After the men left, the woman chief had second thoughts. “These poor men,” she said, “they don’t know any better, but we could teach them. We could make clothes for them. Instead of shaming them, maybe we could get them to come back if we dress as poorly as they do, just with a piece of hide or fur around our waist.
And in the men’s camp, Old Man said: “Maybe we should try to meet these women creatures once more. Yes, we should give it another chance. See what I did on the sly.” He opened his traveling bundle in which he kept his jerk meat and other supplies, and out of it took a resplendent white buckskin outfit. “I managed to steal this when those women weren’t looking. It’s too small for me, but I’ll add on a little buffalo hide here and a little bear fur there, and put a shield over here, where it doesn’t come together over my belly. And I’ll make myself a feather headdress and paint my face. Then maybe this woman chief will look at me with new eyes. Let me go alone to speak with the women creatures first. You stay back a little and hide until I have straightened things out.”
So Old Man dressed up as best he could. He even purified himself in a sweat bath which he thought up for this purpose. He looked at his reflection in the lake waters and exclaimed: “Oh, how beautiful I am! I never knew I was that good-looking! Now that woman chief will surely like me.”
Then Old Man led the way back to the women’s camp. There was one woman on the lookout, and even though the men were staying back in hiding, she saw them coming. Then she spotted Old Man standing alone on a hilltop overlooking the camp. She hurried to tell the woman chief, who was butchering with most of the other women at the buffalo jump. For this job they wore their poorest outfits: just pieces of rawhide with a hole for the head, or maybe only a strap of rawhide around the waist. What little they had on was stiff with blood and reeked of freshly slaughtered carcasses. Even their faces and hands were streaked with blood.
“We’ll meet these men just as we are,” said the woman chief. “They will appreciate our being dressed like them.”
So the woman chief went up to the hill on which Old Man was standing, and the other women followed her. When he saw the woman chief standing there in her butchering clothes, her skinning flint knife still in her hand, her hair matted and unkempt, he exclaimed: “Hah! Hrumph! This woman chief is ugly. She’s dressed in rags covered with blood. She stinks. I want nothing to do with a creature like this. And those other women are just like her. No, I made no mistake putting these beings far away from us men!” And having said this, he turned around and went back the way he had come, with all his men following him.
“It seems we can’t do anything right,” said the woman chief. “Whatever it is, those male beings misunderstand it. But I still think we should unite with them. I think they have something we haven’t got, and we have something they haven’t got, and these things must come together. We’ll try one last time to get them to understand us. Let’s make ourselves beautiful.”
The women went into the river and bathed. They washed and combed their hair, braided it, and attached hair strings of bone pipes and shell beads. They put on their finest robes of well-tanned, dazzling white doeskin covered with wonderful designs of porcupine quills more colorful than the rainbow. They placed bone and shell chokers around their necks and shell bracelets around their wrists. On their feet they put fully quilled moccasins. Finally the women painted their cheeks with sacred red face paint. Thus wonderfully decked out, they started on their journey to the men’s camp.
In the village of the male creatures, Old Man was cross and ill-humored. Nothing pleased him. Nothing he ate tasted good. He slept fitfully. He got angry over nothing. And so it was with all the men. “I don’t know what’s the matter,” said Old Man. “I wish women were beautiful instead of ugly, sweet-smelling instead of malodorous, good-tempered instead of coming at us with stones or bloody knives in their hands.”
“We wish it too,” said all the other men.
Then a lookout came running, telling Old Man: “The women beings are marching over here to our camp. Probably they’re coming to kill us. Quick everybody, get your bows and arrows!”
“No, wait!” said Old Man. “Quick! Go to the river. Clean yourselves. Anoint and rub your bodies with fat. Arrange your hair pleasingly. Smoke yourselves up with cedar. Put on your best fur garments. Paint your faces with sacred red color. Put bright feathers on your heads.” Old Man himself dressed in the quilled robe stolen from the women’s camp which he had made into a war shirt. He wore his great chief’s headdress. He put on his necklace of bear claws. Thus arrayed, the men assembled at the entrance of their camp, awaiting the women’s coming.
