Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143)

by Dog, Leonard C.

  A yuwipi ceremony takes place when somebody with a problem asks for it. You must ask in the right way, with the pipe. The medicine man, the yuwipi wichasha, does not accept pay for his help, but the one who wants to be helped, the sponsor, has to provide the food for all who want to participate. Like other ceremonies, this one begins with a sweat. While those who will partake in the yuwipi purify themselves in the sweat lodge, the women prepare the sacred food. Inside the medicine man’s house a room has been made ready for the ceremony. All furniture has been taken out. All the windows have been covered with blankets so that not even the tiniest bit of light can enter from the outside, because the ceremony has to be performed in total darkness. Everything that could reflect light is taken down from the walls or covered up—mirrors, pictures, photos, anything made of glass or having a shiny surface. People coming into the room even take off their wristwatches. Now the room is empty, waiting to be made sacred, waiting for the spirits. Blankets are folded up and put along the walls for the people to sit on. The floor is covered with sage.

  Many elements are used in the yuwipi ceremony—tobacco ties, eagle feathers, eagle wings, an eagle bone whistle, deer tails, drums, gourd rattles, and, most of all, the chanunpa, the sacred pipe.

  First, a square is laid out inside the room, made of chanli wapahta, tobacco ties. The chanli are made this way: You cut a little square of colored cloth, maybe an inch and a half across. On this you put a little pinch of tobacco. Then you fold it into a tiny bundle that you tie into a long string. Four hundred five chanli are tied on that string. They stand for all the different kinds of animals, for all the kinds of plants in the universe. They also represent the spirits that might come in to help. So you form this string into a square. The medicine man is on the inside. The sponsor, the drummer, the singer, and all others who want to be cured or have their problems solved sit on the outside of the space made by the string of tobacco ties. In the old days the chanli, the little bundles, were tanned deer hide filled with chanshasha, red willow bark tobacco, but now somehow it is changed and we use colored material and Bull Durham.

  In my ceremony, we place large cans at the four corners of the sacred square. They are filled with earth, and into each we put a peeled willow stick, to the top of which are tied strips of colored cloth offerings, the waunyanpi. These colored flags represent the sacred four directions—black for the west, red for the north, yellow for the east, and white for the south. They also stand for the generations. It means that the sacred square now stands for the whole universe. Between the black west flag and the red north flag, at the top of the sacred space opposite the door, we place the center staff. Its upper half is painted red, the lower half is black. In between is a narrow yellow stripe. The red represents the day, the black stands for the night. The thin yellow stripe is the dawn or the sunset. To the top of the staff we tie a single center eagle feather. It represents wanblee, our sacred bird, the Great Spirit’s messenger, the go-between from Tunkashila to the human being. This feather is also for the spirits to come in. Then I put another eagle wing feather under the other one. That represents all the flying relatives, the winged ones. This feather creates a good spirit, good understanding.

  Halfway down the staff we fasten the tail of a black-tailed deer. The deer is fast and has a powerful spirit. If there is any person present who is sick and wants to be doctored, the deer will come in, go around, and walk through. If it turns back to where someone sits and turns its back on him, you can’t cure that person. Early in the morning the deer comes to the creek to drink. He can smell and hear a human being from half a mile away. If somebody is far behind him he knows. He can see in the darkness of the night. On his eyes you see a yellow part and a white part. And in the morning the sun comes up, yellow and white shining upon all living beings. The white is your bone, and the yellow is for when you get into the spiritual power and you see little golden sparks in front of you. On the horns you see the four colors, because the deer horn has four colors. In the beginning, when the deer horn is growing, it is pink, or redlike, then it turns a little bit whitelike, then yellow, and then black. So there are the four direction colors. There is a powerful medicine we get from behind the deer’s ear. It’s some kind of fat. You use this medicine to find healing herbs and roots and to pray with it. For this reason we have the blacktailed-deer medicine to help cure people during the yuwipi. Together with the center staff I have four smaller willow sticks with cloth offerings tied to them.

