Once we were in California testifying for an Indian brother on trial in Los Angeles. Some of the local Indians invited us to a sweat somewhere in the desert eighty miles from L.A. As I was hunkering down inside the lodge, they started passing in the rocks. When about twenty were in the pit, the usual number for a woman’s sweat, I expected them to close the flap and start the ceremony. Instead more and more rocks, a big heap, were coming in. I stared at the huge pile of glowing, hissing rocks rising higher and higher. I tried to back away from the rocks, but there was no room. My knees started to blister. Already the heat was terrific and they had not even poured the water yet. I cringed at the thought of what cold water on this big mound of fiery rocks would do. Then it came, the water. I thought I would die. Never, never thereafter would I eat lobsters, knowing what these poor creatures have to go through. I felt I could not cry out to have the flap opened. After all, I represented the Sioux women on this occasion. As the hissing steam enveloped us there rose a chorus of cries: “Ow, ow, ow, Great Spirit, we thank you for making us suffer so. We are suffering for our poor brothers in jail. Make us suffer more!”
“Jesus Christmas,” I thought, “these people don’t sweat to purify themselves. They sweat to suffer.” There were some anguished cries: “All my relatives!” The door was opened, but it was so hot outside in the desert that it brought me no relief. The flap was closed again and more water poured. The prayers started. I was praying too, silently: “Please make the prayers short,” but they were long. When it was all over we could not get out quickly enough. Some women were in such a hurry they did not even wrap their towels around themselves and came out stark naked. The relief of being out of that particular sweat lodge was indescribable. Leonard told me that they had used more stones in the men’s sweat than in ours. I could not see how that was possible.
Once Leonard ran a sweat in New Jersey for New York Indians—just a good, normally hot Sioux sweat. As Leonard poured the water those New York Indians began to scream. They tore apart the back of the sweat lodge, clawed their way out, and ran away in all directions. If that had happened in Sioux country it would have been a serious desecration of a religious ceremony. Leonard just gave the kind of laugh he reserves for tragicomic situations. “I forgive these people,” he said. “They just don’t understand Indian ways. They have to be taught.”
I have to admit that Leonard’s sweats are very hot. He has been in so many of them that he does not seem to feel the searing heat. During a peyote ceremony, I saw him picking up glowing embers with his bare fingers to put them back into place. Because he is no longer bothered by intense heat, he thinks everybody is like him in that respect. People are always dropping in to meet a medicine man, or to learn from him, or simply out of curiosity. One such visitor was a young black man called Jamesie. He made himself into a slave for me, chopping wood, fetching water, helping in the kitchen. That was nice. Then he wanted to take part in a sweat. Unfortunately for him, it was one of those in which men want to suffer for a brother in the slammer. That meant not only that it would be excruciatingly hot, but that there would be no crying “All my relatives!” and no opening of the flap during the ceremony. When the heat got to poor Jamesie he started screaming: “I’m dying, I’m dying!” Crow Dog told him that it was the most wonderful thing in the world to die during this ceremony, the most beautiful end a man could wish for. It was but little comfort to Jamesie.
I often tell Leonard, “Purify them, but don’t cook them!” And Leonard always answers, looking innocent, “But it wasn’t hot at all. I can’t understand these people. There must be something wrong with them.”
Leonard is also a yuwipi man. Yuwipi is one of our oldest, and also strangest, ceremonies. I had never been to a yuwipi until I met Leonard. It is an unexplainable experience. How can you explain the supernatural for which there is no rationalization? When the first yuwipi ceremony that I took part in was being prepared, I became apprehensive, and once it was in progress, I was even scared. I was still reacting like a white woman.
A yuwipi is put in motion when a man or woman sends a sacred pipe and tobacco to a medicine man. That is the right way to ask for a ceremony. Some person wants to find something—something that can be touched, or something that exists only in the mind. Maybe a missing child or the cause of an illness. The yuwipi man is a finder. He is the go-between, a bridge between the people and the spirits. Through him people ask questions of the supernaturals, and through him the spirits answer back. The person who sent the pipe is the sponsor. Yuwipi men do not get paid for their services, but the sponsor has to feed all comers who want to participate and take advantage of the ritual.
