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GOODBIRD THE INDIAN
_Interdenominational Home Mission Study Course_
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_Under Our Flag_
_By Alice M. Guernsey_
_The Call of the Waters_
_By Katharine R. Crowell_
_From Darkness to Light_
_By Mary Helm_
_Conservation of National Ideals_
_A Symposium_
_Mormonism, the Islam of America_
_By Bruce Kinney, D.D._
_The New America_
_By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. L. C. Barnes_
_In Red Man’s Land. A Study of the American Indian_
_By Francis E. Leupp_
_Supplementary_
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_By Laura Gerould Craig_
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_Good Bird, the Indian_
_By Gilbert L. Wilson_
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_Comrades from Other Lands_
_By Leila Allen Dimock_
[Illustration: EDWARD GOODBIRD]
_Issued under the direction of the Council of
Women for Home Missions_
GOODBIRD THE INDIAN
His Story
TOLD BY HIMSELF
TO
GILBERT L. WILSON
Author of “Myths of the Red Children,” “Indian Hero Tales”
ILLUSTRATED BY FREDERICK N. WILSON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1914, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
Contents
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN WORDS 6
I BIRTH 9
II CHILDHOOD 19
III THE GODS 27
IV INDIAN BELIEFS 36
V SCHOOL DAYS 43
VI HUNTING BUFFALOES 53
VII FARMING 61
VIII THE WHITE MAN’S WAY 71
Glossary of Indian Words
ạ hạ hé̱
aī (ī)
ạ pạ tḯp
É̱ dï ạ́ kạ tạ
Hĭ dā̆́t sạ
Hō Wạsh té̱
Ït sï dï shï dï ḯ tạ kạ
Ït sï kạ mä́ hï dï
Kạ dū́ te̱ tạ
kū kạts
Mạ hḯ dï wī ạ
Mā̆́n dăn
mï hạ́ dīts
Mĭ nĭ tä́ rĭ
nạ
Săn tḗē
Sioux (Sōō). (The plural, spelled also Sioux, is commonly
pronounced Soos.)
tḗ pēē
Tsạ kạ́ kạ sạ kĭ
Tsạ́ wạ
ū ạ kī hĕ kĕ
FOREWORD
Catlin in 1832, and Maximilian in 1833, have made famous the culture of
the Mandan and Minitari, or Hidatsa, tribes.
In 1907, I was sent out by the American Museum of Natural History, to
begin anthropological studies among the remnants of these peoples, on
Fort Berthold Reservation; and I have been among them each summer, ever
since.
During these years, Goodbird has been my faithful helper and interpreter.
His mother, Mahidiwia, or Buffalo Bird Woman, is a marvelous source of
information on old-time life and beliefs.
Indians have a gentle custom of adopting very dear friends by
relationship terms; by such adoption, Goodbird is my brother; Mahidiwia
is my mother.
The stories which make this little book were told me by Goodbird in
August, 1913.
I have but put Goodbird’s Indian-English into common idiom. The stories
are his own; in them he has bared his heart.
In 1908, and again in 1913, my brother, Frederick N. Wilson, was also
sent by the Museum to make drawings of Hidatsa arts. Illustrations in
this book are from studies made by him in those years; a few are redrawn
from simpler sketches by Goodbird himself.
Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of the Museum’s curator, Dr. Clark
Wissler, whose permission makes possible the publishing of this book.
May _Goodbird’s Story_ give the reader a kindly interest in his people.
Minneapolis.
G. L. W.
[Illustration: An Old Hidatsa Village.]
I
BIRTH
I was born on a sand bar, near the mouth of the Yellowstone, seven years
before the battle in which Long Hair[1] was killed. My tribe had camped
on the bar and were crossing the river in bull boats. As ice chunks were
running on the Missouri current, it was probably the second week in
November.
The Mandans and my own people, the Hidatsas, were once powerful tribes
who dwelt in five villages at the mouth of the Knife River, in what is
now North Dakota. Smallpox weakened both peoples; the survivors moved
up the Missouri and built a village at Like-a-fish-hook Bend, or Fort
Berthold as the whites called it, where they dwelt together as one tribe.
They fortified their village with a fence of upright logs against their
enemies, the Sioux.
We Hidatsas looked upon the Sioux as wild men, because they lived by
hunting and dwelt in tents. Our own life we thought civilized. Our lodges
were houses of logs, with rounded roofs covered with earth; hence their
name, earth lodges. Fields of corn, beans, squashes and sunflowers lay on
either side of the village, in the bottom lands along the river; these
were cultivated in old times with bone hoes.
[Illustration: Bone Hoe.]
With our crops of corn and beans, we had less fear of famine than the
wilder tribes; but like them we hunted buffaloes for our meat. After
firearms became common, big game grew less plentiful, and for several
years before my birth, few buffaloes had been seen near our village.
However, scouts brought in word that big herds were to be found farther
up the river and on the Yellowstone, and our villagers, Mandans and
Hidatsas, made ready for a hunt.
A chief, or leader, was always chosen for a tribal hunt, some one who
was thought to have power with the gods. Not every one was willing to
be leader. The tribe expected of him a prosperous hunt with plenty of
meat, and no attacks from enemies. If the hunt proved an unlucky one, the
failure was laid to the leader. “His prayers have no power with the gods.
He is not fit to be leader!” the people would say.
