Conquering Horse (18 page)

Then four virgins were chosen, with Pretty Walker named as leader. The four virgins approached the tree, singing songs. Most of the people followed them. Pretty Walker was given an ax and she made a feint with it as if to strike the tree, then gave the ax to the other virgins, who in turn also made as if to strike it. Finally Pretty Walker took the ax firmly in hand and began chopping it down, cutting it so that it would fall to the south. Great was the shout of victory when the sapling began to sway, then to fall. Twenty young men, marshals especially chosen by Moon Dreamer, each wearing the customary black stripe from the outer corner of the eye to the lower edge of the jaw, leaped to catch it before it hit the ground.

The four virgins sang:

Moon Dreamer took the ax and cut off all the branches close to the trunk except the one near the top. Pregnant women scurried around him, eagerly gathering up the trimmings as good luck charms. With leather thongs Moon Dreamer tied a wooden bar to the remaining branch, so that the stripped tree resembled a cross. Moon Dreamer permitted no one to step over the sapling while he worked.

The twenty marshals, two abreast, then took up the pole on their shoulders, the crossbar first, and with Moon Dreamer and the people following, headed for the sacred place in the open center of the circular medicine lodge. No one was permitted to precede the sacred pole. Young braves on horseback raced back and forth behind the procession. Grapevines tied to their horses’ tails trailed along the ground.

When the sacred pole was almost in the center of the medicine lodge, Moon Dreamer stopped the procession. He held up his hand and cried in a loud clear voice, all the while shaking his buffalo mask vigorously, “Now is the time to bring an offering or make a wish!”

Immediately the people ran to their lodges and brought out prepared gifts, of tobacco, clothes, food, bags, and presented them to one another. The noise and the joy of giving became so great men could not hear the sound of their own voices. Men and women treated each other on terms of equality, with friendly hilarity.

Suddenly through it all roared the great voice of Thunder Close By. Gradually the hubbub ceased. Old women stood trembling, the children stood solemnly still, the horses looked up alert.

“Look! Attend! Redbird our father wishes it to be known at this time that after the sun-watching dance he will give away certain of his many horses. He will give them away in equal shares. Redbird says a time for giving and rejoicing has come because of what his son is doing. Therefore he wishes to give this
to his children, the Shining People. I have said. Hechetu aloh! It is so indeed.”

Instantly the women raised the tremolo of joy and rushed up to Redbird and touched him and sang praises in his ear. The men shouted together and went up to him and embraced him one by one.

After suffering their love for a time, Redbird raised his copper-tipped lance. A soft morning breeze ruffled the fringes on his sleeve. The snowy filament of the feathers in his headdress fluffed gently. “My children, listen to me. A great day has come. My son is doing the sun-watching dance so that he may receive the second part of his vision and help make our people a great nation. Therefore my heart is full of joy. My friends, here beside our River of the Double Bend, where our guardian spirit the Buffalo Woman lives under Falling Water, here we shall raise our children and be as little chickens under the mother prairie hen’s wing. Behold, I see a good nation walking in a sacred manner in a good land. I have said.” And holding his lance before him, he took a seat under the circular brush shelter.

Still praising Redbird for his goodness in forthgiving and sharing, the people also retired under the shelter to await the great thing.

Moon Dreamer then stripped the sun dance pole of its rough ocher bark, painted it with red stripes from the crossbar down to its base, festooned it with fresh cherry leaves. He fastened a thick foot-long stick with a red-painted knob, representing the human phallus, at the very top of the pole. He hung the effigies of a man, a buffalo, and a moon just below the crossbar. Last he fastened on a long rawhide thong which was separated into two parts at the near end.

Nodding his buffalo head, Moon Dreamer prayed in a low gutteral voice. As he did so, the young marshals began to raise the sun dance pole, catching its thick end into the fat-filled hole. The people watched in respectful silence. There was only the sound of Falling Water, low, murmurous, unending.