A dog feast is part of the yuwipi ritual, and dog meat is the holy food that is served at the end of the ceremony. This did not bother me. I had eaten dog many times as a child—not in a sacred way, but simply because we were so poor that we ate any kind of meat we could get our hands on—dog, gopher, prairie dog, jackrabbits—just about anything that walked on four legs. The dog feast is an almost human sacrifice. In the old days, young men from the warrior societies would go through the camp selecting dogs for a dog feast. Sometimes they would pick the dog of a great chief or famous hunter. It would have been very bad manners for the owner to object or let his face betray his feelings. It was an honor bestowed upon the owner as well as the dog. Whether they always appreciated the honor is another matter. It is because we are so fond of our dogs that the feast takes on the character of a sacrifice. They scent the dog, paint a red stripe on its back, and strangle it so that its neck is broken and it dies instantly.
I remember a funny incident. We were all staying at: a white friend’s home in New York. Somebody had a strange dream, and that called for a yuwipi ceremony. We had everything necessary for it except the dog. Henry was standing at a window overlooking Broadway. He pointed out to our host a man walking a young, plump dog. “Just the right kind,” said Henry. “Go get him!” “No way,” said our friend. “Go, tell the man,” urged Henry, “what a great honor it is. Also tell the dog that it is a very great honor and that he won’t feel a thing.” “New York dogs have no sense of honor,” replied our friend and we all had to laugh. So we used beef.
The way I remember my first yuwipi, young girls started it by making tobacco ties, tiny squares of colored cloth, each containing a pinch of Bull Durham tobacco, that were being tied into one single string more than thirty feet long. They made four hundred and five of these little tobacco bundles, one for each of the different plants, “our green brothers,” in our Sioux world.
While the girls made tobacco ties, others prepared the biggest room in the house for the ceremony. All furniture was removed, the floors swept and covered with sage. All pictures were taken from the walls. Mirrors were turned around because nothing that reflects light is allowed to remain during the ceremony. For this reason participants must remove jewelry, wristwatches, even eyeglasses before entering. All windows were covered with blankets because the ritual takes place in total darkness. Blankets and bedrolls were placed all along the four walls for everybody to sit on.
The string of tobacco ties was laid out in a square within the room. Nobody was allowed in this sacred square except the yuwipi man. All others remained outside. At the head of the square, where the sponsor and singer with his drum had taken their seats, were put a large can filled with earth and two smaller cans on each side. Planted into the big can was the sacred staff. It was half red and half black, the colors separated by a thin yellow stripe. To the top half of the staff was fastened an eagle feather and to the lower half, the tail of a black-tailed deer. The red of the staff stands for the day; the black, for the night. The eagle feather represents wisdom because the eagle is the wisest of all birds. An eagle’s center feather will make the spirits come into the ceremony.
The deer is very sacred. Each morning, before any other creature, the deer comes to the creek to drink and bless the water. The deer is medicine. It is a healer. It can see in the dark. If any doct
oring is to be done, the deer’s spirit will enter. Leonard uses a certain kind of medicine from behind the animal’s ears to cure certain diseases. It is very powerful. So that is what the deer tail stands for.
In the smaller, earth-filled tin cans were planted sticks with colored strips of cloth, like flags, attached to them. These represent the sacred four directions, red for the west, white for the north, yellow for the east, and black for the south. In front of the staff was put the buffalo skull, serving as an altar. There was also a small earth altar, representing Grandmother Earth. On it was placed a circle of tobacco ties. Inside this circle, with his finger, Leonard traced a lightning design, because on this occasion he also wanted to use lightning medicine. It is believed that if a spirit comes in and then backs away from a person, that person cannot be cured.
