“What if I chicken out?” I asked. I had to know.
“You thinking of backing out?”
“No, I mean what if I can’t hack it? What if I give up after a day or two and quit?”
“There’s no shame in that. It’s not unusual.”
If you say so, I thought to myself. We came to a plateau clearing, where there was a group of twenty or twenty-five tipis and a store that didn’t look like a store; it looked like a small warehouse made of logs and mud.
Donny parked the truck and said with a big smile, “My hometown.”
If it was a town, it wasn’t one that would show up on anybody’s map. What it really was, was a trip back in time to another world. Donny spent a few minutes talking to some guys in front of the store. One of the men was Delbert Bear, but I didn’t recognize the others. After that, Donny took me to a tipi that belonged to his older sister, Kaia, and her husband, Gilbert. Gilbert wasn’t there because he was away on some highway construction job.
This was not a canvas tipi; it was made of real buffalo hides. It did have a couple of modern features, such as cots to sleep on, and instead of an ordinary fireplace in the center, it had a wood-burning stove, with an exhaust pipe that went straight up through the top. The water, which had to be fetched from a well, was stored in large metal army cans; I tried lifting a full one, but it felt like it weighed about a thousand pounds.
“You need to eat,” Donny told me. “You’re looking at four days without any food.”
He no more than got the words out of his mouth than Kaia showed up with a cast-iron skillet full of casserole. She gave us both a heaping serving on metal plates that looked like they came from an old GI field kit. I took a few bites and said, “I hate to put your sister to this trouble. I could have bought some hot dogs or hamburgers at the snack bar; it’s not like I don’t have any money.”
Donny was shoveling it in. “You can’t eat that crap now, you’re going on a vision seek. You need Dakota food.”
“What is this stuff?”
“Chicken and eggplant fried in corn meal.”
“It’s good,” I said. Which was true, but I didn’t have my usual appetite, not with all the butterflies I felt in my stomach. I asked Donny what would be next, after we finished eating.
“Delbert is going to come. He was a shaman, a long time ago. You’ll be spending a couple of hours in the sweat lodge for purification.”
“Was he a real shaman?” I asked. “Or does he just think he was?”
Donny smiled. “He was a real shaman.”
“There are so many people putting themselves out for me. It’s very humbling.”
“Humility is the right frame of mind for vision seeking.”
“But I don’t feel worthy.”
“I believe in your sincerity,” said Donny. “So does the chief, or he wouldn’t be recommending the hanblecheya. My advice is, don’t think.”
“Have you gone on the hanblecheya?” I asked him.
He was finishing off his food. He nodded his head. “I did go once, two years ago. Four days is a long time to go with no TV or stereo or books or other people. It can really grind on you. The worst mistake is to think too much or try to figure things out.”
“But aren’t you supposed to learn your vision?”
“You’re supposed to receive your vision. You can’t make it happen, you have to let go.”
I told him, “When I left the chief’s trailer, I felt my brain spinning around with questions. It was too much. I felt myself wanting to go into a numbout. I think I should just let myself go into that head.”
“That’s exactly it. Just let it go.” Then he said if I was done eating, we’d better get started. I told him I needed to go to the bathroom, and I’d also like to have a little willow bark for my pipe. He showed me the way to the outhouse, then he headed for that store down at the end of the clearing to get the willow bark.
The outhouse turned out to be a two-holer, although I couldn’t figure out why. I was sitting there over one hole looking at the extra and wondering would you take a crap with someone side by side? This thought made me giggle, and then I started laughing out loud.
When I got back to the tipi, Donny and Delbert Bear were waiting. They both had blue jeans on, but no shirt. Delbert was also wearing an authentic Dakota headdress made of eagle feathers.
Delbert had a small dish of blue paint that looked like greasepaint. He used his thumbs to put the paint on both sides of his nose and under his eyes. Then he did the same to Donny and to me. Delbert’s ancient skin was like loose leather. He smelled like whiskey, but I reminded myself you don’t judge people by what’s on the surface.
Donny gave me about half a dozen plastic pouches of shredded willow bark, which I put in my backpack. He also gave me a large metal canteen full of water. It looked like shirts were out of touch, so I took mine off and put it in the backpack, too.
To get to the sweat lodge, we had to follow a path through a small section of timber, mostly pine. Since Delbert was leading the way, we weren’t walking very fast. He was carrying a bundle of sage and lighting pieces of it along the way. He was chanting as he went, but it sounded more like mumbling; I guess at his age, there’s not much difference. The only words I could make out were Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, and Inipi, which means purification rite.
Donny told me that he didn’t understand every single word Delbert Bear was saying, but basically he was appealing to Wakan Tanka so that my purification rite would be a good one. “Sweating in the lodge will purify your body,” said Donny. “But it will take Wakan Tanka to purify your soul.”
This was all stuff I knew from reading about it, but I felt so honored and privileged, I was getting a head rush. There was Delbert’s prayer and the smell of the burning sage and the pine limbs overhead with the background of the blue sky. Was this authentic or what? If Mrs. Bluefish or Mr. Saberhagen or Mrs. Grice could see me now, they’d be laughing out of the other sides of their faces.