The women came. They were singing. Their white quilled robes dazzled the men’s eyes. Their bodies were fragrant with the good smell of sweet grass. Their cheeks shone with sacred red face paint.
Old Man exclaimed: “Why, these women beings are beautiful! They delight my eyes! Their singing is wonderfully pleasing to my ears. Their bodies are sweet-smelling and alluring!”
“They make our hearts leap,” said the other men.
“I’ll go talk to their woman chief,” said Old Man. “I’ll fix things up with her.”
The woman chief in the meantime remarked to the other women: “Why, these men beings are really not as uncouth as we thought. Their rawness is a sort of strength. The sight of their arm muscles pleases my eyes. The sound of their deep voices thrills my ears. They are not altogether bad, these men.”
Old Man went up to the woman chief and said, “Let’s you and I go someplace and talk.”
“Yes, let’s do that,” answered the woman chief. They went someplace. The woman chief looked at Old Man and liked what she saw. Old Man looked at the woman chief and his heart pounded with joy. “Let’s try one thing that has never been tried before,” he said to the woman chief.
“I always like to try out new, useful things,” she answered.
“Maybe one should lie down, trying this,” said Old Man.
“Maybe one should,” agreed the woman chief. They lay down.
After a while Old Man said: “This is surely the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t ever imagine such a wonderful thing.”
“And I,” said the woman chief, “I never dreamed I could feel so good. This is much better, even, than eating buffalo tongues. It’s too good to be properly described.”
“Let’s go and tell the others about it,” said Old Man.
When Old Man and the woman chief got back to the camp, they found nobody there. All the male creatures and the women beings had already paired off and gone someplace, each pair to their own spot. They didn’t need to be told about this new thing; they had already found out.
When the men and women came back from wherever they had gone, they were smiling. Their eyes were smiling. Their mouths were smiling, their whole bodies were smiling, so it seemed.
Then the women moved in with the men. They brought all their things, all their skills to the men’s village. Then the women quilled and tanned for the men. Then the men hunted for the women. Then there was love. Then there was happiness. Then there was marriage. Then there were children.
—Based on four fragments dating from 1883 to 1910.
THE WELL-BAKED MAN
[PIMA]
The creation of the white man is depicted here, as in many other tales, as one of the Creator’s slight mistakes.
The Magician had made the world but felt that something was missing. “What could it be?” he thought. “What could be missing?” Then it came to him that what he wanted on this earth was some beings like himself, not just animals. “How will I make them?” he thought. First he built himself a horno, an oven. Then he took some clay and formed it into a shape like himself.
Now, Coyote was hanging around the way he usually does, and when Magician, who was Man Maker, was off gathering firewood, Coyote quickly changed the shape of that clay image. Man Maker built a fire inside the horno, then put the image in without looking
at it closely.
After a while the Magician said: “He must be ready now.” He took the image and breathed on it, whereupon it came to life. “Why don’t you stand up?” said Man Maker. “What’s wrong with you?” The creature barked and wagged its tail. “Ah, oh my, Coyote has tricked me,” he said. “Coyote changed my being into an animal like himself.”
“Coyote said, “Well, what’s wrong with it? Why can’t I have a pretty creature that pleases me?”
“Oh my, well, all right, but don’t interfere again.” That’s why we have the dog; it was Coyote’s doing.
So Man Maker tried again. “They should be companions to each other,” he thought. “I shouldn’t make just one.” He shaped some humans who were rather like himself and identical with each other in every part.
“What’s wrong here?” Man Maker was thinking. Then he saw. “Oh my, that won’t do. How can they increase?” So he pulled a little between the legs of one image, saying: “Ah, that’s much better.” With his fingernail he made a crack in the other image. He put some pleasant feeling in them somewhere. “Ah, now it’s good. Now they’ll be able to do all the necessary things.” He put them in the horno to bake.
