Part 2

One winter evening I was vexed at my mother and would not go to bed. “Come,” she said, trying to draw me away, but I fought, kicking at her and screaming. Quite out of patience, my mother turned to Flies Low. “_Apatip_—duck him!” she cried. A pail of water stood by the fireplace. Flies Low caught me up, my legs over his shoulder, and plunged me, head downward, into the pail. I broke from him screaming, but he caught me and plunged me in again. The water strangled me, I thought I was going to die!

“Stop crying,” said my uncle.

My mother took me by the arm. “Stop crying,” she said. “If you are bad, I will call your uncle again!” And she put me to bed.

We Indian children knew nothing of marbles or skates. I had a swing, made of my mother’s packing strap, and a top, cut from the tip of a buffalo’s horn. Many boys owned sleds, made of five or six buffalo ribs bound side by side. With these they coasted down the steep Missouri bank, but that was play for older boys.

Few wagons were owned by the tribe at this time. When journeying, we packed our baggage on the backs of ponies, or on travois dragged by dogs.

A travois was a curious vehicle. It was made of two poles lashed together in the shape of a V, and bearing a flat basket woven with thongs. A good dog with a travois could drag sixty or eighty pounds over the snow, or on the smooth prairie grass.

But a travois’s chief use was in dragging in wood for a lodge fire. In our lodge my mother and my two grandmothers, with five dogs, went for wood about twice a week. They started at sunrise for the woods, a mile or two away, and returned about noon.

It happened one morning that my father and mother went to gather wood, and I asked to go along. “No,” they said, “you would but be in our way. You stay at home!” But I wept and teased until they let me go.

My parents walked before, the dogs following in a single file. They were gentle animals, used to having me play with them; and I was amusing myself running along, jumping on a travois, riding a bit, and jumping off again.

Our road led to a choke-cherry grove, but it was crossed by another that went to the river. As we neared the place where the roads crossed, we saw a woman coming down the river road, also followed by three or four dogs in travois. I had just leaped on the travois of one of our dogs.

The packs spied each other at the same instant; and our dogs, pricking up their ears, burst into yelps and started for the other pack. I was frightened out of my wits. “_Ai, ai, ai!_” I yelled; for I thought I was going to be eaten up. The dogs were leaping along at such speed that I dared not jump off.

The woman with the strange dogs ran between the packs crying, “_Na, na_,—go way, go way!” This stopped our dogs; and I sprang to the ground and ran to my mother. I would never ride a travois again.

Taking it altogether, children were well treated in my tribe. Food was coarse, but nourishing; and there was usually plenty of it. Children of poor families suffered for clothing, but rarely for food, for a family having meat or corn always shared with any who were hungry. If a child’s parents died, relatives or friends cared for him.

My mother sighs for the good old times. “Children were then in every lodge,” she says, “and there were many old men in the tribe. Now that we live in cabins and eat white men’s foods, the children and old men die; and our tribe dies!”

But this is hardly true of the Christian families.

III

THE GODS

I have said we Hidatsas believed that an earth lodge was alive; and that its soul, or spirit, dwelt in the four big roof posts. We believed, indeed, that this world and everything in it was alive and had spirits; and our faith in these spirits and our worship of them made our religion.

My father explained this to me. “All things in this world,” he said, “have souls, or spirits. The sky has a spirit; the clouds have spirits; the sun and moon have spirits; so have animals, trees, grass, water, stones, everything. These spirits are our gods; and we pray to them and give them offerings, that they may help us in our need.”

We Indians did not believe in one Great Spirit, as white men seem to think all Indians do. We did believe that certain gods were more powerful than others. Of these was _It-si-ka-ma-hi-di_, our elder creator, the spirit of the prairie wolf; and _Ka-du-te-ta_, or Old-woman-who-never-dies, who first taught my people to till their fields. Long histories are given of these gods.