  Sometimes I also use a buffalo skull altar. Tatanka, the buffalo, is sacred. He stands for the four winds of the universe. He is our brother. During a yuwipi ceremony I took part in, a buffalo spirit came out of the earth into the meeting. He rumbled and bellowed, and his hooves made the ground shake beneath us.

  In front of the center staff we make an earth altar. This is most sacred when made from gopher dust, from earth taken from a gopher hole. Gophers have power. It is a medicine. Before going into battle, Crazy Horse always sprinkled gopher dust over his horse’s back. The altar is round. It is made smooth with an eagle feather or a sprig of sage. The medicine man traces a design on it—maybe an Iktomi design, a spider, a thunderbird, wakinyan, design, or a wicite, a human face. It is up to the yuwipi man to pick his own design. This altar represents Unci, Grandmother Earth. Around it I always place a circle of chanli.

  On each side of the altar I place a wagmuha, a gourd rattle. The gourds are made of tanned deer or buffalo hide, just like a ball filled with the little ant rocks. Sometimes feathers are attached to them. Often during a yuwipi ceremony these gourds fly through the air all by themselves. When the spirit enters, he picks up the gourd and makes a noise with it, makes it talk. He may hit your body with it to make a cure. Sometimes there is a spark, a tiny flash of lightning at the point where the gourd makes a hit. Bad spirits do not like the sound of the wagmuha. They run away from it. If you put a sprig of sage behind your ear, if you are lucky you can understand what the gourd is saying. The gourd travels around the room or tent so fast that you can never catch it. The sound of the rattle is not music; it is the sound of spirit voices. Tunkashila put the spirits into the yuwipi ceremony. They are visiting spirits, soul spirits. When the wagmuha, or the eagle feather, touches a person, that’s a gift of power from the spirits. The spirit is a nest touch. Someday everybody should be a nest, a nest builder for the future. Good things happen when you have a son or daughter. Tunkashila sees it. So he touches you like that. The spirit talks in his own language, hanbloglaka, dream speaking. Only the yuwipi man can understand it. He is the interpreter.

  Before getting to the heart of the ceremony we smoke up the room with wachanga, smoldering sweet grass. Its good scent drives away evil spirits and adds to the sacredness of what is going to take place. Someone could make a flesh offering at that time. Then the medicine man takes off his shoes and shirt and stands ready to be tied up. We use rawhide for the tying. We take a big hide and cut it all in a circle. We cut it about an inch wide, for bowstrings as well as the yuwipi. We use the skin from the back of the animal, opening it up on top where the bone is covered by a white gut. It makes a string as strong as nylon. You roll and twist it together to make a long rope. The rawhide represents itazipe ikan, the bowstring. The spirit strikes with a bow.

  There are two helpers standing with the medicine man, the yuwipi wichasha. They first tie his hands and fingers together behind his back. The finger ties represent the wakinyan, the thunderbirds. Next the helpers cover the yuwipi man with a star blanket. They cover his head and his face, all of him. In the old days they used a buffalo robe, but now it’s a quilt. They make him into a bundle, wrap him up like a mummy. They tie him with the long rawhide thong, tight around his neck and then down and all around his body, using seven knots to do the job. They follow an ancient vision. They have to do everything right. A mistake could endanger the yuwipi wichasha’s life. They make the string tight to unite the man with Tunkashila, the Everywhere Spirit. The one who is bundled up senses what the peo
ple feel. The tying is for concentration. People have one or two minds, but in this ceremony everybody is going into one mind. It pulls together the medicine man, the spirits, and all who have come to the ceremony. The helpers lift the medicine man up and lay him facedown upon the sage-covered floor. All this is called wichapahtepi, meaning “they tie him up.” Hokshila unpapi, the cradle bundling, the little baby ceremony, that’s one of the meanings of the yuwipi. They cradle bundle each other. We have performed this since the beginning of time. It symbolizes the baby wrapped in its cradleboard. While all this is taking place the yuwipi man prays to the four winds of the earth.

