So they began to dance, and when they had ended, the chief asked Wakiash what kind of dance he would like. The dancers had been using all sorts of masks. Most of all Wakiash wanted the Echo mask and the mask of the Little Man who goes about the house talking, talking, and trying to quarrel with others. Wakiash only formed his wishes in his mind; the mouse told them to the chief. So the animals taught Wakiash all their dances, and the chief told him that he might take as many dances and masks as he wished, as well as the house and the totem pole.
The beaver-chief promised Wakiash that these things would all go with him when he returned home, and that he could use them all in one dance. The chief also gave him for his own the name of the totem pole, Kalakuyuwish, meaning sky pole, because the pole was so tall.
So the chief took the house and folded it up like a little bundle. He put it into the headdress of one of the dancers and gave it to Wakiash, saying, “When you reach home, throw down this bundle. The house will become as it was when you first saw it, and then you can begin to give a dance.”
Wakiash went back to the raven, and the raven flew away with him toward the mountain from which they had set out. Before they arrived, Wakiash fell asleep, and when he awoke, the raven and the frog were gone and he was alone.
It was night by the time Wakiash arrived home. He threw down the bundle that was in the headdress, and there was the house with its totem pole! The whale painted on the house was blowing, the animals carved on the totem pole were making their noises, and all the masks inside the house were talking and crying aloud.
At once Wakiash’s people woke up and came out to see what was happening, and Wakiash found that instead of four days, he had been away for four years. They all went into the new house, and Wakiash began to make a dance. He taught the people the songs, and they sang while Wakiash danced. Then the Echo came, and whoever made a noise, the Echo made the same by changing the mouthpieces of its mask. When they had finished dancing, the house was gone; it went back to the animals. And all the chiefs were ashamed because Wakiash now had the best dance.
Then Wakiash made a house and masks and a totem pole out of wood, and when the totem pole was finished, the people composed a song for it. This pole was the first the tribe had ever had. The animals had named it Kalakuyuwish, “the pole that holds up the sky,” and they said that it made a creaking noise because the sky was so heavy. And Wakiash took for his own the name of the totem pole, Kalakuyuwish.
—Based on a version reported by Natalie Curtis in The Indian’s Book, 1907.
* Cottie Burland, North American Indian Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, 1965, p. 31.
Ghost stories and tales of the dead are essential parts of almost every people’s folklore, and American Indians are no exception. The ghosts here, however, are not necessarily always evil or threatening; the dead don’t automatically become ghosts, either, so all haunting visions are not necessarily spirits of the departed. Among some tribes there are only vague ideas of the existence of an afterlife. Death was the end, and that was that. At the other extreme of the cultural spectrum were the burial-mound builders like the Natchez, who practiced an elaborate death cult with pyramids for the dead. The ruler was buried with treasures of copper, mica, shell, and pearls, as well as a host of women and retainers, dispatched to serve him in the next world.
In between are the cultures that envision the souls of the dead living in the spirit land in much the same way that they lived on earth—the men hunting buffalo, gathering crops, or fishing; the women tending the home or tipi. The Mandans believed that people had four souls, and the sage and meadowlark souls merged to form the spirit that went on to another world. The third soul remained in its old lodge, and the fourth appeared from time to time simply to frighten people.
In variations on the classical Orpheus theme, the tales here recount several voyages made by the living into the land of the departed, from either curiosity or devotion to a dead relative. While the Greek hero follows his beloved to a world underground, his Indian counterpart may find himself traveling to the bottom of a lake, across the Milky Way, or over mountains and plains similar to those inhabited by the living, although the road is usually strewn with traps for the cowardly or careless.
Exchanges between the dead and the living are common—men or women suddenly find out that they have married a ghost, a discovery that puts an interesting twist in romance. The lives of the dead and the living are not generally compatible over the long run, it would seem; each must return to his or her own kind eventually, so that order may be reestablished.
Relations with the departed continue, however, through ritual. Among many tribes a warrior must purify himself, fast, and abstain from sex in order to propitiate the ghost of an enemy he has killed. When a Sioux died, his wanagi, his ghost or soul, left the body but stayed near for four days. “You’d better please this spirit,” Lame Deer said, “or it might make trouble.”
With every meal, you leave a morsel aside for the spirits. When I drink some mni-sha, wine, or some suta, hard liquor, I always spill a little bit for an old wino friend, saying, “Here, kola, is something for you to enjoy.” A good man could take his horse along to the Happy Hunting Grounds. That’s why a great chief’s or fighter’s best horse was sometimes killed after his death, and the horse’s head and tail were tied to the funeral scaffold. We didn’t believe in burying people in the earth. No, the body of our dead were put on scaffolds or in trees, where the birds, the wind, and the rain could take care of them. The soul went on to the spirit land through the sky, and on the trail sat Owl-Woman, Hihan-Kaha, who would not let them pass unless they had the right signs on their foreheads, or chins, or wrists. When a child died, sometimes the father could not stand parting from it. Then he took some hair from the body and put it into a bundle which he placed in a special tipi. There he kept the child’s soul. Soul keeping was hard. It might go on for a year, and during this time the father could not touch his wife, his gun, his weapons; he could not go out and hunt. At the end, the soul was released with a great giveaway feast.