This leader had to be chosen by a military society of men, called the
Black Mouths. They made up a collection of rich gifts—gun, blankets,
robes, war bonnet, embroidered shirt—and with much ceremony offered the
gifts, successively, to men who were known to own sacred bundles; all
refused.
They prevailed at length upon Ediakata to accept half the gifts. “Choose
another to take the rest,” he told the Black Mouths: “I will share the
leadership with him!” They chose Short Horn.
The two leaders fixed the day of departure. On the evening before, a
crier went through the village, calling out, “To-morrow at sunrise we
break camp. Get ready, everybody!”
The march was up the Missouri, on the narrow prairie between the
foothills and the river. Ediakata and Short Horn led, commanding, the
one, one day, the other, the next. The camp followed in a long line, some
on horseback, more afoot; a few old people rode on travois. Camp was made
at night in tepees, or skin-covered tents.
My grandfather’s was a large thirteen-skin tepee, pitched with fifteen
poles. It sheltered twelve persons; my grandfather, Small Ankle, and his
two wives, Red Blossom and Strikes-many-woman; his sons, Bear’s Tail and
Wolf Chief, and their wives; my mother, Buffalo Bird Woman, daughter of
Small Ankle, and Son-of-a-Star, her husband; Flies Low, a younger son of
Small Ankle; and Red Kettle and Full Heart, mere boys, brothers of Flies
Low.
Ascending the west bank of the Missouri, my tribe reached the mouth
of the Yellowstone at their eleventh camp; here the Missouri narrows,
offering a good place to cross. A long sand bar skirted the south shore;
tents were pitched here about noon. There was not room on the narrow bar
to pitch a camping circle, and the tepees stood in rows, like the houses
of a village.
My grandfather pitched his tent near the place chosen for the crossing.
The day was cold and windy; with flint and steel, my grandfather kindled
a fire. Dry grass was laid around the wall of the tent and covered with
robes, for beds. Small logs, laid along the edges of the beds, shielded
them from sparks from the fire.
At evening the wind died; twilight crept over the sky, and the stars
appeared. The new moon, narrow and bent like an Indian bow, shone white
over the river, and the waves of the long mid-current sparkled silvery
in the moonlight. Now and then with a _swi-i-s-sh_, a sheet of water, a
tiny whirl-pool in its center, would come washing in to shore; while over
all rose the roar, roar, roar of the great river, sweeping onward, the
Indians knew not where.
At midnight a dog raised himself on his haunches, pointed his nose
at the sky, and yelped. It was the signal for the midnight chorus;
and in a moment every dog in camp had joined it, nose-in-air, howling
mournfully at the moon. Far out on the prairie rose the wailing
yip-yip-yip-_ya-a-ah_! of a coyote. The dogs grew silent again and curled
up, to sleep.
And I came into the world.
Wrapped in a bit of robe, I was laid in my mother’s arms, her first born;
she folded me to her breast.
The morning sky was growing gray when my father came home. He raised the
tent door and entered, smiling.
“I heard my little son cry, as I came,” he said; “It was a lusty cry! I
am very happy.”
My grandmother placed me in his arms.
* * * * *
My tribe began crossing the river the same morning. Tents were struck,
one by one; and the owners, having loaded their baggage in bull boats,
pushed boldly out into the current.
A bull boat was made by stretching a buffalo skin over a frame of
willows. It was shaped like a tub and was not graceful; but it carried a
heavy load.
Our boat had been brought up from the village on a travois, and my father
ferried my mother and me across. He knelt in the bow, dipping his oar in
the water directly before him; my mother sat in the tail of the boat with
me in her arms. Our tent poles, tied in a bundle, floated behind us; and
our dogs and horses came swimming after, sniffing and blowing as they
breasted the heavy current. We landed tired, and rather wet.
The tribe was four days in crossing; and as the season was late, we at
once took up our march to the place chosen for our winter camp. My mother
and I now rode on a travois, drawn by a pony. A buffalo skin was spread
on the bottom of the travois basket; this my father bound snugly about my
mother’s knees as she sat, Indian fashion, with her ankles turned to the
right. I lay in her lap, cuddled in a wild-cat skin and covered by her
robe.
We reached Round Bank, the place of our winter camp, in five days. My
tribe’s usual custom was to winter in small earth lodges, in the woods
by the Missouri, a few miles from Like-a-fish-hook village; but this
winter we were to camp in our skin tents, like the Sioux. A tent, well
sheltered, with a brisk fire under the smoke hole, was comfortable and
warm.
No buffaloes had been killed on the way up to the Yellowstone; but much
deer, elk, and antelope meat had been brought into camp, dried, and
packed in bags for winter. Many, also, of the more provident families had
stores of corn, brought with them from Like-a-fish-hook village. After
snow fell, our hunters discovered buffaloes and made a kill. We thus
faced winter without fear of famine.
The tenth day after my birth was my naming day; it came just as we were
getting settled in our winter camp. An Indian child was named to bring
him good luck. A medicine man was called in, feasted, and given a present
to name the child and pray for him. As my grandfather was one of the
chief medicine men of the tribe, my mother asked him to name me.
My grandfather’s gods were the birds that send the thunder. He was a kind
old man, and took me gently into his arms and said, “I name my grandson
_Tsa-ka-ka-sa-ki_,—Good-bird!” My name thus became a kind of prayer;
whenever it was spoken it reminded the bird spirits that I was named for
them, and that my grandfather prayed that I might grow up a brave and
good man.