Any one could pray to the spirits, receiving answer usually in a dream. Indeed, all dreams were thought to be from the spirits; and for this reason they were always heeded, especially those that came by fasting and suffering. Sometimes a man fasted and tortured himself until he fell into a kind of dream while yet awake; we called this a vision.

A man whom the gods helped and visited in dreams, was said to have mystery power; and one who had much mystery power, we called a mystery man, or medicine man. Almost every one received dreams from the spirits at some time; but a medicine man received them more often than others.

A man might have mystery power and not use it wisely. There once lived in our village a medicine man who had one little son. On day in summer, the little boy with some playmates crossed a shallow creek behind the village in search of grass for grass arrows. It happened that the villagers’ fields were suffering from drought, and that very day, some old men brought gifts to the medicine man and asked him to send them rain.

The medicine man prayed to his gods, and in an hour rain fell in torrents. The little boys, seeking to return, found the creek choked by the rising waters; greatly frightened, they plunged in, and all got safely over but the medicine man’s little son; he was drowned.

The medicine man mourned bitterly for his son, for he thought it was he that had caused the little boy’s death.

Believing as he did that the world was full of spirits, every Indian hoped that one of them would come to him and be his protector, especially in war. When a lad became about seventeen years of age, his parents would say, “You are now old enough to go to war; but you should first go out and find your god!” They meant by this, that he should not risk his life in battle until he had a protecting spirit.

Finding one’s god was not an easy task. The lad painted his body with white clay, as if in mourning, and went out among the hills, upon some bluff, where he could be seen of the gods; and for days, with neither food nor drink, and often torturing himself, he cried to the gods to pity him and come to him. His sufferings at last brought on delirium, so that he dreamed, or saw a vision. Whatever he saw in this vision was his god, come to pledge him protection. Usually this god was a bird or beast; or it might be the spirit of some one dead; the bird or beast was not a flesh-and-blood animal, but a spirit.

The lad then returned home. As soon as he was recovered from his fast, he set out to kill an animal like that seen in his vision, and its dried skin, or a part of it, he kept as his sacred object, or medicine, for in this sacred object dwelt his god. Thus if an otter god appeared to him, the lad would kill an otter, and into its skin, which the lad kept, the god entered. The otter skin was now the lad’s medicine; he prayed to it and bore it with him to war, that his god might be present to protect him.

Indians even made offerings of food to their sacred objects. They knew the sacred object did not eat the food; but they believed that the god, or spirit, in the sacred object, ate the spirit of the food. They also burned cedar incense to their sacred objects.

The story of my uncle Wolf Chief, as he was afterwards called, will show what sufferings a young man was willing to endure who went out to seek his god. He was but seventeen when his father, Small Ankle, said to him, “My son, I think you should go out and seek your god!” The next morning my uncle climbed a high butte overlooking the Missouri, and prayed:

“O gods, I am poor; I lead a poor life; Make me a good man, a brave warrior! I want to be a great warrior; I want to capture many horses; I want to teach much to my people; I want to be their chief and save them in their need!”

For three days and nights, my uncle prayed; and in this time he had not a mouthful of food, not a drop of water to drink. The fourth day his father came to him. “My son,” he said, “perhaps the gods would have you become a great man: and they are trying you, whether you are worthy. You have not suffered enough!”

“I am ready, father,” said my uncle.

Small Ankle fixed a stout post in the ground and fastened my uncle to it with thongs, so that all day he was in great suffering.

In the evening, Small Ankle came and cut him loose. “You have suffered enough, my son,” he said; “I think the gods will now pity you and give you a dream!”

He took my uncle home and gave him something to eat and drink; then he laid the boy tenderly upon a pile of buffalo skins, before his own medicines.

For a long time, my uncle could not sleep for the pain from his wounds. A little before daylight, he fell into a troubled dream. He heard a man outside, walking around the earth lodge. The man was singing a mystery song; now and then he paused and cried, “You have done well, Strong Bull!”