Among the Navajo and some other Southwestern tribes, the dwelling in which a person had died was abandoned or destroyed, and his corpse, the token of lifelessness, greatly feared. People not related to the departed would offer to bury or cover the body as a gesture of good will. They believed that ghosts come out only after dark, and their appearance often betokens the imminent death of a close relative. In some tribes the name of a dead person was never mentioned again.
Some ghosts are harmlessly funny, prompting (or getting caught in) a string of comic episodes among the living. They have also been known to play tricks on people, making a man’s mouth crooked or bringing illness. Parents invoke them as bogeymen to scare children—“If you don’t behave, Siyoko will take you away,” a Sioux mother might threaten. Other ghosts may bless a person in his dreams, or warn of approaching dangers.
A whistling sound behind a tipi usually announces the arrival of a ghostly messenger. Ghosts are generally dark and indistinct in shape; they nourish themselves only on the smell, not the substance, of food. However, they have also been known to appear in the guise of coyotes, mice, and sparks of fire. The Crow believe that certain ghosts haunt graves, hoot like owls, and manifest themselves as whirlwinds.
Among the Tewa Pueblos, the newly dead soul wanders about in the world of the living, in the company of his ancestors, for four days, during which time the village remains generally uneasy. Relatives fear that the soul will become lonely and return to take one of them with him. The house itself must not be left unoccupied at any time during these four days, in order to keep the soul from reoccupying it. The soul is eventually released when the head elder utters a short prayer and reveals the purpose of the symbolic acts the relatives have performed.
We have muddied the water for you (the smoke)
We have cast shadows between us (the charcoal)
We have made deep gullies between us (the lines)
Do not, there
fore, reach for even a hair on our heads
Rather, help us attain that which we are always seeking
Long life, that our children may grow
Abundant game, the raising of crops
And in all the works of man
Ask for these things for all, and do no more
And now you must go, for you are now free.
When Incarnacion Peña, the last sacred clown of San Ildefonso Pueblo, had been dead four days, one of his friends remarked, “He is already up there in the mountains, making rain for us.”
[BRULE SIOUX]
Long ago there lived a young, good-looking man whom no woman could resist. He was an elk charmer—a man who had elk medicine, which carries love power. When this man played the siyotanka, the flute, it produced a magic sound. At night a girl hearing it would just get up and go to him, forsaking her father and mother, her own lover or husband. Maybe her mind told her to stay, but her heart was already beating faster and her feet were running.
Yet the young man, the elk charmer himself, was a lover with a stone heart. He wanted only to conquer women, the way a warrior conquers an enemy. After they came to him once, he had no more use for them. So in spite of his wonderful powers, he did not act as a young man should and was not well liked.
One day when the elk charmer went out to hunt buffalo, he did not return to the village. His parents waited for him day after day, but he never came back. At last they went to a special kind of medicine man who has “finding stones” that give him the power to locate lost things and lost people.
After this holy man had used his finding stones, he told the parents: “I have sad news for you. Your son is dead, and not from sickness or an accident. He was killed. He is lying out there on the prairie.”
The medicine man described the spot where they would find the body, it was as he had said. Out on the prairie their son was lying dead, stabbed through the heart. Whether he had been killed by an enemy warrior, or a wronged husband from his own tribe, or even a discarded, thrown-away girl, no one ever knew.
His parents dressed him in his finest war shirt, which he had loved more than all his women, and in dead man’s moccasins, whose soles are beaded with spirit-land designs. They put his body up on the funeral scaffold, and then the tribe left that part of the country. For it was a very bad thing, this killing which was probably within the tribe. It was, in fact, the very worst thing that could happen, even though everybody was thinking that the young man had brought it on himself.
One evening many days’ ride away, when the people had already forgotten this sad happening and were feasting in their tipis, all the dogs in camp started howling. Then the coyotes in the hills took up their mournful cry. Nobody could discover the reason for all this yowling and yipping. But when it finally stopped, the people could hear the hooting of many owls, speaking of death and ghostly things. The laughter in camp stopped. The fires were put out, and the entry flaps to the tipis were closed.
People tried to sleep, but instead they found themselves listening. They knew a spirit was coming. Finally they heard the unearthly sounds of a ghost flute and a voice they knew very well—the voice of the dead young man with the elk medicine. They heard this voice singing:
Weeping I roam.
I thought I was the only one
Who had known many loves,
Many girls, many women,
Too many of them.
Now I am having a hard time.
I am roaming, roaming,
And I have to keep on roaming
As long as the world stands.
After that night, the people heard the song many times. A lone girl coming home late from a dance, a young woman up before sunrise to get water from the stream, would hear the ghostly song mixed with the sound of the flute. And they would see the shape of a man wrapped in a gray blanket hovering above the ground, for even as a ghost this young man would not leave the girls alone.