The moment the pole stood upright and was firmly tamped into place, the people began to shout ribald remarks at each other. They cried, “They of the other world have two faces. The Obscene God now prevails over us. We cannot help ourselves.” Men and women commingled, jesting of sexual things, touching and handling each other in a lewd manner, even pretending vigorous carnal relations. “Kill the Obscene God,” they cried. “He has power over us. Help us before all the virgins are taken.”

Moon Dreamer pretended to be very angry. He took up a bow and shot an arrow at the red-tipped phallic symbol tied to the top of the sun dance pole. His aim was true and the wooden phallus came tumbling down. Then he took a dried buffalo penis from one of his medicine bags and quickly leaned it against the bottom of the sacred pole. At that the people immediately ceased their ribald behavior and broke into shouts of rejoicing. Some ululated. Some patted their lips with their fingers while uttering a prolonged cry in falsetto key.

They sang a song for the sun dance pole:

A woman named Thrush brought her little boy babe forward to have its ears pierced. Beside her stood her husband White Rain. The little one lay gurgling in her arms. It had straight, wispy black hair, reddish skin like the hair of a fresh-born buffalo calf, little fat hands wider than they were long. Its black eyes gazed blankly up at the blue sky. The babe had been very ill during the winter and both parents had made a vow that if Wakantanka would spare its life they would consecrate it to him at the next sun dance ceremony.

Moon Dreamer addressed the parents. “I see you with this child. It is good to see parents who want their child to grow up
in the Yankton way. This piercing of his ears shall always be a sign that he is a true Yankton. Let him possess the four Yankton virtues: be brave, give generously, speak with a single tongue, beget many children. I have said.”

Moon Dreamer then knelt at the head of the babe, placed the lobe of one ear on a block of wood, and quickly pierced it with a bone awl. He pierced the other ear in a like manner. The father White Rain then inserted copper rings in the holes. Slowly the babe’s black eyes filled with amazement. Then he let go with a roar of rage. The people laughed in joy as the mother picked it up to comfort it.

Circling Hawk, following instructions from Moon Dreamer, took up a position a short distance apart from where No Name sat in his little tepee. Circling Hawk feigned discovery of No Name as an enemy. Circling Hawk’s great eyes rolled and he whooped the Yankton war cry. Then he rushed upon the tepee and dragged No Name forth and wrestled with him and threw him prone on the ground. Loudly he announced, “Hi-ye! I have captured the enemy! He is ours. Now we shall torment him as the gods prescribe.”

Circling Hawk sat No Name up and, still under Moon Dreamer’s instructions, painted a red sun high on No Name’s chest and a black crescent moon on his back, with twenty-eight stripes of white radiating away from the sun and coming together again on the black moon. “Look. Attend. Here is the man in the sun and here is the woman in the moon.” He arranged No Name’s hair in a loose fashion and tied a white feather to a lock in back. He hung a whistle made of the wingbone of an eagle around No Name’s neck. He outfitted him with a white deerskin apron, fastening it at the waist and extending it below the knees both in front and back.

Dark buffalo head inclined, Moon Dreamer took No Name by the arm, lifted him to his feet, and led him to the sacred pole, facing him to the east. He lit the sun dance pipe with a coal from the sacred square place, held the stem to the sky, the earth, and
the four great directions, took a puff himself, held the pipe out to Circling Hawk for a puff, held it to the lips of No Name for a puff, then replaced it on the buffalo skull.

“Behold!” Moon Dreamer cried. Again he approached the waiting No Name. With a bone awl he picked up a point of skin low on No Name’s chest, lifting it clear of the flesh, and then, with a quick stroke, cut off the raised portion with a knife, leaving a small raw hole the size of a chokecherry. Blood instantly welled out of the raw hole and began to flow down No Name’s belly.

No Name stood perfectly still, suffering it without flinching. “Have pity on me, Wakantanka,” No Name said quietly. “Send me the second part of my vision so that I may go on my long journey and then receive my name upon my return.”

Star his mother began to wail in a low tremolo from the sidelines, the notes falling slowly, almost imperceptibly, until at last they could hardly be heard.

Moon Dreamer worked on, calmly, cutting a row of raw spots from one side of the chest to the other. Presently No Name’s belly was sheathed in a moving blanket of blood.