Against the horns of the buffalo skull rested the sacred pipe. Also used were two special, round finding stones and three gourd rattles. Out of the tiny rocks inside the gourds come the spirit voices. These rocks, not much bigger than grains of sand, come from ant heaps. They are crystals, agates, and tiny fossils. They sparkle in the sunlight. Ants are believed to have power because they work together in tribes and don’t have hearts but live by the universe.
Everybody then received a twig of sage to put behind their ears or into their hair. This is supposed to make the spirits come to you and to enable you to hear their voices. Then the yuwipi man was brought into the center of the square. His helpers first put his arms behind his back and tied all his fingers together. Then they wrapped him up in a star blanket, covering him completely. A rawhide thong, the kind once used to make bowstrings, was then wound tightly around the blanket and secured with knots. Then the yuwipi man was placed face down on the sage-covered floor. On this occasion it was Leonard who had been tied up. He lay there like a mummy. I could not imagine how he could breathe. Then the kerosene lamps with the big reflectors were extinguished, leaving us sitting in absolute, total darkness. For a short while we sat in utter silence. Then, with a tremendous roar, the drum started to pound, filling the room with its reverberations as the singers began their yuwipi songs. It sent shivers down my spine.
Almost at once the spirits entered. First I heard tiny voices whispering, speaking fast in a ghostly language. Then the gourds began to fly through the air, rattling, bumping into walls, touching our bodies. Little sparks of light danced through the room, wandered over the ceiling, circled my head. I felt the wing beats of a big bird flitting here and there through the darkness with a whoosh, the feathers lightly brushing my face. At one time the whole house shook as if torn by an earthquake. One woman told me later that in one of the flashes of light she had seen the sacred pipe dancing. I was scared until I remembered that the spirits were friends. The meeting lasted almost until the morning. Finally they sang a farewell song for the spirits who were going home to the place from which they had come.
The lamp was lit and revealed Leonard sitting in the middle of the sacred square—unwrapped and untied. He was weeping from emotion and exhaustion. He then told us what the spirits had told him. Then we ate the dog, and afterward wojapi, a kind of berry pudding, drank mint tea and coffee, and of course smoked the pipe, which went around clockwise from one person to the next.
The white missionaries have always tried to suppress this ceremony, saying it was Indian hocus-pocus and that the yuwipi men simply were mountebanks after the manner of circus magicians. They tried to “expose” our medicine men, but the attempt backfired. During the 1940s the superintendent at Pine Ridge had Horn Chips, our foremost yuwipi man, perform the ceremony in full daylight in the presence of a number of skeptical white observers. He had Horn Chips tied and wrapped by his own BIA police. To the disappointment of the watching missionaries, the mystery sparks appeared out of nowhere and the gourds flew around the superintendent’s head. The result was that many Christian Indians went back to the old Lakota religion.
One of the strangest yuwipi ceremonies took place in New York when Leonard was visiting there. Dick Cavett some-how got wind of a yuwipi man being in town and asked for a ceremony in the proper ritual way. Cavett was born and raised in Nebraska, close to the Pine Ridge Reservation, and he believes in the power of yuwipi. As usual Leonard had all his sacred things with him, but he had no drummer or singer and, of course, no dog meat. The dog could be dispensed with, but having neither drummer nor singer was a problem. Leonard solved it by getting hold of a tape recorder and taping his own drumming and singing before the ceremony. He instructed one of the New York Indians to turn the recorder on the moment the lights went out. He had timed the whole ceremony on his watch. He also taught some Mohawk Indians how to tie him up. He told Cavett and the Indians who had come to participate that he doubted very much that the spirits would come in under such unusual circumstances, but they did appear and it turned into a very good meeting. As Leonard used to say: “I am a guitar and the spirits are the strings who make the music.”