The winter passed without mishap to any one in our tent. An old man named
Holding Eagle had his leg broken digging in a bank for white clay; he was
prying out a lump with a stick, when the bank caved in upon him. Toward
spring, Wolf-with-his-back-to-the-wind and his brother were surprised by
Sioux and killed. A man named Drum was also killed and scalped.
Spring came, but ice still lay on the Missouri when the Goose society
gave their spring dance. The flocks of geese that came flying north at
this season of the year were a sign that it was time to make ready our
fields for planting corn. The Goose society was a society of women, and
their dance was a prayer that the spirits of the geese would send good
weather for the corn-planting. Most of the work of planting and hoeing
our corn fell to the women.
Our winter camp now broke up, most of the tribe returning to the
Yellowstone; but my grandfather and One Buffalo, with their families,
went up the Missouri to hunt for buffaloes. They found a small herd, gave
chase, and killed ten.
Four more tepees now joined us, those of Strikes Back-bone, Old Bear,
Long Wing, Spotted Horn, and their families. To each tent owner, my
grandfather gave the half of a freshly killed buffalo and one whole green
buffalo skin. Camp was pitched; the meat was hung on stages to dry, and
the women busied themselves making the skins into bull boats.
[Illustration: At Work with a Bone Hoe.]
When the ice on the Missouri broke, our camp made ready to return to the
village, for the women wanted to be about their spring planting. Bull
boats were now taken to the river and loaded; and the families, six or
seven tepees in all, pushed out into the current.
My parents led, with three boats lashed together, in the first of which
they sat and paddled; my father’s rifle lay by him. The second boat was
partly loaded with bags of dried meat, and upon these sat Flies Low, my
uncle, with me in his arms. The third boat was loaded to the water with
meat and skins.
The Missouri’s course is winding; if a turn in it sends the current
against the wind, the waves rise heavy and choppy, so that a single boat
can hardly ride them. When approaching one of these turns, our party
would draw together, laying tight hold of one another’s boats until the
danger was passed; bunched together in this manner, the boats ran less
risk of upsetting.
Snow had disappeared from the ground, and the grass was beginning to
show green when we left the Yellowstone. We floated down the great river
in high spirits. All went well until we neared the mouth of the Little
Missouri, thirty miles from the village. Then a storm arose, and as we
rounded a bend, the current carried us into the very teeth of the wind.
Our flimsy boats, sea-sawing up and down on the heavy waves, threatened
to overturn.
My parents turned hastily to shore and plied their paddles. Suddenly
my father leaned over his side of the boat, almost tipping it over and
tumbling my mother in upon him; she caught at the edge of the boat to
save herself, but had the presence of mind not to drop her paddle. Then
she saw what had happened; I had fallen into the water, and my father was
drawing me, wet but unhurt, into the boat.
I have said that my uncle, Flies Low, and I rode in the second boat.
I had grown restless, and he had loosened my cradle clothes to give me
room to move my limbs. When we ran into the storm, our boat rocked so
violently that I slipped from his arms, but my loosened clothes made me
float.
[Illustration: Flint and Steel, with Bag.]
“I did not mean to drop the baby,” my uncle said afterwards. “I thought
the boat had upset and I was frightened.” He was only a lad, and my
mother could not blame him.
We reached shore in a terrible storm of snow and wind. The boats were
dragged up on the beach; the two tents were hastily pitched to shelter
the women and children; and fires were lighted.
My father stopped only long enough to see us safe, and then pushed on
through the storm with the horses, which my grandfather had been driving
along the shore in sight of the boats. He reached the village safely and
drove the horses into the shelter of some woods along the river.
Boys know that in summer, when they go swimming, it is warmer to stay in
the water, than upon the bank, in a wind. There was a pond in the woods;
and our horses waded into the water to escape the cold wind. When they
came out the wind chilled their coats, so that three of them died.
The storm lasted four days. When it was over, my mother and the rest
of the party re-embarked in their bull boats and floated safely down to
Like-a-fish-hook village.
Of course I remember nothing of these things; but I have told the story
as I heard it from the lips of my mother.
[1] General George A. Custer.
[Illustration: Hidatsa Earth Lodge.]
II
CHILDHOOD
Like-a-fish-hook village stood on a bluff overlooking the Missouri, and
contained about seventy dwellings. Most of these were earth lodges, but a
few were log cabins which traders had taught us to build.
My grandfather’s was a large, well-built earth lodge, with a floor
measuring about forty feet across. Small Ankle, his two wives and their
younger children; his sons, Bear’s Tail and Wolf Chief, and his daughter,
my mother, with their families, dwelt together. It was usual for several
families of relatives to dwell together in one lodge.
An earth lodge was built with a good deal of labor. The posts were cut in
summer, and let lie in the woods until snow fell; men then dragged them
to the village with ropes. Holes were dug the next spring, and the posts
raised. Stringers, laid along the tops of the posts, supported rafters;
and upon these was laid a matting of willows and dry grass. Over all went
a thick layer of sods.
[Illustration: Small Ankle’s Couch.]
The four great posts that upheld the roof had each a buffalo calf skin or
a piece of bright-colored calico bound about it at the height of a man’s
head. These were offerings to the house spirit. We Hidatsas believed that
an earth lodge was alive, and that the lodge’s spirit, or soul, dwelt in
the four posts. Certain medicine women were hired to raise these posts in
place when a lodge was built.
