that there is a power above that moves the universe, and that
he controls all things. In the old days when they had buffalo meat,
they used to make a sacrifice at the time of the first thunder in the
spring. The next day after it had thundered, all the people would go
into the sacred lodge, where the sacred bundles were kept at that
time. When they had all come together, the priest would open the
bundles and take out the sacred things, among which were Indian
tobacco and some little pieces of scalp tied to a stick. Through these
sacred things we worshiped, and the sacrifices were made to the Ruler
above. This seemed to be a help to us, and we used to live, increase
and grow strong. Up north, when we worshiped at the time of the first
thunder, we never had cyclones. Down here, now that this worship has
been given up, we have them."
There is no doubt that the most important of the religious ceremonials
of the Pawnees were the burnt offering of the animal and of the scalp.
These two, though different, had yet the same meaning. In each the
sacrifice was an offering to _Ti-ra´-wa_. Perhaps next in importance
to these were the buffalo dance and the corn dance, which were special
ceremonies to implore a blessing on the hunt and on the harvest.
The first animal killed on the hunt was sacrificed. It was necessary
that this animal should be either a deer or a buffalo; the first one
killed on the hunt of these two kinds. They were not permitted to kill
any other sort of an animal, save only these two, until after the
sacrifice had been made.
When this first animal had been killed, it was brought into the camp,
and taken to the sacred lodge, and there the priests themselves went
through the secret ceremonies. Then they divided the meat, and took a
part of it to the southeast end of the village. There they built a
fire of sticks, and placed the meat on it. As the fire burned the
flesh, the whole tribe marched slowly and reverently by the fire, and
grasped handfuls of the smoke, and rubbed it over their bodies and
arms, and prayed, saying, "Now, you, _Ti-ra´-wa_, the Ruler, look at
your children, and bless them; keep them and have mercy upon them, and
care for them." If any could not understand, such as little children,
their elders, who did understand--their relations--prayed for them.
The sick were carried out to the place, and prayed, and the smoke was
rubbed over them. The young men would run races, starting from a
certain place, and going around the village until they came to the
place where the smoke of the sacrifice rose.
The sacrifice, by burning of the scalp, was a very elaborate
performance, and occupied a whole day. The high priest faced the east
and prayed, and sang twelve times. Descriptions of it given me in
general terms indicate that this ceremony was extremely interesting.
It was rather unusual, but was performed once in 1877.
The sacrifice of the captive has not been practiced by the Skidi for a
long time, perhaps forty or fifty years. Bear Chief told me that he
had witnessed it six times; Eagle Chief, who is, perhaps, between
fifty and sixty years old, says he has seen it once. The old Skidi
described the ceremony as follows:
"The Skidi alone of the Pawnees sacrificed human beings to
_Ti-ra´-wa_. When they had returned home from war successful, bringing
captives with them, they selected one of these for the sacrifice. The
others were adopted into the tribe, but this one, who must be young
and stout, one who would fatten easily, was kept apart, eating by
himself, fed on the best of food and treated with the greatest
kindness. No hint of the fate in store for him was given until the day
of the sacrifice. For four nights before that day the people danced;
and for four days they feasted. Each day after they had got through
feasting, the dishes were taken to their especial place. Each woman,
after she got through eating, rose, and said to the prisoner, 'I have
finished eating, and I hope that I may be blessed from _Ti-ra´-wa_;
that he may take pity on me; that when I put my seed in the ground
they may grow, and that I may have plenty of everything.'
"At the end of the four days two old men went, one to each end of the
village, and called aloud, directing every male person in the village
to make a bow and an arrow, and to be ready for the sacrifice. For
every male child that had been born a bow and an arrow was made; for
the little boys small bows that they could bend and small arrows. The
arrows must be feathered with the feathers of the eagle, or of some
bird of prey, a hawk, an owl or an eagle. They must not cut the
feathers nor burn them to make them low.
"The next day, before daybreak, every one was ready. All of the
warriors, who had led parties on the warpath, took from their sacred
bundles their collars, made from the feathers of the bird they
wore,[12] and put them on their backs and tied them about their necks.
They held their pipes in their left hands, to signify that they were
warriors. Every male carried his bow and arrow. Every woman had a
lance or a stick. Just before daylight they all went out to the west
end of the village, and stood there looking for the prisoner to be
brought. Here two stout posts had been set up, one of ash and the
other of hackberry, and between these had been tied four cross-poles,
the three lower ones to aid in climbing up to the highest of the four.
[12] The Purple Martin, _Progne subis_.
"As day broke, the people, looking back toward the village, could see
the captive being led toward them, bound hand and foot. Behind him, as
he was led along, followed a warrior carrying the heart and tongue of
a buffalo; after him came another, carrying a blazing stick, then one
with a bow and arrow, and last a warrior with the stuffed skin of an
owl.
"They led the naked captive to the posts, and lifting him up, tied
first the left hand and then the right to the top cross-pole, and
afterward tied the feet below. Every one stood there silent, looking,
waiting; the men holding their weapons and the women their sticks and
lances. On the ground under the sacrifice was laid the wood for a
great fire, which was now lighted. Then the man with the blazing stick
stepped forward, but before he reached the captive, the warrior with
the bow and arrow, he who had taken the captive, ran up close to the
victim and shot him through from side to side, beneath the arms, with
the sacred arrow, whose point was of flint, such as they used in the
olden time. After the blood had run down upon the fire below, the
warrior who carried the buffalo tongue and the heart, placed them on
the fire beneath the body. When this had been done the man who
carried the owl ran up, and seized the burning stick and burned the
body, once under each arm, and once in each groin, in all four times.
Then, at a given signal, the males all ran up, and shot their arrows
into the body. If any male children were not large enough to shoot,
some one shot for them. There were so many arrows that the body was
stuck full of them; it bristled with them.