“They’re done now,” Coyote told him. So Man Maker took them out and made them come to life.
“Oh my, what’s wrong?” he said. “They’re underdone; they’re not brown enough. They don’t belong here—they belong across the water someplace.” He scowled at Coyote. “Why did you tell me they were done? I can’t use them here.”
So the Magician tried again, making a pair like the last one and placing them in the oven. After a while he said: “I think they’re ready now.”
“No, they aren’t done yet,” said Coyote. “You don’t want them to come out too light again; leave them in a little longer.”
“Well, all right,” replied Man Maker. They waited, and then he took them out. “Oh my. What’s wrong? These are overdone. They’re burned too dark.” He put them aside. “Maybe I can use them some other place across the water. They don’t belong here.”
For the fourth time Man Maker placed his images inside the oven. “Now, don’t interfere,” he said to Coyote, “you give me bad advice. Leave me alone.”
This time the Magician did not listen to Coyote but took them out when he himself thought they were done. He made them come to life, and the two beings walked around, talked, laughed, and behaved in a seemly fashion. They were neither underdone nor overdone.
“These are exactly right,” said Man Maker. “These really belong here; these I will use. They are beautiful.” So that’s why we have the Pueblo Indians.
—Based on fragments recorded in the 1880s.
THE WHITE BUFFALO WOMAN
[BRULE SIOUX]
The Sioux are a warrior tribe, and one of their proverbs says, “Woman shall not walk before man.” Yet White Buffalo Woman is the dominant figure of their most important legend. The medicine man Crow Dog explains, “This holy woman brought the sacred buffalo calf pipe to the Sioux. There could be no Indians without it. Before she came, people didn’t know how to live. They knew nothing. The Buffalo Woman put her sacred mind into their minds.” At the ritual of the sun dance one woman, usually a mature and universally respected member of the tribe, is given the honor of representing Buffalo Woman.
Though she first appeared to the Sioux in human form, White Buffalo Woman was also a buffalo—the Indians’ brother, who gave its flesh so that the people might live. Albino buffalo were sacred to all Plains tribes; a white buffalo hide was a sacred talisman, a possession beyond price.
One summer so long ago that nobody knows how long, the Oceti-Shakowin, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate, the nation, came together and camped. The sun shone all the time, but there was no game and the people were starving. Every day they sent scouts to look for game, but the scouts found nothing.
Among the bands assembled were the Itazipcho, the Without-Bows, who had their own camp circle under their chief, Standing Hollow Horn. Early one morning the chief sent two of his young men to hunt for game. They went on foot, because at that time the Sioux didn’t yet have horses. They searched everywhere but could find nothing. Seeing a high hill, they decided to climb it in order to look over the whole country. Halfway up, they saw something coming toward them from far off, but the figure was floating instead of walking. From this they knew that the person was wakan, holy.
At first they could make out only a small moving speck and had to squint to see that it was a human form. But as it came nearer, they realized that it was a beautiful young woman, more beautiful than any they had ever seen, with two round, red dots of face paint on her cheeks. She wore a wonderful white buckskin outfit, tanned until it shone a long way in the sun. It was embroidered with sacred and marvellous designs of porcupine quill, in radiant colors no ordinary woman could have made. This wakan stranger was Ptesan-Wi, White Buffalo Woman. In her hands she carried a large bundle and a fan of sage leaves. She wore her blue-black hair loose except for a strand at the left side, which was tied up with buffalo fur. Her eyes shone dark and sparkling, with great power in them.
The two young men looked at her open-mouthed. One was overawed, but the other desired her body and stretched his hand out to touch her. This woman was lila wakan, very sacred, and could not be treated with disrespect. Lightning instantly struck the brash young man and burned him up, so that only a small heap of blackened bones was left. Or some say that he was suddenly covered by a cloud, and within it he was eaten up by snakes that left only his skeleton, just as a man can be eaten up by lust.