  After they have laid the yuwipi man on his bed of sage, the helpers step outside the square of tobacco ties, leaving him alone in the center. He lies there so that the spirits can come in and use him. While all this has been going on, the yuwipi wichasha has prayed to the four winds of the earth. Now the moment comes when all lights are put out, plunging the room into darkest darkness, into womb darkness, blacker than a moonless night. It is like floating in a river of black ink. It is the darkness of the grave. Then the drums begin to pound in step with your heartbeat. You feel it pulsating in your veins. Then the singing starts. There could be one singer and one drum or there could be several.

  Uncle Bill Eagle Feathers used to say, “That man all bundled up like a mummy, he is like dead. It is up to all who participate to bring him back to life.” When I am lying there I am a foundation, a receptacle for the spirit. So you are empty for that, lifeless. You make yourself completely empty to let the spirit energy come into you, to fill that space. At the fourth song the spirits come in. They speak to me in little voices. They use dream language. Wrapped up in my star blanket, I understand what they are saying. They are telling me the answers to what the sponsor and the other people present want to know. They can hear the voices, too, but they can’t understand them. If they put a sprig of sage behind their ear, or in their hair, the spirits will talk to them. When I am tied up and they sing the songs, I feel the powers of the singers coming into me and my power going into them. And I travel while I am tied up, to all kinds of spirit places. I could travel to the place where Sitting Bull is buried, and still my body is lying there all wrapped and tied up. I could travel all over and, at the same time, spirits could come in from far away—Crazy Horse’s spirit, maybe. The spirits of people who used to live, who have passed on, speak directly to the one who is tied up.

  One sign that the spirits have come in are sparks of light flickering in the darkness, flying all over the ceiling, dashing all over the place, sometimes making a sound like two pebbles clicking together. These are the spirits of wakinyan, the thunderbirds. The wakinyan works with the sun, with the light that is everywhere. The sun is life; it lives within us, even in the dark. Wakinyan and inyan, the stone, are related. Two flint rocks knocked together make a little spark, a tiny bit of lightning. The rock and the wakinyan go together. Nobody can explain the yuwipi lights flitting through the darkness. The white man’s science can’t. It is the work of Tunka wasichun, rock power. Sometimes an eagle comes into the ceremony. You can’t see him, but you hear his cry far above you and you feel the touch of his wings.

  Sometimes I do a kind of yuwipi ceremony called iktomi lowanpi, spider ceremony. For this I use only seventy-five tobacco ties. It is for somebody who is in trouble and needs help in a hurry. So this is a shortened ceremony. I trace a spiderweb design on the earth altar. Iktomi, the spider man, Tunka, and wakinyan are closely related. It is all part of the yuwipi. A spider ceremony is a scouting. If anything is going to happen in the future, you scout for it. We have the power to do this. The Iktomi lowanpi is a one-track identity spiritual power given to our tiyoshpaye. It will always be in our family. The spider man is speaking to me when I am tied up, like a voice out of the womb. He is talking in a high, sharp voice, a voice you hear only in the yuwipi. A voice of the fathers and grandfathers.

  In the end they sing the sixteenth song, the wanagi kiglapi olowan, the spirits-going-home song. When the lights are turned on again, the yuwipi man sits in the center, untied and unwrapped. Then he interprets what the spirits have told him, where to find a person or a thing lost, how to cure someone’s disease. The yuwipi man could do some doctoring at that time, lead a sick person to the altar, smoke him up with cedar or sweet grass and fan him off with the eagle wing. Maybe he gives him or her a special medicine, a kind of root, for which the white man has no name. Then the sacred pipe goes around, clockwise, and everybody smokes it. Those present have the privilege to speak, to say something good, to ask questions. After the last person has smoked, we say “mitakuye oyasin,” all my relatives, and the ceremony is finished.

