SINOPAH JOINS THE MOSQUITO SOCIETY
On a summer day several years after the people wintered on the Two
Medicine, old Red Crane and White Wolf sat on the shady side of their
lodge smoking a big pipe turn-about, and idly watching a crowd of
children playing tag. Swiftest of them all was Sinopah, although some of
the other boys were older and taller than he. White Wolf laid down the
smoked-out pipe and smiled happily as he softly rubbed his small, firm
hands together. Indians, you know, especially those of the plains, were
noted for their small and beautifully shaped hands and feet.
"Well, my son," said Red Crane, "why your smiles--what is it that makes
your heart glad?"
"That is it," White Wolf replied, pointing at Sinopah, who was far in
the lead of the boys and girls who chased him. "I tell you this,
father," he added, "there is in this child of ours the making of a great
chief. Some day, if we live, we are going to be very proud of him."
"Ai! Ai! That is so. You never spoke truer words," old Red Crane agreed.
"How good he is, and how fearless! And how popular also! Children from
all parts of the camp are ever coming to ask him to play with them."
"That is the great point in the making of a chief," said White Wolf. "No
matter how brave a man is, no matter how successful in war, if his
people do not love him, he can never become a leader."
"Huh! As if I didn't know that!" Red Crane exclaimed. "Why, son, that is
what I was always teaching you in your young days; because of your
goodness, of your kindness to the poor, to the widows and orphans, you
are chief to-day."
White Wolf made a gesture of assent. "Well," he said, "it is time that
we take Sinopah in hand for his training. As a beginning, let us have
him join the Su-is-ksis-iks at their next meeting."
Here, now, I have something to explain that is very interesting, and
that is that nearly all Indian tribes of the country had a number of
societies, some of them so secret that only a very few of the most
prominent men ever learned their mysteries. The tribe that had, and
still has, the most fraternities, or secret societies, is the Hopi, or
so-called Moqui tribe of northern Arizona. There are several hundred
secret orders in this tribe, the greatest of them being the Snake and
the Flute societies. It is the Snake order that gives every two years
the great snake dance, in which, after many secret rites and prayers in
their kiva, or sacred house, the members perform a public dance, during
which they carry live and deadly rattlesnakes dangling from their
mouths.
All these societies in all the tribes are for a purpose. The Hopi, or
"People of Peace," as they call themselves, live in a desert country,
and depend upon their little plantings of corn, beans, and squash for
their food. They are not, and never were, hunters and warriors. Now, the
most important thing in all the world for the Hopi is rain; rain to make
their gardens yield a plenty of food. So it is that the object of all
their secret societies is to bring the rain. All the secret rites in the
kivas, all the dances, have that end in view.
See, now, how different were the Blackfeet. They were hunters, and
wanderers over a great country extending south from the Saskatchewan to
the Yellowstone River, a distance of seven hundred miles, and from the
Rocky Mountains eastward for several hundred miles. That was their
country, their hunting-ground, and on it swarmed thousands and thousands
of buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and many other kinds of game. Along
the borders of this great stretch of country were many tribes always
trying to enter it and kill the game, and to save themselves the
Blackfeet were obliged to make war on them and keep them out of the
country. So it was that the fraternities or societies of the Blackfeet
were societies of warriors and for the making of warriors. The least of
these was the society of the Su-is-ksis-iks, or Mosquitoes, which White
Wolf mentioned.
The Mosquito Society was composed entirely of young boys, but at the
head of it were two or three old men who were their teachers, as they
may be called. It was the duty of these old men to give talks to the
boys on the right way to live, to instruct them in the ways of war, to
pray for their long life and success, to teach them certain dances, and
above all to make them honor and obey the teachings of the gods,
especially the Sun.
Evening came. Tired and hungry, Sinopah entered the lodge and sat by his
father's side. His mother set before him a long, heavy rib of boiled
buffalo meat, a dish of service berries, a bowl of soup, and he ate a
big meal. Pausing once between mouthfuls, he said: "We played tag and
none caught me. We went into the river and I was the leader in the race
when we swam to the far shore and back."
White Wolf and Red Crane looked at each other and smiled, and the old
grandfather said to himself: "Ai! Ai! The time has come."
The meal was soon over, and then White Wolf said to the boy: "My son,
your days of tag-playing are about over. Your grandfather and I have
made up our minds that you are big enough now to become a Su-is-ksis-ik.
He will take you to the next meeting of the society."
"Oh, that will be good," Sinopah cried. "I am to become a member of a
warrior band. How long will it be before I can join a higher one? I
would like to be an Ai-in-i-ki-quan."
"Oh, that time is yet some winters ahead," his father answered. "You
have to go to war before joining that order, you know."
The Ai-in-i-ki-kwaks, or Seizers, were the police of the great camp. It
was their duty to guard it in time of danger and to carry out the orders
of the chiefs. For instance, at times when there were great herds of
buffalo near camp, the chiefs would order that no one should go out by
himself to hunt and so scatter the animals and make it hard for all the
hunters to get a plenty of meat and hides. Certain days were set when
all the men would go together and make a big hunt. If any one broke that
rule, the chiefs would order the Seizers to punish him, and punished he
was. Sometimes the man was whipped and his weapons smashed; or, worse,
he might not only be whipped, but his lodge and property would be torn
to pieces and some of his horses killed.
Besides the Mosquitoes and Seizers, there were a number of other orders,
the Buffalo Bulls, They Who Carry the Raven, the Dogs, all parts of the
great society of the tribe, which was called I-kun-uh-ka-tse, All
Friends.