Small Ankle was very happy when my uncle awoke and told him his dream. He knew that one of the gods had now come to his son to protect him and help him; and he called the boy by his new name, Strong Bull, that the god had given him.

Other men had different dreams. My grandfather once told me of a man who had a vision of four buffalo skulls that became alive.

Many years ago when our villages were on Knife River a man named Bush went out to find his god. He sought a vision from the buffalo spirits; and he thought to make himself suffer so that the spirits might pity him. He tied four buffalo skulls in a train, one behind another, and as Bush walked he dragged the train of skulls behind him.

He made his way painfully up the Missouri, mourning and crying to the gods. The banks of the Missouri are much cut up by ravines, and Bush suffered greatly as he dragged the heavy skulls over this rough country.

Fifty miles north of the villages, he came to the Little Missouri, a shallow stream, but subject to sudden freshets; he found the river flooded, and rising.

He stood on the bank and cried: “O gods, I am poor and I suffer! I want to find my god. Other men have suffered, and found their gods. Now I suffer much, but no god answers me. I am going to plunge into this torrent. I think I shall die, yet I will plunge in. O gods, if you are going to answer me, do it now and save me!“

He waded in, dragging the heavy skulls after him. The water grew deeper. He could no longer wade, he had to swim; he struck out.

He wondered that he no longer felt the weight of the skulls, and that he did not sink. Then he heard something behind him cry, “_Whoo-oo-ooh!_” He looked around. The four buffalo skulls were swimming about him, buoying him up; but they were no longer skulls! Flesh and woolly hair covered them; they had big, blue eyes; they had red tongues. They were alive!

Bush himself told this story to my grandfather.

It should not be thought that Bush was trying to deceive when he said he saw these things. If one had been with him when he sprang into the torrent, and had cried, “Bush, the skulls are not alive; it is your delirium that makes you think they live!” he would have answered, “Of course you cannot see they are alive! The vision is to me, not to you. The flesh and hair and eyes are spirit flesh. I see them; you see only the skulls!”

A man might go out many times thus, to find his god. If he had ill success in war, or if sickness or misfortune came upon him, he would think the gods had forgotten him; and he would throw away his moccasins, cut his hair as for mourning, paint his face with white clay, and again cry to the gods for a vision.

A medicine man’s visions were like other men’s; but we gave them more heed, because we thought he had more power with the gods. We looked upon a medicine man as a prophet; his dreams and visions were messages to us from the spirits; and we thought of his mystery power as white men think of a prophet’s power to work miracles. Our medicine men sought visions for us, and messages from the gods, just as white men’s preachers study to tell them what God speaks to them in His Book.

A medicine man had much influence in the tribe. He cured our sick, called the buffalo herds to us, gave us advice when a war party was being formed, and in times of drought prayed for rain.

Worshipping as we did many gods, we Indians did not think it strange that white men prayed to another God; and when missionaries came, we did not think it wrong that they taught us to pray to their God, but that they said we should not pray to our own gods. “Why,“ we asked, “do the missionaries hate our gods? We do not deny the white men’s Great Spirit; why, then, should they deny our gods?”

Sometimes Indians who seek to join the mission church, secretly pray to their own gods; more often an Indian who accepts Jesus Christ and tries to follow Him, still fears his old gods, although he no longer prays to them.

Many older Indians, who do not know English, look upon Jesus Christ as they would upon one of their own gods; a story will show how His mission is sometimes misunderstood.

On this reservation lives a medicine woman, named Minnie Enemy Heart. When a girl, she went to the mission school and learned something about Jesus Christ. Afterward, as her fathers had done, she went into the hills to seek her god. She says that she fasted and prayed, and Jesus came to her in a vision. One side of his body was dark, like an Indian; the other side was white, like a white man. In His white hand he carried a lamb; in the other, a little dog.