Our lodge was picturesque within, especially by the yellow light of the
evening fire. In the center of the floor, under the smoke hole, was
the fireplace; a screen of puncheons, or split logs, set on end, stood
between it and the door. On the right was the corral, where horses were
stabled at night. In the back of the lodge were the covered beds of the
household, and my grandfather’s medicines, or sacred objects. The most
important of these sacred objects were two human skulls of the Big Birds’
ceremony, as it was called. Small Ankle was a medicine man and when our
corn fields suffered from drought, he prayed to the skulls for rain.
Against the puncheon screen on the side next the fireplace, was a couch
made of planks laid on small logs, with a bedding of robes. This couch
was my grandfather’s bed at night, and his lounging place by day. A
buffalo skin overhead protected him from bits of falling earth or a leak
in the roof, when it rained.
My two grandmothers also used the couch as a bench when making ready the
family meals; and the water and grease spilled by them and trampled into
the dirt floor made the spot between the couch and the fireplace as hard
as brick. Small Ankle filed his finger nails here against the hard floor.
The earliest thing that I remember, is my grandfather sitting on his
couch, plucking gray hairs from his head. Indians do not like to see
themselves growing old, and Small Ankle’s friends used to tease him. “We
see our brother is growing gray—and old!” they would say, laughing. Small
Ankle used to sit on the edge of his couch with his face tilted toward
the smoke hole, and drawing his loose hair before his eyes, he would
search for gray ones.
He had another habit I greatly admired. The grease dropped from my
grandmothers’ cooking, drew many flies into our lodge, and as my
grandfather sat on his couch, the flies would alight on his bare
shoulders and arms. He used to fight them off with a little wooden
paddle. I can yet hear the little paddle’s _spat_ as it fell on some
luckless fly, against his bare flesh. No war club had surer aim.
His couch, indeed, was the throne from which my grandfather ruled his
household, and his rule began daily at an early hour. He arose with the
birds, raked coals from the ashes and started a fire. Then we would hear
his voice, ”Awake, daughters; up, sons; out, all of you! The sun is up!
Wash your faces!”
My fat grandmothers made a funny sight, washing their faces; stooping,
with eyes tightly shut, each filled her mouth with water, blew it into
her palms and rubbed them over her face. No towels were used.
The men of the household more often went down for a plunge in the river.
Some of the young men of the village bathed in the river the whole year,
through a hole in the ice in winter.
Many bathers, after their morning plunge, rubbed their wet bodies with
white clay; this warmed and freshened the skin.
My mother usually washed my face for me; I liked it quite as little as
any white boy.
Our morning meal was now eaten, hominy boiled with beans and buffalo
fat, and seasoned with alkali salt—spring salt we called it, because we
gathered it from the edges of springs. After the meal, I had nothing to
do all day but play.
My best loved toy was my bow, of choke-cherry wood, given me when I
was four years old. My arrows were of buck-brush shoots, unfeathered.
These shoots were brought in green, and thrust into the hot ashes of the
fireplace; when heated, they were drawn out and the bark peeled off,
leaving them a beautiful yellow. Buck-brush arrows are light, and I was
allowed to shoot them within the lodge.
My uncle, Full Heart, a boy two years older than myself, taught me how
to use my bow. In our lodge were many mice that nested in holes under the
sloping roof, and my uncle and I hunted these mice as savagely as our
fathers hunted buffaloes. I think I was not a very good shot, for I do
not remember ever killing one.
But I had the ill luck to shoot my mother. She was stooping at her work,
one day, when an arrow badly aimed struck her in the cheek, its point
pierced the skin, and the shaft remained hanging in the flesh. I saw the
blood start and heard my mother cry, “Oh, my son has shot me!” I dropped
my bow and ran, for I thought I had killed her; but she drew out the
shaft, laughing.
I was too young to have any fear of the Sioux, and I had not yet learned
to be afraid of ghosts, but I was afraid of owls, for I was taught that
they punished little boys. Sometimes, if I was pettish, my uncles would
cry, “The owl is coming!” And in the back of the lodge a voice would
call, “_Hoo, hoo, hoo!_” This always gave me a good fright, and I would
run to my grandfather and cover my head with his robe, or hide in my
fathers bed.
It was not the custom of my tribe for parents to punish their own
children; usually, the father called in a clan brother to do this. My
uncle, Flies Low, a clan brother of my father, punished me when I was
bad, but he seldom did more than threaten.
Sometimes my mother would say, “My son is bad, pierce his flesh!” and my
uncle would take an arrow, pinch the flesh of my arm, and make as if he
would pierce it. I would cry, “I will be good, I will be good!” and he
would let me go without doing more than giving me a good fright.
A very naughty boy was sometimes punished by rolling him in a snow bank,
or ducking him in water.
One winter evening I was vexed at my mother and would not go to bed.
“Come,” she said, trying to draw me away, but I fought, kicking at her
and screaming. Quite out of patience, my mother turned to Flies Low.
“_Apatip_—duck him!” she cried. A pail of water stood by the fireplace.
Flies Low caught me up, my legs over his shoulder, and plunged me, head
downward, into the pail. I broke from him screaming, but he caught me and
plunged me in again. The water strangled me, I thought I was going to die!
“Stop crying,” said my uncle.
My mother took me by the arm. “Stop crying,” she said. “If you are bad, I
will call your uncle again!” And she put me to bed.
[Illustration: Sled of Buffalo Ribs.]
