AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  “You can’t have a boy’s first hide,” said Sweet Medicine. “Surely you must know this. But you are welcome to half of the meat, because I honor old age.”

  The chief took the meat but grabbed the hide too and began to walk off with it. Sweet Medicine took hold of one end, and they started a tug-of-war. The chief used his riding whip on Sweet Medicine, shouting: “How dare a poor nothing boy defy a chief?” As he whipped Sweet Medicine again and again across the face, the boy’s fighting spirit was aroused. He grabbed a big buffalo leg bone and hit the old man over the head.

  Some say Sweet Medicine killed that chief, others say the old man just fell down stunned. But in the village the people were angry that a mere boy had dared to fight the old chief. Some said, “Let’s whip him,” others said, “Let’s kill him.”

  After he had returned to the old woman’s lodge, Sweet Medicine sensed what was going on. He said: “Grandmother, some young men of the warrior societies will come here to kill me for having stood up for myself.” He thanked her for her kindness to him and then fled from the village. Later when the young warriors came, they were so angry to find the boy gone that they pulled the lodge down and set fire to it.

  The following morning someone saw Sweet Medicine, dressed like a Fox warrior, standing on a hill overlooking the village. His enemies set out in pursuit, but he was always just out of their reach and they finally retired exhausted. The next morning he appeared as an Elk warrior, carrying a crooked coupstick wrapped in otter skin. Again they tried to catch and kill him, and again he evaded them. They resumed their futile chase on the third morning, when he wore the red face paint and feathers of a Red Shield warrior, and on the fourth, when he dressed like a Dog soldier and shook a small red rattle tied with buffalo hair at his pursuers. On the fifth day he appeared in the full regalia of a Cheyenne chief. That made the village warriors angrier than ever, but they still couldn’t catch him, and after that they saw him no more.

  Wandering alone over the prairie, the boy heard a voice calling, leading him to a beautiful dark-forested land of many hills. Standing apart from the others was a single mountain shaped like a huge tipi: the sacred medicine mountain called Bear Butte. Sweet Medicine found a secret opening which has since closed (or perhaps was visible to him alone) and entered the mountain. It was hollow inside like a tipi, forming a sacred lodge filled with people who looked like ordinary men and women, but were really powerful spirits.

  “Grandson, come in, we have been expecting you,” the holy people said, and when Sweet Medicine took his seat, they began teaching him the Cheyenne way to live so that he could return to the people and give them this knowledge.

  First of all, the spirits gave him the sacred four arrows, saying: “This is the great gift we are handing you. With these wonderful arrows, the tribe will prosper. Two arrows are for war and two for hunting. But there is much, much more to the four arrows. They have great powers. They contain rules by which men ought to live.”

  The spirit people taught Sweet Medicine how to pray to the arrows, how to keep them, how to renew them. They taught him the wise laws of the forty-four chiefs. They taught him how to set up rules for the warrior societies. They taught him how women should be honored. They taught him the many useful things by which people could live, survive, and prosper, things people had not yet learned at that time. Finally they taught him how to make a special tipi in which the sacred arows were to be kept. Sweet Medicine listened respectfully and learned well, and finally an old spirit man burned incense of sweet grass to purify both Sweet Medicine and the sacred arrow bundle. Then the Cheyenne boy put the holy bundle on his back and began the long journey home to his people.

  During his absence there had been a famine in the land. The buffalo had gone into hiding, for they were angry that the people did not know how to live and were behaving badly. When Sweet Medicine arrived at the village, he found a group of tired and listless children, their ribs sticking out, who were playing with little buffalo figures they had made out of mud. Sweet Medicine immediately changed the figures into large chunks of juicy buffalo meat and fat. “Now there’s enough for you to eat,” he told the young ones, “with plenty left over for your parents and grandparents. Take the meat, fat, and tongues into the village, and tell two good young hunters to come out in the morning to meet me.”

  Though the children carried the message and two young hunters went out and looked everywhere for Sweet Medicine the next day, all they saw was a big eagle circling above them. They tried again on the second and third days with no success, but on the fourth morning they found Sweet Medicine standing on top of a hill overlooking the village. He told the two: “I have come bringing a wonderful gift from the Creator which the spirits inside the great medicine mountain have sent you. Tell the people to set up a big lodge in the center of the camp circle. Cover its floor with sage, and purify it with burning sweet grass. Tell everyone to go inside the tipi and stay there; no one must see me approaching.”

  When at last all was ready, Sweet Medicine walked slowly toward the village and four times called out: “People of the Cheyenne, with a great power I am approaching. Be joyful. The sacred arrows I am bringing.” He entered the tipi with the sacred arrow bundle and said: “You have not yet learned how to live in the right way. That is why the Ones Above were angry and the buffalo went into hiding.” The two young hunters lit the fire, and Sweet Medicine filled a deer-bone pipe with sacred tobacco. All night through, he taught the people what the spirits inside the holy mountain had taught him. These teachings established the way of the Tsistsistas, the true Cheyenne nation. Toward morning Sweet Medicine sang four sacred songs. After each song he smoked the pipe, and its holy breath ascended through the smoke hole up into the sky, up to the great mystery.