Jesus explained the vision. “My body,” He said, “half dark and half white, means that I am as much an Indian as I am a white man. This dog means that Indian ways are for Indians, as white ways are for white men; for Indians sacrifice dogs, as white men once sacrificed lambs. If the missionaries tell you this is not true, ask them who crucified me, were they Indians or white men?”

Many Indians believe this vision. More than fifteen have left the Catholic priest to follow Minnie Enemy Heart, and three or four have left our Protestant mission.

To us Indians, the spirit world seemed very near, and we did nothing without taking thought of the gods. If we would begin a journey, form a war party, hunt, trap eagles, or fish, or plant corn, we first prayed to the spirits. A bad dream would send the bravest war party hurrying home.

If our belief seem strange to white men, theirs seemed just as strange to us.

IV

INDIAN BELIEFS

Many medicine men added to their mystery power by owning sacred bundles, neatly bound bundles of skin or cloth, containing sacred objects or relics that had been handed down from old times. Every bundle had its history, telling how the bundle began and what gods they were that helped those who prayed before it. There were about sixty of these sacred bundles in the tribe, when I was a boy.

The owner of a sacred bundle was called its keeper; he usually kept it hung on his medicine post, in the back part of his lodge. A sacred bundle was looked upon as a kind of shrine, and in some lodges strangers were forbidden to walk between it and the fire.

When a keeper became old, he sold his sacred bundle to some younger man, that its rites might not die with him. The young man paid a hundred tanned buffalo skins and a gun or pony, and made a feast for the keeper; at this feast, the young man received the bundle with the rites and songs that went with it. This was called, “making a ceremony.”

White men think it strange that we Indians honored these sacred bundles; but I have heard that in Europe men once honored relics, the skull, or a bone, or a bit of hair of some saint, or a nail from Jesus’ cross; that they did not pray to the relic, but thought that the spirit of the saint was near; or that he was more willing to hear their prayers when they knelt before the relic.

In much the same way, we Indians honored our sacred bundles. They contained sacred objects, or relics, that had belonged each to some god—his scalp, or skull, the pipe he smoked, or his robe. We did not pray to the object, but to the god or spirit to whom it had belonged, and we thought these sacred objects had wonderful power, just as white men once thought they could be cured of sickness by touching the bone of some saint.

A medicine man’s influence was greater if he owned a sacred bundle. Men then came to him not only because the spirits answered him when he fasted, but because, as its keeper, he had power from the gods of the sacred bundle.

The most famous of these sacred bundles belonged to my grandfather, Small Ankle. It was called the bundle of the Big Birds’ ceremony. It was kept on a kind of stand in the back part of our lodge, and it contained two skulls and a carved wooden pipe. These objects were thought to be very holy.

When my tribe came up the Missouri to Like-a-fish-hook Bend, where they built their last village, they first camped there in tepees. A question arose as to how they should plan their village, and the more important medicine men of the tribe came and sat in a circle, to consider what to do. This was seven years after the small-pox year.

At that time, the skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony were owned by an old man named Missouri River. The other medicine men, knowing that these skulls were most important sacred objects in the tribe, said to Missouri River, “Your gods are most powerful. Tell us how we should lay out our village!”

Missouri River brought the two skulls from his tent, and holding one in either hand, he walked around in a wide circle, returning again to the place where he had started. “We will leave this circle open, in the center of our village,” he said. “So shall we plan it!”

He laid the skulls on the grass and said to Big Cloud, Small Ankle’s son-in-law, “Your gods are powerful. Choose where you will build your earth lodge!”

Big Cloud arose. “I will build it here,” he said, “where lie the two skulls. The door shall face the west, for my gods are eagles that send thunder, and eagles and thunders come from the west. And so I think we shall have rain, and our children and our fields shall thrive, and we shall live here many years.” Big Cloud had once seen a vision of thunder eagles, awake and with his eyes open.

The medicine men said to Has-a-game-stick, “You choose a place for your lodge!”