We came to a clearing where a couple of women were putting the final touches on getting the sweat lodge ready by throwing extra buffalo hides over it. It was a small structure in the shape of a dome, built out of willow saplings. “The sweat lodge is not always ready,” Donny explained, “because hanblecheyas are not that common anymore.”
I didn’t know where the two women disappeared to, but all of a sudden it was just Donny and Delbert and me in front of the lodge. Still chanting, Delbert held up burning sage to the north, south, east, and west. I didn’t need Donny to tell me—Delbert was offering the prayer of sage to the four corners of the universe; there was no limit to the domain of Wakan Tanka. Delbert Bear kept burning the sage and offering it to the four corners so many times, I began to wonder if he was losing his concentration. But when he finally pulled back the flap, I didn’t need any instructions; I knew it was time for me to enter.
Inside, the lodge was dark and hot. Hot as hell, in fact. Because the sides were so sloped, there was only room at the center to stand up straight. The buffalo hides left a few small gaps, so there was some light coming through, but not much.
Delbert and Donny were still on the outside, with the flap pulled halfway. Delbert was saying something to me in Dakota.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Donny.
“He said you need to get naked now.”
I wasn’t sure I heard it right, so I asked him to repeat it; there was already sweat popping out on my forehead and my temples.
“The tradition is to go through Inipi without any clothes on. Besides the fact that it frees all your pores, it symbolizes leaving the things of the world behind.”
This was the unexpected. Maybe along the way I’d skipped a chapter I should have read. I was a little self-conscious, especially with the two of them standing there looking at me. I finally said, “It sounds logical, but would you mind closing the flap and I’ll just throw my clothes out?”
They closed the flap, which made the hut real, real
dark, which made it easier for me to take off my clothes. I tried not to think about what I was doing.
I heard Donny’s voice from the outside: “You’ll be glad you’re not wearing any clothes. You’ll be sweating so hard, clothes would just make you miserable.”
I rolled up my blue jeans, moccasins, and underwear and pitched them outside. I could hear Donny say, “I’ll put these in your backpack. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. Are you okay in there?”
After a few moments I said, “I’m okay.”
After a few moments’ pause of his own, I heard Donny say, “Don’t think.”
Then I heard their footsteps fade and I knew they were gone. I turned around. Even though this was real Dakota ritual, the authentic Inipi, and I felt real honored, I also felt real weird. I was standing there naked, in this semidark hut of a sweat lodge, in a different world. There was all this heat and so much silence, you could practically hear it.
It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust, though. In the center of the dirt floor there was a big hole, not deep but about three feet across. In the hole there were a dozen or so big rocks, some of them bigger than a volleyball. They were all pretty smooth and rounded, which told me they were probably meant only for this ritual purpose. Besides having a nice shape, they were hot. When I sat down on the folded blanket next to the circle, I found out how hot. It was like sitting beside a fireplace. I didn’t know who had heated the rocks, but I figured it must have been Delbert, and maybe he had some help. A small amount of steam was rising from the hot rocks, and I wondered what caused it.
By the time I got myself into a more or less comfortable position by folding my legs, the sweat was pouring out of me. It was running down my face and chest in little streams, which was uncomfortable; it was also gratifying when I remembered the purpose. According to Dakota belief, the water spirits rid the body of impurities so there’s no block in communication with Wakan Tanka. If your hanblecheya was going to be a success, you had to get rid of your impurities. I wondered if I could stand this flow of sweat for two hours, but I knew that kind of thought was dangerous; you had to do what you had to do. This was destiny here.
The vapor coming from the rocks smelled a little bit like sage, and it was also sort of hypnotic. After a while I found myself going into a mild numb-out.
Then the woman came in, carrying a pitcher.
It was one of the two women I had seen earlier, draping up the buffalo hides. She leaned down next to me and started sprinkling water from the pitcher onto the rocks. There was plenty of hissing and steam came rising up; the smell of sage was real strong, so I guess there was some of it mixed in with the water.
Real quick, I flinched and sat up straight. I was sitting there naked, and this woman was doing chores next to me. I could feel myself turning red as a beet, though I doubted she could notice that, not in that much darkness, in a cloud of rising steam. To tell the truth, though, she didn’t pay any attention to me at all. After she sprinkled the water for a few seconds, she was gone.
Even for a few minutes after she left, I still had the aftermath of being embarrassed, which meant my skin had a burning sensation added to the sweat flow. What the hell, I thought to myself, she was just a woman doing her job; I was getting exactly the same treatment as any young Dakota man going through Inipi.
The rest of the time seemed to go pretty fast. It was so hot and stifling, I had trouble breathing, but I got back into the numb zone and pretty much stayed in it. Every once in a while I wiped the sweat off my face so it wouldn’t bother my breathing. When the woman came a second time with her water pitcher, it didn’t make me uncomfortable. She came and went like it was a dream.
The next thing I knew, Delbert Bear and Donny were at the flap, asking me if I was ready to come out.
When I stepped out, the sun was so blinding, it took me several minutes to get my eyes adjusted. The breeze felt cool to me, even though it was a warm summer day. I was standing there in the altogether, shivering in the chill of gooseflesh, with all my sweat running down to the ground.