  At daybreak, as the sun rose and the people emerged from the sacred arrow lodge, they found the prairie around them covered with buffalo. The spirits were no longer angry. The famine was over.

  For many nights to come, Sweet Medicine instructed the people in the sacred laws. He lived among the Cheyenne for a long time and made them into a proud tribe respected throughout the Plains.

  Four lives the Creator had given him, but even Sweet Medicine was not immortal. Only the rocks and mountains are forever. When he grew old and feeble and felt that the end of his appointed time was near, he directed the people to carry him to a place near the Sacred Bear Butte. There they made a small hut for him out of cottonwood branches and cedar lodge poles covered with bark and leaves. They spread its floor with sage, flat cedar leaves, and fragrant grass. It was a good lodge to die in, and when they placed him before it, he addressed the people for the last time:

  I have seen in my mind that some time after I am dead—and may the time be long—light-skinned, bearded men will arrive with sticks spitting fire. They will conquer the land and drive you before them. They will kill the animals who give their flesh that you may live, and they will bring strange animals for you to ride and eat. They will introduce war and evil, strange sicknesses and death. They will try to make you forget Maheo, the Creator, and the things I taught you, and will impose their own alien, evil ways. They will take your land little by little, until there is nothing left for you. I do not like to tell you this, but you must know. You must be strong when that bad time comes, you men, and particularly you women, because much depends on you, because you are the perpetuators of life and if you weaken, the Cheyenne will cease to be. Now I have said all there is to say.

  Then Sweet Medicine went into his hut to die.

  —Told by members of the Strange Owl family on the Lame Deer Indian Reservation, Montana, 1967, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  [CHEYENNE]

  In another Cheyenne tale, the buffalo are villains instead of benevolent animals who give their flesh so that people may live.

  Hundreds of years ago there was a girl who was very good at quillwork, so good that she was the best among all tribes everywhere. Her designs were radiant with color, and she c
ould decorate anything—clothing, pouches, quivers, even tipis.

  One day this girl sat down in her parents’ lodge and began to make a man’s outfit of white buckskin—war shirt, leggings, moccasins, gauntlets, everything. It took her weeks to embroider them with exquisite quillwork and fringes of buffalo hair marvellous to look at. Though her mother said nothing, she wondered. The girl had no brothers, nor was a young man courting her, so why was she making a man’s outfit?

  As if that wasn’t strange enough, no sooner had she finished the first outfit than she began working on a second, then on a third. She worked all year until she had made and decorated seven complete sets of men’s clothes, the last a very small one. The mother just watched and kept wondering. At last after the girl had finished the seventh outfit, she spoke to her mother. “Someplace, many days’ walk from here, live seven brothers,” she said. “Someday all the world will admire them. Since I am an only child, I want to take them for my brothers, and these clothes are for them.”

  “It is well, my daughter,” her mother said. “I will go with you.”

  “This is too far for you to walk,” said the girl.

  “Then I will go part of the way,” said her mother.

  They loaded their strongest dogs with the seven bundles and set off toward the north. “You seem to know the way,” said the mother.

  “Yes. I don’t know why, but I do,” answered the daughter.

  “And you seem to know all about those seven young men and what makes them stand out from ordinary humans.”

  “I know about them,” said the girl, “though I don’t know how.”

  Thus they walked, the girl seeming sure of herself. At last the mother said, “This is as far as I can go.” They divided the dogs, the girl keeping two for her journey, and took leave of each other. Then the mother headed south back to her village and her husband, while the daughter continued walking into the north.

  At last the daughter came to a lone, painted, and very large tipi which stood near a wide stream. The stream was shallow and she waded across it, calling: “It is I, the young-girl-looking-for-brothers, bringing gifts.”

  At that a small boy about ten years old came out of the tipi. “I am the youngest of seven brothers,” he told the girl. “The others are out hunting buffalo, but they’ll come back after a while. I have been expecting you. But you’ll be a surprise to my brothers, because they don’t have my special gifts of knowing and of ‘No Touch.’ ”

  “What is the gift of no touch?” asked the girl.

  “Sometime you’ll find out. Well, come into the tipi.”

  The girl gave the boy the smallest outfit, which fitted him perfectly and delighted him with its beautiful quillwork.

  “I shall take you all for my brothers,” the girl told him.

  “And I am glad to have you for a sister,” answered the boy.

  The girl took all the other bundles off her two dogs’ backs and told them to go back to her parents, and at once the dogs began trotting south.

  Inside the tipi were seven beds of willow sticks and sage. The girl unpacked her bundles and put a war shirt, a pair of leggings, a pair of moccasins, and a pair of gauntlets upon each of the older brothers’ beds. Then she gathered wood and built a fire. From her packs she took dried meat, dried chokecherries, and kidney fat, and cooked a meal for eight.

  Toward evening just as the meal was ready, the six older brothers appeared laden with buffalo meat. The little boy ran outside the lodge and capered, kicking his heels and jumping up and down, showing off his quilled buckskin outfit.

  “Where did you get these fine clothes?” the brothers asked.