Has-a-game-stick stood and said, “My god is the Sunset Woman. I want my lodge to face the sunset, that the Sunset Woman may remember me, and I will pray to her that the village may have plenty and enemies may never take it, and I think the Sunset Woman will hear me!”

The medicine men said to Bad Horn, “You stand up!”

Bad Horn stood and said, “My gods are bears, and bears always make the mouths of their dens open toward the north. I want my lodge door to open toward the north, that my bear gods may remember me. And I will pray to them that this village may stand many years!”

The medicine men then said to Missouri River, “Choose a place for your lodge!”

Missouri River took the two skulls, one in either hand, and singing a mystery song, walked around the circle with his right hand toward the center, as moves the sun. Three times he walked around, the fourth time he stopped at a place and prayed, “My gods, you are my protectors, protect also this village. Send also rains that our grain may grow, and our children may eat and be strong and healthy. So shall we prosper, because my sacred bundle is in the village.“

He turned to the company upon the grass. “Go, the rest of you,” he said, “and choose where you will build your lodges; and keep the circle open, as I have marked!”

Before Missouri River died, he sold his sacred bundle to my grandfather, Small Ankle; and Small Ankle sold it to his son, Wolf Chief. After Wolf Chief became a Christian, he sold the bundle to a man in New York, that it might be put into a museum.

We had other beliefs, besides these of the gods.

We thought that all little babies had lived before, most of them as birds, or beasts, or even plants. My father, Son-of-a-Star, claimed he could even remember what bird he had been.

We believed that many babies came from the babes’ lodges. There were several of these. One was near our villages on the Knife River. It was a hill of yellow sand, with a rounded top like the roof of an earth lodge. In one side was a little cave, and the ground about the cave’s mouth was worn smooth, as if children played there. Sometimes in the morning, little footprints were found in the sand.

To this hill a childless wife would come to pray for a son or daughter. She would lay a pair of very beautiful child’s moccasins at the mouth of the cave and pray: “I am poor. I am lonesome. Come to me, one of you! I love you. I long for you!” We understood that children who came from this babes’ lodge had light skin and yellowish hair, like yellow sand.

A very old man once said to me: “I remember my former life. I lived in a babes’ lodge. It was like a small earth lodge inside. There was a pit before the door, crossed by a log. Many of the babes, trying to cross the pit, fell in. But I walked the whole length of the log; hence I have lived to be an old man.” I have heard this story from other old men.

Very small children, who died before they teethed or were old enough to laugh, were not buried upon scaffolds with our other dead, but were wrapped in skins and placed in trees. We thought if such a baby died, that its spirit went back to live its former life again, as a bird, or plant, or as a babe in one of the babes’ lodges.

Older children and men and women, when they died, went to the ghosts’ village. This was a big town of earth lodges, where the dead lived very much as they had lived on earth. Older Indians of my tribe still believe in the ghosts’ village.

There were men in my tribe who had died, as we believed, and gone to the ghosts’ village, and come back to life again. From these men we learned what the ghosts’ village was like.

My mother’s grandfather came back thus, from the ghosts’ village; his name was _It-si-di-shi-di-it-a-ka_, or Old Yellow Elk.

Old Yellow Elk had an otter skin for his medicine, or sacred object. He died in the small-pox year; and his family laid his body out on a hill with the otter skin under his head for a pillow. Logs were piled about the body, to keep off wolves. Men were dying so fast that there was no time to make burial scaffolds.

That night a voice was heard calling from the hill, “_A-ha-he! A-ha-he!_ Come for me, I want to get up!”

The villagers ran to the grave and took away the logs, and Old Yellow Elk arose and came home.

“The ghosts’ village is a fine town,“ he told his family. “I saw many people there, they gave me a spotted pony. My god, the otter, brought me back. He led me up the bed of the Missouri, under the water. I brought my pony with me and tied him to a log on my grave!”

His family went out to the grave the next morning and looked for the pony’s tracks, but found none!

All these things I firmly believed, when I was a boy.

V

SCHOOL DAYS