To the other scout who had behaved rightly, the White Buffalo Woman said: “Good things I am bringing, something holy to your nation. A message I carry for your people from the buffalo nation. Go back to the camp and tell the people to prepare for my arrival. Tell your chief to put up a medicine lodge with twenty-four poles. Let it be made holy for my coming.”
This young hunter returned to the camp. He told the chief, he told the people, what the sacred woman had commanded. The chief told the eyapaha, the crier, and the crier went through the camp circle calling: “Someone sacred is coming. A holy woman approaches. Make all things ready for her.” So the people put up the big medicine tipi and waited. After four days they saw the White Buffalo Woman approaching, carrying her bundle before her. Her wonderful white buckskin dress shone from afar. The chief, Standing Hollow Horn, invited her to enter the medicine lodge. She went in and circled the interior sunwise. The chief addressed her respectfully, saying: “Sister, we are glad you have come to instruct us.”
She told him what she wanted done. In the center of the tipi they were to put up an owanka wakan, a sacred altar, made of red earth, with a buffalo skull and a three-stick rack for a holy thing she was bringing. They did what she directed, and she traced a design with her finger on the smoothed earth of the altar. She showed them how to do all this, then circled the lodge again sunwise. Halting before the chief, she now opened the bundle. The holy thing it contained was the chanunpa, the sacred pipe. She held it out to the people and let them look at it. She was grasping the stem with her right hand and the bowl with her left, and thus the pipe has been held ever since.
Again the chief spoke, saying: “Sister, we are glad. We have had no meat for some time. All we can give you is water.” They dipped some wacanga, sweet grass, into a skin bag of water and gave it to her, and to this day the people dip sweet grass or an eagle wing in water and sprinkle it on a person to be purified.
The White Buffalo Woman showed the people how to use the pipe. She filled it with chan-shasha, red willow-bark tobacco. She walked around the lodge four times after the manner of Anpetu-Wi, the great sun. This represented the circle without end, the sacred hoop, the road of life. The woman placed a dry buffalo chip on the fire and lit the pipe with it. This was peta-owihankeshni, the fire without end, the flame to be passed on from generation to generation. She told them that the smoke rising from the bowl was Tunkashila
’s breath, the living breath of the great Grandfather Mystery.
The White Buffalo Woman showed the people the right way to pray, the right words and the right gestures. She taught them how to sing the pipe-filling song and how to lift the pipe up to the sky, toward Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to Unci, and then to the four directions of the universe.
“With this holy pipe,” she said, “you will walk like a living prayer. With your feet resting upon the earth and the pipestem reaching into the sky, your body forms a living bridge between the Sacred Beneath and the Sacred Above. Wakan Tanka smiles upon us, because now we are as one: earth, sky, all living things, the two-legged, the four-legged, the winged ones, the trees, the grasses. Together with the people, they are all related, one family. The pipe holds them all together.
“Look at this bowl,” said the White Buffalo Woman. “Its stone represents the buffalo, but also the flesh and blood of the red man. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions, because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of creation. The buffalo was put in the west by Wakan Tanka at the making of the world, to hold back the waters. Every year he loses one hair, and in every one of the four ages he loses a leg. The sacred hoop will end when all the hair and legs of the great buffalo are gone, and the water comes back to cover the Earth.
The wooden stem of this chanunpa stands for all that grows on the earth. Twelve feathers hanging from where the stem—the backbone—joins the bowl—the skull—are from Wanblee Galeshka, the spotted eagle, the very sacred bird who is the Great Spirit’s messenger and the wisest of all flying ones. You are joined to all things of the universe, for they all cry out to Tunkashila. Look at the bowl: engraved in it are seven circles of various sizes. They stand for the seven sacred ceremonies you will practice with this pipe, and for the Ocheti Shakowin, the seven sacred campfires of our Lakota nation.”
AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS Page 7