Donny asked me how it went.
“Pretty good, I think. The time went fast.”
“You can use some of the sage to dry off.”
“My impurities must be gone,” I said. “It’s like all my fluids are emptied.”
Donny put the canteen in my hand. “Have a drink,” he said.
I took a few swallows from the canteen, which was a big-time relief. I had to keep my eyes mostly closed because the light was still so blinding. I started wiping the sweat with the clusters of sage, which was not real comfortable. The sage is real holy to the Dakota, and real important to any ritual, but it’s not very absorbent. It did knock off some of the water, and besides that the sun was drying me off, too.
By the time I got myself mostly dry, and had my blue jeans and my moccasins back on, Delbert Bear was lighting a ceremonial pipe. It was a real Sioux ceremonial, about three feet long, nearly twice as long as my own pipe. The three of us passed the pipe, taking turns smoking it. Since I don’t inhale when I use a pipe, I couldn’t tell for sure what was in the bowl; all I know is, it didn’t taste like willow bark. No Dakota ritual is complete without the passing of the sacred pipe; we smoked it all the way down until it was out.
Then Delbert took some more sage pieces from his bundle and burned to the four corners once more.
“It’s time now,” said Donny. “Are you ready?”
I had this feeling of being lifted above ordinary stuff. I guess that’s what being purified means, but it’s hard to find the words to express a thing like that. I said to Donny, “I’m ready.”
We had to walk through some more woods until we came out on a huge prairie that sloped upward a long way into the distance. On the far side of the rise, at its highest point, there was a mound with a heavy growth of prairie grass and high weeds. The mound seemed to have a slit in it, but it was too far away to make out much. Just on the back side of the mound, there were a few boulders and a cluster of pine trees.
“What’s up there?” I asked Donny.
“It’s a cave. The opening is bigger than it looks from here.”
“It’s the place for hanblecheya,” I said reverently.
“It’s a place. It’s a traditional one. I recommend it, but any place would work as long as you’re off by yourself and your mind is open. It’s not the place that matters, it’s what’s inside you that really counts.”
“Is it the site you used?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure it will be just fine.” I didn’t tell him I was getting scared again.
It took us a while to get there. It was several hundred yards and even though the slope was gentle, we went by Delbert’s pace. He stopped every once in a while to catch his breath and burn some sage.
When we finally got to the mound, I found out how big it truly was; the opening itself, which looked so small from a distance, was big enough to walk through without touching. The cave inside was big, big as an average-sized bedroom, I would say. It was dark and moist, and cooler than the air outside.
Delbert Bear began chanting again and burning sage to the four corners. Donny took me up above where there was a small clearing among the group of pine trees, a nice cushion of pine needles on the ground. We were on a high spot, so the view was sensational in all directions. The clearing seemed like such a mellow place, I asked Donny if I had to spend the whole hanblecheya in the cave, or was it okay to come up here?
“You can be where you want to be,” he said. “According to Delbert and the other old-timers, when Black Elk went vision seeking he came here. He spent most of his time pacing and smoking his pipe.”
It was truly awesome to think that the Dakota were putting me on the very spot used by Black Elk himself. “Is it really true?” I asked him.
He smiled. “I don’t know for sure, but I like to think it’s true.”
We climbed back down to the cave opening; some of the prairie grass was so t
all, you had to push it out of your face. I guess Delbert Bear must have been getting weary, because he went ahead and burned up all the sage left in his bundle.
Then Donny said it was time for them to leave. He gave me the Dakota embrace, where you grip the back of each others’ upper arms. So did Delbert.
“Good luck, good vision,” said Donny.
I told him thanks. I was scared again, and I guess afraid what words might come out.
“If you have to come back early, you’ll be able to find the village, right?”
I licked my lips. “I could find it, no problem. But I don’t intend for that to happen.”
“Good.” He smiled again.
Then Delbert said something long to me in Dakota, but the only words I could understand were Wakan Tanka and Hanblecheya. I could tell it was some kind of a blessing. I nodded my head and said, “Thank you.”
After that, when they started to leave, he said something else to me, but I couldn’t understand any of his words. Donny said, “He’s reminding you to get naked. Clothes are things of the world.”
“Do I have to do it right now?”
He laughed. “You can wait.”
Then the two of them were headed down the hillside. I just stood there for the longest time, watching them get smaller and smaller. I could see clear to the woods we had come through, and way beyond that. As a matter of fact, I could’ve seen all the way to Chief Bear-in-cave’s trailer, except there was a mountain blocking it. But it was a radical thought to realize I could see six or seven miles in any direction. It was pretty obvious why this was considered an ideal spot for vision seeking.
I stood there watching until Delbert and Donny were just specks and I realized I wouldn’t be able to make them out when they went into the woods.
Now that I was all alone, it felt like it was just me and the universe. I wasn’t sure what to do, but then I remembered not to think too much. I went inside the cave to check it out better. Even though it was large, most of the ceiling was too low to stand up straight. The roomiest part was close to the entrance, which was also the part with the strongest light.
Dakota Dream Page 3