We Indian children knew nothing of marbles or skates. I had a swing, made
of my mother’s packing strap, and a top, cut from the tip of a buffalo’s
horn. Many boys owned sleds, made of five or six buffalo ribs bound side
by side. With these they coasted down the steep Missouri bank, but that
was play for older boys.
Few wagons were owned by the tribe at this time. When journeying, we
packed our baggage on the backs of ponies, or on travois dragged by dogs.
A travois was a curious vehicle. It was made of two poles lashed together
in the shape of a V, and bearing a flat basket woven with thongs. A good
dog with a travois could drag sixty or eighty pounds over the snow, or on
the smooth prairie grass.
But a travois’s chief use was in dragging in wood for a lodge fire. In
our lodge my mother and my two grandmothers, with five dogs, went for
wood about twice a week. They started at sunrise for the woods, a mile or
two away, and returned about noon.
It happened one morning that my father and mother went to gather wood,
and I asked to go along. “No,” they said, “you would but be in our way.
You stay at home!” But I wept and teased until they let me go.
[Illustration: Dog Travois.]
My parents walked before, the dogs following in a single file. They were
gentle animals, used to having me play with them; and I was amusing
myself running along, jumping on a travois, riding a bit, and jumping off
again.
Our road led to a choke-cherry grove, but it was crossed by another that
went to the river. As we neared the place where the roads crossed, we saw
a woman coming down the river road, also followed by three or four dogs
in travois. I had just leaped on the travois of one of our dogs.
The packs spied each other at the same instant; and our dogs, pricking
up their ears, burst into yelps and started for the other pack. I was
frightened out of my wits. “_Ai, ai, ai!_” I yelled; for I thought I was
going to be eaten up. The dogs were leaping along at such speed that I
dared not jump off.
The woman with the strange dogs ran between the packs crying, “_Na,
na_,—go way, go way!” This stopped our dogs; and I sprang to the ground
and ran to my mother. I would never ride a travois again.
Taking it altogether, children were well treated in my tribe. Food was
coarse, but nourishing; and there was usually plenty of it. Children of
poor families suffered for clothing, but rarely for food, for a family
having meat or corn always shared with any who were hungry. If a child’s
parents died, relatives or friends cared for him.
My mother sighs for the good old times. “Children were then in every
lodge,” she says, “and there were many old men in the tribe. Now that we
live in cabins and eat white men’s foods, the children and old men die;
and our tribe dies!”
But this is hardly true of the Christian families.
III
THE GODS
I have said we Hidatsas believed that an earth lodge was alive; and that
its soul, or spirit, dwelt in the four big roof posts. We believed,
indeed, that this world and everything in it was alive and had spirits;
and our faith in these spirits and our worship of them made our religion.
[Illustration: Seeking His God.]
My father explained this to me. “All things in this world,” he said,
“have souls, or spirits. The sky has a spirit; the clouds have spirits;
the sun and moon have spirits; so have animals, trees, grass, water,
stones, everything. These spirits are our gods; and we pray to them and
give them offerings, that they may help us in our need.”
We Indians did not believe in one Great Spirit, as white men seem
to think all Indians do. We did believe that certain gods were more
powerful than others. Of these was _It-si-ka-ma-hi-di_, our elder
creator, the spirit of the prairie wolf; and _Ka-du-te-ta_, or
Old-woman-who-never-dies, who first taught my people to till their
fields. Long histories are given of these gods.
Any one could pray to the spirits, receiving answer usually in a dream.
Indeed, all dreams were thought to be from the spirits; and for this
reason they were always heeded, especially those that came by fasting and
suffering. Sometimes a man fasted and tortured himself until he fell into
a kind of dream while yet awake; we called this a vision.
A man whom the gods helped and visited in dreams, was said to have
mystery power; and one who had much mystery power, we called a mystery
man, or medicine man. Almost every one received dreams from the spirits
at some time; but a medicine man received them more often than others.
A man might have mystery power and not use it wisely. There once lived in
our village a medicine man who had one little son. On day in summer, the
little boy with some playmates crossed a shallow creek behind the village
in search of grass for grass arrows. It happened that the villagers’
fields were suffering from drought, and that very day, some old men
brought gifts to the medicine man and asked him to send them rain.
The medicine man prayed to his gods, and in an hour rain fell in
torrents. The little boys, seeking to return, found the creek choked by
the rising waters; greatly frightened, they plunged in, and all got
safely over but the medicine man’s little son; he was drowned.
The medicine man mourned bitterly for his son, for he thought it was he
that had caused the little boy’s death.
Believing as he did that the world was full of spirits, every Indian
hoped that one of them would come to him and be his protector, especially
in war. When a lad became about seventeen years of age, his parents would
say, “You are now old enough to go to war; but you should first go out
and find your god!” They meant by this, that he should not risk his life
in battle until he had a protecting spirit.
Finding one’s god was not an easy task. The lad painted his body with
white clay, as if in mourning, and went out among the hills, upon some
bluff, where he could be seen of the gods; and for days, with neither
food nor drink, and often torturing himself, he cried to the gods to pity
him and come to him. His sufferings at last brought on delirium, so that
he dreamed, or saw a vision. Whatever he saw in this vision was his god,
come to pledge him protection. Usually this god was a bird or beast; or
it might be the spirit of some one dead; the bird or beast was not a
flesh-and-blood animal, but a spirit.