  After that we eat the sacred food. There will be a kettle of dog soup, because the yuwipi is also a dog feast. The dog is a sacrifice. The dog is sacred. If you leave your home, the dog will stay around until the last bit of food is gone. A dog will stay by the side of his dead master and starve rather than leave. Every once in a while the dog will bark toward the east and the west. When somebody dies he’ll be calling to the family, barking. The dog sees the spirits, the dead souls. The dog knows when someone is about to die, but you don’t know it. They choke the dog toward the west. We let a man pull the rope on the dog only for the yuwipi, heyoka, and memorial ceremony. The dog does not suffer. The rope kills him instantly. My father always painted a red stripe from the dog’s nose and down the spine before choking him, because the dog is sacred. They also scent the dog, cedar him, or fan him off with sweet grass. The women singe it, cut the neck, and let the blood come out. They pray while doing this. Besides the dog we eat other sacred food: wojapi, which is a chokecherry pudding, and corn wasna, which is corn and kidney fat pounded together; we drink a kind of herb tea. We also drink the pejuta sapa, or “black medicine”—namely, coffee. That is not sacred, but good, hot, and strong. And then it is over. Maybe it is already close to sunup. Time to say good-bye, go home, and go to sleep.

  thirteen

  THE GHOSTS RETURN

  Maka sitomniya ukiye, The whole world is coming,

  oyate ukiye, a nation is coming,

  oyate ukiye, a nation is coming,

  wanbli oyate wan the eagle brought

  hoshihiye lo, the message,

  ate heye lo, says the father,

  ate heye lo, says the father,

  maka owanchaya ukiye, the whole world is coming, the buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,

  kangi oyate wan the crow has

  hoshihiye lo, brought the message,

  ate heye lo, says the father,

  ate heye lo. says the father.

  Kangi oyate wan uyike lo, The crow nation is coming,

  ate heye lo, says the father,

  ate heye lo. says the father.

  Ghost dance

  On January 14, 1890, my great-grandfather Jerome Crow Dog came out of the Badlands with his people to surrender. He and his band were the last of the ghost dancers, the last to dance the wanagi wachipi. In March of 1973, I, Leonard Crow Dog, brought the ghost dance back. At the right place, at the right time. I started from where the first Crow Dog had stopped. I brought it back at Wounded Knee, during the seventy-one-day siege, when I was the spiritual leader of AIM, the American Indian Movement. My great-grandfather’s spirit gave me a vision to do this. The vision told me to revive this ceremony at the place where Chief Big Foot’s ghost dancers, three hundred men, women, and children, had been massacred by the army, shot to pieces by cannons, old people, babies. I could feel their spirits telling me to do it. Everybody at Wounded Knee could feel the presence of the ghosts of those who had been killed, their bodies lying in that ditch, right under our feet. So I rounded up as many people as I could get hold of, with the help of Wallace Black Elk. We were going to dance for the sake of the spirits. For our own sakes.

  I spoke to the people. Somebody taped it, so my words are not lost: “Tomorrow, we’re going to ghost dance. For eighty-three years it has never been dan
ced. When they killed our people here so long ago, it was said that the nation’s hoop was broken. We’ll make the sacred hoop whole again. We’re going to dance, whether it rains or snows. Whether the land is muddy or covered with snow, the spirit will come traveling. There’ll be no rest, no intermission, no coffee break. During the day, we’re not going to eat or drink water. We’ll unite together as one tribe through the language of the Great Spirit. We’re not going to divide. We’re going to be brothers and sisters. Whether you’re Mohawk, or Cheyenne, we’ll be as one.

  “We will hold hands. If one of you gets into the power, if he’s in a trance, if he falls down inside the ring, let him. If somebody goes into convulsions, let him. Don’t get scared. The spirit will be the doctor. If anything happens like that, hold hands, keep dancing. There will be no drum. The earth will be our drum. Our feet will do the drumming. There’s a song I’m going to sing, my grandfather’s song. The clouds will be dreams. They’ll go into your minds. You will see visions. We will elevate ourselves from this world to another. From there we can see Tunkashila.

  “We’re going to remember our brothers who were killed by the white man, and you will see your brothers, your relations who have died. You will see them. The ghost dance spirit will appear. The sacred pipe is going to be there. The fire is going to be there. The sage is going to be there. Indian tobacco is going to be there. It starts physically and goes into spirituality. And then you will get into the power. It’s going to start here, at Wounded Knee, and it will continue. We are going to unite as brothers and sisters. We will ghost dance. Everybody has heard about the ghost dance, but nobody has ever seen it. It was something the United States government had forbidden—no ghost dance, no sun dance, no Indian religion. That hoop has not been broken. We will dance for the future generations.