Well, it all happened long ago, but even now the old-timers at Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and Cheyenne River are still singing this ghost song.
Now, there was another young man who also had a cold heart. He too made love to many girls and soon threw them away. He was a brave warrior, though. He was out a few times with a girl who was in love with him, and he said he would marry her. But he didn’t really mean it; he was like many other men who make the same promise only to get under a girl’s blanket. One day he said: “I have to go away on a horse-stealing raid. I’ll be back soon, and then I’ll marry you.” She told him: “I’ll wait for you forever!”
The young warrior went off and never came back; he forgot all about her. The girl, however, waited for a long time.
Well, this young man roamed about for years and had many loves. Then one time when he was out hunting, he saw a fine tipi. It had a sun-and-moon design painted on it. He recognized it immediately: it was the tipi of the girl he had left long ago. “Is she still good-looking and loving?” he wondered. “I’ll find out!”
He went inside, and there was the girl, lovelier than ever. She was dressed in a white, richly quilled buckskin dress. She smiled at him. “My lover, have you come back at last?”
After serving him a fine meal, she helped him take off his moccasins and his war shirt. She traced his scars from many fights with her fingers. “My warrior,” she said, “lie down here beside me, on this soft, soft buffalo robe.” He lay down and made love to her, and it was sweeter than he had ever experienced, sweeter than he could have imagined. Then she said: “Rest and sleep now.”
The young man—though not so very young anymore—woke up in the morning and saw the morning sun shining into the tipi. But the tipi was no longer bright and new; it was ragged and rotting. The buffalo robe under which they had slept was almost hairless and full of holes. He lifted the robe and pulled it aside to look at the girl, and instead of a living, beautiful woman, he found a skeleton. A few strands of black hair still adhered to the skull, which seemed to smile at him. The young girl had died there long ago, waiting for him to come back. He had made love to a spirit. He had embraced bones. He had kissed a skull. He had coupled with a skeleton!
As the thought sank in, the warrior cried aloud, jumped up, and began running in great fear, running he knew not where. When he finally came to, he was witko, mad. He spoke in strange sounds. His eyes wandered. His thoughts went astray. He was never right in his mind again.
—Told by Lame Deer at Winner, Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1970.
Recorded by Richard Erdoes.
THE MAN WHO WAS
AFRAID OF NOTHING
[BRULE SIOUX]
Now, there were four ghosts sitting together, talking, smoking ghost smoke, having a good time, as far as it’s possible for ghosts to have a good time. One of them said: “I’ve heard of a young man nothing can scare. He’s not afraid of us, so they say.”
The second ghost said: “I bet I could scare him.”
The third ghost said: “We must try to make him shiver and run and hide.”
The fourth ghost said: “Let’s bet; let’s make a wager. Whoever can scare him the most, wins.” And they agreed to bet their ghost horses.
So this young man who was never afraid came walking along one night. The moon was shining. Suddenly in his path the first ghost materialized, taking the form of a skeleton. “Hou, friend,” said the ghost, clicking his teeth together, making a sound like a water drum.
“Hou, cousin,” said the young man, “you’re in my way. Get off the road and let me pass.”
“Not until we have played the hoop-and-stick game. If you lose, I’ll make you into a skeleton like me.”
The young man laughed. He bent the skeleton into a big hoop, tying it with some grass. He took one of the skeleton’s leg bones for his game stick and rolled the skeleton along, scoring again and again with the leg bone. “Well, I guess I won this game,” said the young man. “How about some shinny ball?”
The young man took the skeleton’s skull
and used the leg bone to drive it ahead of him like a ball.
“Ouch!” said the skull. “You’re hurting me; you’re giving me a headache.”
“Well, you asked for it. Who proposed this game, you or me? You’re a silly fellow.” The young man kicked the skull aside and walked on.
Further on he met the second ghost also in the form of a skeleton, who jumped at him and grabbed him with bony hands. “Let’s dance, friend,” the skeleton said.
“A very good idea, cousin ghost,” said the young man. “What shall we use for a drum and drumstick? I know!” Taking the ghost’s thighbone and skull, the young man danced and sang, beating on the skull with the bone.
“Stop, stop!” cried the skull. “This is no way to dance. You’re hurting me; you’re giving me a headache.”
“You’re lying, ghost,” said the young man. “Ghosts can’t feel pain.”
“I don’t know about other ghosts,” said the skull, “but me, I’m hurting.”
“For a ghost you’re awfully sensitive,” said the young man. “Really, I’m disappointed. There we were, having a good time, and you spoiled my fun with your whining. Groan somewhere else.” The young man kicked the skull aside and scattered the rest of the bones all over.
“Now see what you’ve done,” complained the ghost, “it will take me hours to get all my bones together. You’re a bad man.”
“Stop your whining,” said the young man. “It gives you something to do.” Then he went on.
Soon he came upon the third ghost, another skeleton. “This is getting monotonous,” said the young man. “Are you the same as before? Did I meet you further back?”
AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS Page 50