The lad then returned home. As soon as he was recovered from his fast,
he set out to kill an animal like that seen in his vision, and its dried
skin, or a part of it, he kept as his sacred object, or medicine, for in
this sacred object dwelt his god. Thus if an otter god appeared to him,
the lad would kill an otter, and into its skin, which the lad kept, the
god entered. The otter skin was now the lad’s medicine; he prayed to it
and bore it with him to war, that his god might be present to protect him.
Indians even made offerings of food to their sacred objects. They knew
the sacred object did not eat the food; but they believed that the god,
or spirit, in the sacred object, ate the spirit of the food. They also
burned cedar incense to their sacred objects.
The story of my uncle Wolf Chief, as he was afterwards called, will show
what sufferings a young man was willing to endure who went out to seek
his god. He was but seventeen when his father, Small Ankle, said to him,
“My son, I think you should go out and seek your god!” The next morning
my uncle climbed a high butte overlooking the Missouri, and prayed:
“O gods, I am poor; I lead a poor life;
Make me a good man, a brave warrior!
I want to be a great warrior;
I want to capture many horses;
I want to teach much to my people;
I want to be their chief and save them in their need!”
For three days and nights, my uncle prayed; and in this time he had not a
mouthful of food, not a drop of water to drink. The fourth day his father
came to him. “My son,” he said, “perhaps the gods would have you become a
great man: and they are trying you, whether you are worthy. You have not
suffered enough!”
“I am ready, father,” said my uncle.
Small Ankle fixed a stout post in the ground and fastened my uncle to it
with thongs, so that all day he was in great suffering.
In the evening, Small Ankle came and cut him loose. “You have suffered
enough, my son,” he said; “I think the gods will now pity you and give
you a dream!”
He took my uncle home and gave him something to eat and drink; then
he laid the boy tenderly upon a pile of buffalo skins, before his own
medicines.
For a long time, my uncle could not sleep for the pain from his wounds.
A little before daylight, he fell into a troubled dream. He heard a man
outside, walking around the earth lodge. The man was singing a mystery
song; now and then he paused and cried, “You have done well, Strong Bull!”
Small Ankle was very happy when my uncle awoke and told him his dream. He
knew that one of the gods had now come to his son to protect him and help
him; and he called the boy by his new name, Strong Bull, that the god had
given him.
[Illustration: Buffalo Skulls.]
Other men had different dreams. My grandfather once told me of a man who
had a vision of four buffalo skulls that became alive.
Many years ago when our villages were on Knife River a man named Bush
went out to find his god. He sought a vision from the buffalo spirits;
and he thought to make himself suffer so that the spirits might pity
him. He tied four buffalo skulls in a train, one behind another, and as
Bush walked he dragged the train of skulls behind him.
He made his way painfully up the Missouri, mourning and crying to the
gods. The banks of the Missouri are much cut up by ravines, and Bush
suffered greatly as he dragged the heavy skulls over this rough country.
Fifty miles north of the villages, he came to the Little Missouri, a
shallow stream, but subject to sudden freshets; he found the river
flooded, and rising.
He stood on the bank and cried: “O gods, I am poor and I suffer! I want
to find my god. Other men have suffered, and found their gods. Now I
suffer much, but no god answers me. I am going to plunge into this
torrent. I think I shall die, yet I will plunge in. O gods, if you are
going to answer me, do it now and save me!“
He waded in, dragging the heavy skulls after him. The water grew deeper.
He could no longer wade, he had to swim; he struck out.
He wondered that he no longer felt the weight of the skulls, and that he
did not sink. Then he heard something behind him cry, “_Whoo-oo-ooh!_” He
looked around. The four buffalo skulls were swimming about him, buoying
him up; but they were no longer skulls! Flesh and woolly hair covered
them; they had big, blue eyes; they had red tongues. They were alive!
Bush himself told this story to my grandfather.
It should not be thought that Bush was trying to deceive when he said
he saw these things. If one had been with him when he sprang into the
torrent, and had cried, “Bush, the skulls are not alive; it is your
delirium that makes you think they live!” he would have answered, “Of
course you cannot see they are alive! The vision is to me, not to you.
The flesh and hair and eyes are spirit flesh. I see them; you see only
the skulls!”
A man might go out many times thus, to find his god. If he had ill
success in war, or if sickness or misfortune came upon him, he would
think the gods had forgotten him; and he would throw away his moccasins,
cut his hair as for mourning, paint his face with white clay, and again
cry to the gods for a vision.
A medicine man’s visions were like other men’s; but we gave them more
heed, because we thought he had more power with the gods. We looked upon
a medicine man as a prophet; his dreams and visions were messages to us
from the spirits; and we thought of his mystery power as white men think
of a prophet’s power to work miracles. Our medicine men sought visions
for us, and messages from the gods, just as white men’s preachers study
to tell them what God speaks to them in His Book.
A medicine man had much influence in the tribe. He cured our sick, called
the buffalo herds to us, gave us advice when a war party was being
formed, and in times of drought prayed for rain.
Worshipping as we did many gods, we Indians did not think it strange
that white men prayed to another God; and when missionaries came, we did
not think it wrong that they taught us to pray to their God, but that
they said we should not pray to our own gods. “Why,“ we asked, “do the
missionaries hate our gods? We do not deny the white men’s Great Spirit;
why, then, should they deny our gods?”
Sometimes Indians who seek to join the mission church, secretly pray to
their own gods; more often an Indian who accepts Jesus Christ and tries
to follow Him, still fears his old gods, although he no longer prays to
them.