  “We have a new sister,” said the child. “She’s waiting inside, and she has clothes for you too. She does the most wonderful quillwork in the world. And she’s beautiful herself!”

  The brothers greeted the girl joyfully. They were struck with wonder at the white buckskin outfits she had brought as gifts for them. They were as glad to have a sister to care for as she was to have brothers to cook and make clothes for. Thus they lived happily.

  One day after the older brothers had gone out to hunt, a light-colored buffalo calf appeared at the tipi and scratched and knocked with his hoof against the entrance flap. The boy came out and asked it what it wanted.

  “I am sent by the buffalo nation,” said the calf. “We have heard of your beautiful sister, and we want her for our own.”

  “You can’t have her,” answered the boy. “Go away.”

  “Oh well, then somebody bigger than I will come,” said the calf and ran off jumping and kicking its heels.

  The next day when the boy and the sister were alone again, a young heifer arrived, lowing and snorting, rattling the entrance flap of the tipi.

  Once more the child came out to ask what she wanted.

  “I am sent by the buffalo nation,” said the heifer. “We want your beautiful sister for ourselves.”

  “You can’t have her,” said the boy. “Go away!”

  “Then somebody bigger than I will come,” said the heifer, galloping off like the calf before her.

  On the third day a large buffalo cow, grunting loudly, appeared at the lodge. The boy came out and asked, “Big buffalo cow, what do you want?”

  “I am sent by the buffalo nation,” said the cow. “I have come to take your beautiful sister. We want her.”

  “You can’t have her,” said the boy. “Go away!”

  “Somebody very big will come after me,” said the buffalo cow, “and he won’t come alone. He’ll kill you if you don’t give him your sister.” With these words the cow trotted off.

  On the fourth day the older brothers stayed home to protect the girl. The earth began to tremble a little, then to rock and heave. At last appeared the most gigantic buffalo bull in the world, much larger than any you see now. Behind him came the whole buffalo nation, making the earth shudder. Pawing the ground, the huge bull snorted and bellowed like thunder. The six older brothers, peering out through the entrance hole, were very much afraid, but the little boy stepped boldly outside. “Big, oversized buffalo bull, what do you want from us?” he asked.

  “I want your sister,” said the giant buffalo bull. “If you won’t give her to me, I’ll kill you all.”

  The boy called for his sister and older brothers to come out. Terrified, they did so.

  “I’ll take her now,” growled the huge bull.

  “No,” said the boy, “she doesn’t want to be taken. You can’t have her. Go away!”

  “In that case I’ll kill you now,” roared the giant bull. “I’m coming!”

  “Quick, brother, use your special medicine!” the six older brothers cried to the youngest.

  “I am using it,” said he. “Now all of you, catch hold of the branches of this tree. Hurry!” He pointed to a tree growing by the tipi. The girl and the six brothers jumped up into its branches. The boy took his bow and swiftly shot an arrow into the tree’s trunk, then clasped the trunk tightly himself. At once the tree started to grow, shooting up into the sky in no time at all. It all happened much, much quicker than it can be told.

  The brothers and the girl were lifted up in the tree branches, out of reach of the buffalo. They watched the herd of angry animals grunting and snorting, milling around the tree far below.

  “I’ll chop the tree down with my horns!” roared the giant buffalo. He charged the tree, which shook like a willow and swayed back and forth. Trying not to fall off, the girl and the brothers clutched the branches. The big bull had gouged a large piece of wood from the trunk.

  The little boy said, “I’d better use one more arrow.” He shot an arrow high into the treetop, and again the tree grew, shooting up another thousand feet or so, while the seven brothers and the girl rose with it.

  The giant buffalo bull made his second charge. Again his horns stabbed into the tree and splintered wood far and wide. The gash in the trunk had become larger.

  The boy said, “I must shoot another arro
w.” He did, hitting the treetop again, and quick as a flash the tree rose another thousand feet.

  A third time the bull charged, rocking the tree, making it sway from side to side so that the brothers and the girl almost tumbled out of their branches. They cried to the boy to save them. The child shot a fourth arrow into the tree, which rose again so that the seven young men and the girl disappeared into the clouds. The gash in the tree trunk had become dangerously large.

  “When that bull charges again, he will shatter this tree,” said the girl. “Little brother, help us!”

  Just as the bull charged for the fourth time, the child loosed the single arrow he had left, and the tree rose above the clouds.

  “Quick, step out right on the clouds. Hurry!” cried the little boy. “Don’t be afraid!”

  The bull’s head hit the tree trunk with a fearful impact. His horns cut the trunk in two, but just as the tree slowly began to topple, the seven brothers and the girl stepped off its branches and into the sky.

  There the eight of them stood. “Little brother, what will become of us now? We can never return to earth; we’re up too high. What shall we do?”

  “Don’t grieve,” said the little boy, “I’ll turn all of us into stars.”

  At once the seven brothers and the girl were bathed in radiant light. They formed themselves into what the white men call the big dipper. You can see them there now. The brightest star is the beautiful girl, who is filling the sky with glimmering quillwork, and the star twinkling at the very end of the dipper’s handle is the little boy. Can you see him?