In May 1974, Old Henry and Leonard put on a Ghost Dance. After the one at Wounded Knee this is only the second time during this century that the dance has been performed. We held it on a lonely mesa which has served the Crow Dogs as their sacred place and vision-quest hill for generations. It was supposed to be a ritual for Sioux only, but somehow, through the “moccasin telegraph” which always spreads news among Indians in a mysterious way, everybody seemed to know about it, and many native people from as far away as Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and Arizona suddenly appeared in order to participate. Strange things happened. Observation planes flew over the sacred dance ground. One of our young security men pointed his gun at them to drive them away. The pilots finally took the hint. Two FBI agents were discovered hiding behind some nearby trees. They wore very stylish, mod clothes and told us they were insurance agents. Though we were angry at their desecration of our ceremony, we had to laugh. It was so ridiculous. There is no house for miles up there, and no road. The only living things to sell life insurance to on that pine-studded hill are coyotes and porcupines. We made a citizens’ arrest and took the two snoopers to tribal court, where they were put on bail for peddling on Indian land without a license. They bailed themselves out with hundred-dollar bills which they peeled off from a fat roll of green frogskins that they carried in their pockets. It was funny, but the presence of the planes and the agents gave me premonitions of bad things to come.
The weather was fine throughout, with the sun shining all the time. We had a great many dancers, among them a sixteen-year-old white girl, the daughter of friends from New York. We also had two Mexican Indians taking part, one a Nahua from Oaxaca, the other a Huichol from Chihuahua. They had come in their white campesino outfits. The Huichol brother said that his name in Indian was Warm Southwind. So, of course, we renamed him “Mild Disturbance.” About a dozen dancers got into the power and received visions. One young Navajo with a red blanket wrapped around him suddenly began to dance with the movements of a bird. It seemed almost as if an eagle had taken possession of his body. The best thing that happened was the appearance of a flight of eagles toward the end of the dance. Nobody had ever seen so many of these sacred birds together at one time. They circled with outspread wings over the dance ground and then flew off in an undulating line, like a long plumed serpent gliding through the clouds. It made us happy.
The Crow Dogs have always believed that they are under a kind of curse on account of the first Crow Dog killing Spotted Tail over a hundred years ago. They see the face of the dead chief in their drinking bowls. Leonard always says that Spotted Tail’s blood is still dripping on him, loading him down. He says that the guilt lasts for four generations, that only his sons will be free from it. Thinking of all the bad things that happened in the months following the Ghost Dance, one could almost believe that Spotted Tail’s anger is still unappeased. (At a give-away feast in 1989, Crow Dog put a war bonnet on the present chief Spotted Tail, and both families decided to be friends forever from that day on.)
CHAPTER 15
The Eagle Caged
Grandfather, I pray to you.
Grandfather, don’t let me be
taken away.
My people need me,
as I need them.
Grandfather, I ask you,
don’t let them put me
in a penitentiary.
—Crow Dog
After the Ghost Dance of 1974, Leonard was in a good mood for a while. He watched sacred water birds flying over Crow Dog land and was happy seeing eagles circling in the sky. He liked to go for rides on Big Red, his favorite horse, and went tearing off at a gallop, enjoying the wind in his face, the sense of freedom one experiences flying on horseback over the prairie. But already he felt prison walls closing in on him. After Wounded Knee he was free on borrowed time. He could not understand why the government was after him. He did not consider himself a radical. He was not interested in politics. He never carried a gun. He thought himself strictly a religious leader, a medicine man. But that was exactly why he was dangerous. The young city Indians talking about revolution and waving guns find no echo among the full-bloods in the back country. But they will listen to a medicine man, telling them in their own language: “Don’t sell your land, don’t sell Grandmother Earth to the strip-mining outfits and the uranium companies. Don’t sell your water.” That kind of advice is a threat to the system and gets you into the penitentiary.
The main charge against Leonard stemmed from the occupation of Wounded Knee. Four government agents in the guise of postal inspectors tried to sneak in during a truce period. They were stopped by some of our young security guards. Afraid of being found out and roughed up, they immediately identified themselves as agents carrying badges, handguns, and handcuffs. Our young men disarmed them and took them to Leonard, who was in the museum building. They asked him, “What shall we do with them?”
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