Many older Indians, who do not know English, look upon Jesus Christ as
they would upon one of their own gods; a story will show how His mission
is sometimes misunderstood.
On this reservation lives a medicine woman, named Minnie Enemy Heart.
When a girl, she went to the mission school and learned something about
Jesus Christ. Afterward, as her fathers had done, she went into the hills
to seek her god. She says that she fasted and prayed, and Jesus came to
her in a vision. One side of his body was dark, like an Indian; the other
side was white, like a white man. In His white hand he carried a lamb; in
the other, a little dog.
Jesus explained the vision. “My body,” He said, “half dark and half
white, means that I am as much an Indian as I am a white man. This dog
means that Indian ways are for Indians, as white ways are for white men;
for Indians sacrifice dogs, as white men once sacrificed lambs. If the
missionaries tell you this is not true, ask them who crucified me, were
they Indians or white men?”
Many Indians believe this vision. More than fifteen have left the
Catholic priest to follow Minnie Enemy Heart, and three or four have left
our Protestant mission.
To us Indians, the spirit world seemed very near, and we did nothing
without taking thought of the gods. If we would begin a journey, form a
war party, hunt, trap eagles, or fish, or plant corn, we first prayed to
the spirits. A bad dream would send the bravest war party hurrying home.
If our belief seem strange to white men, theirs seemed just as strange to
us.
IV
INDIAN BELIEFS
[Illustration: Medicine Post and Sacred Bundle.]
Many medicine men added to their mystery power by owning sacred bundles,
neatly bound bundles of skin or cloth, containing sacred objects or
relics that had been handed down from old times. Every bundle had its
history, telling how the bundle began and what gods they were that helped
those who prayed before it. There were about sixty of these sacred
bundles in the tribe, when I was a boy.
The owner of a sacred bundle was called its keeper; he usually kept it
hung on his medicine post, in the back part of his lodge. A sacred bundle
was looked upon as a kind of shrine, and in some lodges strangers were
forbidden to walk between it and the fire.
When a keeper became old, he sold his sacred bundle to some younger man,
that its rites might not die with him. The young man paid a hundred
tanned buffalo skins and a gun or pony, and made a feast for the keeper;
at this feast, the young man received the bundle with the rites and songs
that went with it. This was called, “making a ceremony.”
[Illustration: Shrine and Sacred Bundle of the Big Birds’ Ceremony.]
White men think it strange that we Indians honored these sacred bundles;
but I have heard that in Europe men once honored relics, the skull, or a
bone, or a bit of hair of some saint, or a nail from Jesus’ cross; that
they did not pray to the relic, but thought that the spirit of the saint
was near; or that he was more willing to hear their prayers when they
knelt before the relic.
In much the same way, we Indians honored our sacred bundles. They
contained sacred objects, or relics, that had belonged each to some
god—his scalp, or skull, the pipe he smoked, or his robe. We did not pray
to the object, but to the god or spirit to whom it had belonged, and we
thought these sacred objects had wonderful power, just as white men once
thought they could be cured of sickness by touching the bone of some
saint.
A medicine man’s influence was greater if he owned a sacred bundle.
Men then came to him not only because the spirits answered him when he
fasted, but because, as its keeper, he had power from the gods of the
sacred bundle.
The most famous of these sacred bundles belonged to my grandfather, Small
Ankle. It was called the bundle of the Big Birds’ ceremony. It was kept
on a kind of stand in the back part of our lodge, and it contained two
skulls and a carved wooden pipe. These objects were thought to be very
holy.
When my tribe came up the Missouri to Like-a-fish-hook Bend, where they
built their last village, they first camped there in tepees. A question
arose as to how they should plan their village, and the more important
medicine men of the tribe came and sat in a circle, to consider what to
do. This was seven years after the small-pox year.
At that time, the skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony were owned by an old
man named Missouri River. The other medicine men, knowing that these
skulls were most important sacred objects in the tribe, said to Missouri
River, “Your gods are most powerful. Tell us how we should lay out our
village!”
Missouri River brought the two skulls from his tent, and holding one
in either hand, he walked around in a wide circle, returning again to
the place where he had started. “We will leave this circle open, in the
center of our village,” he said. “So shall we plan it!”
He laid the skulls on the grass and said to Big Cloud, Small Ankle’s
son-in-law, “Your gods are powerful. Choose where you will build your
earth lodge!”
Big Cloud arose. “I will build it here,” he said, “where lie the two
skulls. The door shall face the west, for my gods are eagles that send
thunder, and eagles and thunders come from the west. And so I think we
shall have rain, and our children and our fields shall thrive, and we
shall live here many years.” Big Cloud had once seen a vision of thunder
eagles, awake and with his eyes open.
The medicine men said to Has-a-game-stick, “You choose a place for your
lodge!”
Has-a-game-stick stood and said, “My god is the Sunset Woman. I want my
lodge to face the sunset, that the Sunset Woman may remember me, and I
will pray to her that the village may have plenty and enemies may never
take it, and I think the Sunset Woman will hear me!”
The medicine men said to Bad Horn, “You stand up!”
Bad Horn stood and said, “My gods are bears, and bears always make the
mouths of their dens open toward the north. I want my lodge door to open
toward the north, that my bear gods may remember me. And I will pray to
them that this village may stand many years!”
The medicine men then said to Missouri River, “Choose a place for your
lodge!”