Redbird, Star, Loves Roots, Circling Hawk, Strikes Twice, Owl Above, Full Kettle, Soft Berry, Pretty Walker, the virgins, the twenty marshals, and all the people looked on in silence.

“Have pity on me.”

With thumb and forefinger Moon Dreamer next took hold of the flesh above No Name’s left nipple, lifted it up, and then, quickly, thrust a sharp ash skewer through it. The flesh gave way with the sound of punctured buckskin. Moon Dreamer also thrust a skewer through the flesh above the right nipple. This too No Name suffered without flinching.

Moon Dreamer grabbed hold of the two ends of the long rawhide thong hanging from the crossbar of the sun dance pole and looped an end around each thorn and fastened them with a tight knot.

Star shuddered. She raised another tremolo, slightly higher in
pitch, which also at the end sank away in falling wavering accents.

Moon Dreamer said in a low voice, “My son, do not let food touch your tongue. Do not let water touch your lips. Also, do not touch your body. All will be done by those who intercede for you.” Moon Dreamer picked up the eagle-bone whistle from around No Name’s neck and placed it between his lips. “Blow upon this from time to time that Wakantanka may know that you are giving him of your most precious possession, your flesh and blood. The eagle is his bird and he will attend to the whistling. Keep your head back and your eyes fixed on him who is our father. It is still morning. The day is still before you. Therefore, be brave as a man would. Let the child in you die and the man in you come forth, as the horse grows out of the tender colt. Follow the blazing one around the pole. May it be given you to follow your father the sun around the circle until the skewers pull out. The circle is sacred. All this is done so that it may be forever scarred on your heart. Ep-e-lo. I have said it.”

Strikes Twice sitting at the foot of the sun dance pole hit the great drum once, deep; then followed it with a series of very quick one-two beats; then leveled off into a very slow methodical beat.

Crying aloud, “Have pity on me!” No Name leaned back on the ends of the thong, hard. Flesh rose off his ribcase in two places like the small sharp breasts of a young girl. He fixed his eyes on a point just below the burning sun. His skull became filled with racing red flames. At the same time, in slow motion, he began to dance in step with the drumming, birdlike, toe down first and then the heel.

The people under the circular shade watched in silence, their black eyes full of reverent wonder, their lips set in the ancient grimace of sympathy.

Moon Dreamer gathered up on the point of his knife all the tiny bead-size bits of flesh he had cut from No Name’s chest. Carrying them carefully, walking with a rolling gaited step, he
took a seat on a log a few steps west of the pole. He turned to the watching Yanktons, and holding aloft the bits of flesh, cried out, “Look upon your son! Behold the flesh he has given! Behold the scarlet blanket he has promised. Your son has kept his promise. Soon now the second part of his vision will be given him and we shall know what future Wakantanka has in store for him.”

No Name concentrated his attention on the dancing manes of fire in his skull. From time to time he blew on the wingbone whistle, low, persistent. “I am happy,” he whistled, “soon I shall know.”

Moon Dreamer every now and then gave instructions to the people. “We do this for the young boys so that they can learn to become men. We do this for the old men so that, remembering the time when they once were strong and could endure the torment, they may be restored in spirit.”

No Name danced on. He kept his eyes fixed on a spot just below the sun. Lashing plumes of fire continued to flower in his brain. “Soon I shall know.”

Moon Dreamer then spoke to No Name. “My son, look upon the noble world. Do you see it? Draw the great power of it into your breast and be joyful. Be one with Wakantanka. He loves his Shining People and wants them to be great. We are here in this one place, on the red rock beside Falling Water on our River of the Double Bend. The red rock is our all-father. The red rock is the ancestor of all things. We are a part of the earth’s body beside the river and this earth is part of our body. We are the breath of the earth. We breathe for her. We are also the breath of Wakantanka. We breathe for him. Remember this and be good. Follow the right path of living.”

The people waited patiently. The sun ovaled up the sky. The red rocks beside the river warmed. The small leaves of the willows quivered a fuzzy yellow in the bright light. Falling Water poured glancing golden lights. The horses across the river grazed in peace.