On the morning following the talk of White Wolf and Red Crane,
preparations were begun for Sinopah's entrance into the Mosquito
Society. First of all, Red Crane changed the manner of dressing the
boy's hair. It had been daily combed and plaited into four long braids,
two of them falling just behind, and two just in front of the ears. To
these was now added a fifth braid, a slender one drooping beside the one
just in front of the right ear, and the end of it was wrapped with a
narrow strip of otter fur, believed to be the favorite fur of the Sun.
This fifth braid was the scalp-lock. Were Sinopah to be killed in battle
the enemy would take it as a trophy of the fight.
Right after the morning meal the boy's mother had begun to make a pair
of moccasins for him, and she kept at the work for some days. The tops
or uppers of them were solidly embroidered with brightly colored
porcupine quills, each small quill tightly fastened in place with many
stitches of very fine sinew thread.
In the mean time, old Red Crane fumbled around in his several pouches
and finally found four beautifully tanned, snow-white antelope skins.
"These your grandmother tanned the summer before she died," he told
Sinopah. "I have been saving them for you. They are for your first
war-suit. Watch, now, how I cut them, for after this you will have to
make your own clothes."
The old man then spread a skin out flat on his couch and cut it into an
oblong square after measuring one of the boy's legs. A few stitches then
made of the material a wide-flapped legging. Next, the flaps were
fringed by slitting them every quarter of an inch along their length,
and then ornamented with tufts of red-dyed horsehair and parts of scalps
that the old man had himself taken in battle. The other legging was made
in the same way.
The other two skins were fashioned into a loose, big-necked,
fringe-seamed shirt that reached nearly to the knees. Snow-white weasel
skins with black tail tips were hung all around the neck and down the
length of the sleeves, along with more red horsehair and scalp-locks;
and lastly, Red Crane painted several blue and yellow things, that
looked like small lizards, on the back and front of the garment. Sinopah
asked what animal they represented.
"That I cannot tell you," the old man answered. "It is my medicine; my
secret helper that came to me in my fasting dream. Yes, in that fast,
when my spirit wandered far, I found this little water animal, and it
promised always to help me when I prayed to it. It has helped me. It has
saved my life in many a dangerous place, so I put the mark of it on here
and will pray to it, to help you until you get a medicine, a secret
helper, for yourself."
"And when shall I get it?" Sinopah asked.
"Let me see; let me see," Red Crane mused. "You are now of age twelve
winters. Three winters after this will be your time to fast. You will go
alone to some sheltered place away from camp. You will lie there without
food. You will pray continually to the Sun; to the Moon; the Stars; to
all the world animals. Maybe you will lie there four--five--or even
seven days, eating nothing, drinking nothing except the water that your
mother will take you every day. And you will sleep; you will dream. In
your dream, when your shadow, your spirit goes forth on adventure, then
you will find your secret helper. I shall pray that it be, that which
you find, very strong medicine."
"It will be strong medicine!" Sinopah declared. "Grandfather, I have the
feeling in here, right here in my heart, that in that fasting time I
shall find a very powerful secret helper."
The meeting of the Mosquito Society was still some days off, but there
was no more than time for Sinopah to get ready for it. The skin of the
otter that Red Crane had captured under the river ice was fashioned into
a combined bow-case and arrow-quiver, and ornamented with bands of fine
porcupine embroidery. A new bow and new arrows were made by Red Crane
and White Wolf to put into it. The bow was longer and more powerful than
any that the boy had yet handled, but he was a big-muscled boy and could
easily bend it. The arrows were real war-arrows; of thin, straight
shafts, firm feathering, and small, sharp, barbed points that would
pierce far into any living thing and could not be pulled out; also, a
new beaded belt was made, this to hold the knife-sheath and support the
breech-clout that covered the loins.
Then came at last one of the great days in the life of Sinopah. Dressed
all in his new war-clothes, with otter-skin bow-case slung on his back,
he went with his grandfather to the meeting of the Mosquitoes. It was
held in a very large lodge of one of the chiefs. Many boys were there,
sitting close together on the couches, but none of them had as fine
clothes or were themselves as handsome as was he. But they were all his
friends. When he entered they cried out: "Oh, here is Sinopah. Welcome,
brother, welcome."
Red Crane went to the back of the lodge and sat with two old men. They
talked together for a few minutes, and then one of them, first calling
out for silence, made a long prayer. He begged the Sun, and all the gods
of the sky, the earth, and the waters, to give them all long life and
happiness, and always a plenty of game for food. At the end of the
prayer all the boys cried out, "Yes, all you great gods, have pity on
us; have pity on us."
Next the old men took up their drums and beat them in time to a war-song
they sung. The boys all arose then and danced around and around the
fireplace, old Red Crane often stopping them to show one of the dancers
his mistakes. Then after the dance they rested, and one of the old men
gave them a talk on kindness of heart. During another rest, old Red
Crane spoke about bravery, saying, among other things, that for the good
of the tribe one must be ever ready to give his life.
And so, in dancing, in listening to talks by the old men, the day
passed, and toward sundown, very tired and happy, Sinopah went home to
rest. All the evening he was very quiet, and was first of all the family
to go to bed. Early the next morning a little girl stuck her head in
through the doorway of the lodge and called out: "Oh, Sinopah, get up
and come with us. We go to the river to play."
The boy raised himself up and looked at her. "No, little sister," he
answered; "I shall go no more to the river to play with you. I am now a
Mosquito. I have now to learn how to be a man."
So it was. In one short day, young as he was, Sinopah passed out of his
childhood days into those of his youth, the beginning of the life of one
of the greatest of Indian chiefs. On that day he for the first time went
with his father to hunt, and returned in the evening with meat of his
own killing tied to the saddle. With his new bow and on a swift horse,
he had joined in a buffalo run and killed a young bull.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Sinopah the Indian Boy, by James Willard Schultz