Missouri River took the two skulls, one in either hand, and singing
a mystery song, walked around the circle with his right hand toward
the center, as moves the sun. Three times he walked around, the fourth
time he stopped at a place and prayed, “My gods, you are my protectors,
protect also this village. Send also rains that our grain may grow, and
our children may eat and be strong and healthy. So shall we prosper,
because my sacred bundle is in the village.“
He turned to the company upon the grass. “Go, the rest of you,” he said,
“and choose where you will build your lodges; and keep the circle open,
as I have marked!”
Before Missouri River died, he sold his sacred bundle to my grandfather,
Small Ankle; and Small Ankle sold it to his son, Wolf Chief. After Wolf
Chief became a Christian, he sold the bundle to a man in New York, that
it might be put into a museum.
We had other beliefs, besides these of the gods.
We thought that all little babies had lived before, most of them as
birds, or beasts, or even plants. My father, Son-of-a-Star, claimed he
could even remember what bird he had been.
We believed that many babies came from the babes’ lodges. There were
several of these. One was near our villages on the Knife River. It was a
hill of yellow sand, with a rounded top like the roof of an earth lodge.
In one side was a little cave, and the ground about the cave’s mouth
was worn smooth, as if children played there. Sometimes in the morning,
little footprints were found in the sand.
To this hill a childless wife would come to pray for a son or daughter.
She would lay a pair of very beautiful child’s moccasins at the mouth of
the cave and pray: “I am poor. I am lonesome. Come to me, one of you! I
love you. I long for you!” We understood that children who came from this
babes’ lodge had light skin and yellowish hair, like yellow sand.
A very old man once said to me: “I remember my former life. I lived in
a babes’ lodge. It was like a small earth lodge inside. There was a pit
before the door, crossed by a log. Many of the babes, trying to cross
the pit, fell in. But I walked the whole length of the log; hence I have
lived to be an old man.” I have heard this story from other old men.
Very small children, who died before they teethed or were old enough
to laugh, were not buried upon scaffolds with our other dead, but were
wrapped in skins and placed in trees. We thought if such a baby died,
that its spirit went back to live its former life again, as a bird, or
plant, or as a babe in one of the babes’ lodges.
Older children and men and women, when they died, went to the ghosts’
village. This was a big town of earth lodges, where the dead lived very
much as they had lived on earth. Older Indians of my tribe still believe
in the ghosts’ village.
There were men in my tribe who had died, as we believed, and gone to the
ghosts’ village, and come back to life again. From these men we learned
what the ghosts’ village was like.
My mother’s grandfather came back thus, from the ghosts’ village; his
name was _It-si-di-shi-di-it-a-ka_, or Old Yellow Elk.
Old Yellow Elk had an otter skin for his medicine, or sacred object. He
died in the small-pox year; and his family laid his body out on a hill
with the otter skin under his head for a pillow. Logs were piled about
the body, to keep off wolves. Men were dying so fast that there was no
time to make burial scaffolds.
That night a voice was heard calling from the hill, “_A-ha-he! A-ha-he!_
Come for me, I want to get up!”
The villagers ran to the grave and took away the logs, and Old Yellow Elk
arose and came home.
“The ghosts’ village is a fine town,“ he told his family. “I saw many
people there, they gave me a spotted pony. My god, the otter, brought me
back. He led me up the bed of the Missouri, under the water. I brought my
pony with me and tied him to a log on my grave!”
His family went out to the grave the next morning and looked for the
pony’s tracks, but found none!
All these things I firmly believed, when I was a boy.
V
SCHOOL DAYS
I was six years old when Mr. Hall, a missionary, came to us, from the
Santee Sioux. He could not speak the Mandan or the Hidatsa language,
but he spoke Sioux, which some of our people understood. He was a good
singer; and he had a song which he sang with Sioux words. Our people
would crowd about him to hear it, for it was the first Christian song
they had ever heard.
[Illustration: The Sun Man (Redrawn from a sketch by Goodbird).]
The song began:
_“Ho washte, ho washte,_
_On Jesus yatan miye;_
_Ho wakan, ho wakan,_
_Nina hin yeyan!”_
The words are a translation of an English hymn:
“Sweetly sing, sweetly sing,
Jesus is our Saviour king;
Let us raise, let us raise,
High our notes of praise!”
It is a custom of my people to give a name to every stranger who comes
among us, either from some singularity in his dress or appearance, or
from something that he says or does. Our people caught the first two
words of the missionary’s song and named him after them, Ho Washte. He is
still called by this name.
Mr. Hall had brought his wife with him, and they began building a house
with timbers freighted up the river on a steamboat. Our chief, Crow’s
Belly, threatened to burn the house, but the missionary made him a feast
and explained that he wanted to use the house for a school, where Indian
children could learn English. Crow’s Belly thought this a good plan, and
made no further trouble.
The school was opened the next winter. It was soon noised in the village
that English would be taught in the mission school, and several young
men started to attend, my uncle, Wolf Chief, among them. They went each
morning with hair newly braided, faces painted, and big brass rings on
their fingers. Most of them found school work rather hard, and soon tired
of it.
The next fall, my parents started me to school, for my father wanted me
to learn English. The mission house was a half mile from our village; I
went each morning with a little Mandan companion, named Hollis Montclair.
We wore Indian dress, leggings, moccasins, and leather shirt.
At noon Hollis and I would return to the village for our noon meal; and
sometimes we would go to school again in the afternoon. We went pretty
faithfully all the fall, and until Christmas time, when our teacher told
us we were to have a Christmas tree.