August 18
The Elk Medicine Ceremony
Not in many, many years have I been so affected as I was this morning. For some days I have had a high fever, and have slept but little at night. In-si-mak′-i (Growth Woman), Yellow Wolf’s wife, had been doctoring me with the good old remedy for fevers, sweet sage tea, but it seemed to have no effect. So Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill announced that he would have his Elk Medicine ceremony for my benefit, and that he was sure that it would cure me of my illness. We had it this morning, and to-night I have a normal pulse and the fever has left me. I will not go so far as to say that it was his prayers that cured me,—prayers far better, far more earnest than those of any Christian preacher I ever heard,—but yet, I am well! To me, all religions are nothing more than the codified superstitions of the ages, but of them all, Christian and pagan, I like best the faith of these, my people, faith that the sun is the conservator of all life and the orderly ruler of this, our earth. And what absolute faith they have in their Sun-religion! Should Christians live as closely to their beliefs as the Blackfeet do to the laws of conduct given them by their Sun god, what a different, what a happy world this would be!
Before I relate the details of the ceremony, I must tell something of the medicine itself.
The Blackfeet believe that, when they lie down and sleep, their shadows, or, as we say, their souls, their spiritualities, leave the body and go on far adventure. Their name for this is Ni-pup′-o-kan (my dream; my vision); and when they awake they really believe that they have experienced all the incidents of their dream, and relate them as having been of actual fact.
When men and animals were first created, they had a common language, and the latter had the power to change themselves at will into the form of man. It was in that long ago time that a man seeking knowledge, and praying earnestly for it, was in his vision visited by an elk in the form of a man, whose name was Po-no-kai′-ût-sĭn-in-ah (Elk-Tongue Chief).
“I have heard you praying, asking for help. What is it you want? Perhaps I can help you,” the elk man said.
The man answered: “I seek some way to relieve my people from sickness; some way to give them long life and happiness. Help me if you can do so.”
The elk man answered: “I can help you; I will help you. Through what was given me in my vision I am in great favor with the sun, and all the gods of the earth, the deep waters, and the blue above. That medicine you shall have. I give it to you now!” And having said that, he gave the man a painted lodge, a medicine pipestem, beautifully decorated with a down-hanging set of tail feathers of the sage hen, and wound with strips of the fur of the bear and various water animals. And with it, wrapped in clean buckskins, were the skins of birds and animals, all those that live upon the water and in the water, and feed upon the life in the water, fish, and all the various water insects. And having given the man all this, he taught him how to use it, with all the prayers and ceremonies that go with it. The man took all this to his home, and used it, and found that it was great medicine, and ever since that time the Elk Medicine Lodge and the things that go with it have been handed down from generation to generation, to this day.
So now we come to the ceremony that was given to-day for the curing of my illness. It was my lucky day! Early in the morning Mr. Herford T. Cowling, chief photographer for the United States Reclamation Service, arrived at the Great Northern Railway Company’s St. Mary’s Camp and I went to him and asked if he would take moving pictures of the ceremony, provided the Indians were willing to have him do it. He enthusiastically replied that he would be very glad to take it all in with his crank-machine, so I went to my people to ask if they would permit it to be done. They objected, saying that the ceremony was so sacred that even the presence of white people, antagonistic all of them to their religion, would profane it. They did not count me. I was one of them!
Said I: “Listen, my relatives, and brothers all! We are all soon to die, and as we pass away the whole of the old life goes with us. Your children, taken away from you by the whites, put in school and taught the white men’s religion and manner of living, will know nothing about the way their fathers lived unless I put it all down in writing for all time to come. That I am doing. And how much more interesting it will be if I can have pictures to go with it! Say yes! Let us have, with this that you are to do to-day, the living pictures of it all!”
There followed a long silence, all considering my request. Finally, my best of friends, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, wiped tears from his eyes, and said, brokenly: “Ap-i-kun′-i is right. The whites take our children from us and teach them false beliefs. But they teach them to read, and it may be, that, after we have all gone on to the Sand Hills,12 they will read our brother’s writings and see us as we were, making our prayers to the gods, and, having read and seen the pictures of it all, return to the one true faith. I say, let the picture man come!”
“Ai! Ai! Let him come!” all cried, and I sent a messenger for him.
During the ceremony he took six hundred feet of it, and so for all time to come is preserved the interesting ceremony of the Elk Medicine.
The ceremony is always given in a closed lodge, but this time we threw the front of it wide open, so that the lens of that moving-picture machine could take it all in.
As I have said, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill is old, feeble, half-blind, and is himself unable to go through parts of the ceremony. So, on the evening before this came off, he sent for Chief Crow and his wife, living near, to help him out. Chief Crow is also a medicine man, his wife, of course, a medicine woman, and he owns the Seizer’s medicine pipe. Four other medicine men were there, all of them taking part in the ceremony. In each of the three tribes of the Blackfeet there is a secret society of the medicine men, and the members help one another in their ceremonies, and they and they only can dance with the sacred symbols of their rites.
When I went into the lodge the sacred medicines were hanging directly over the owner’s couch, opposite the doorway. They were the sacred pipestem and many skins of water animals and birds enclosed in various wrappings, and a buffalo rawhide painted pouch containing sacks of various colored sacred paints. On Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill’s left sat his medicine wife. I took my seat close to him on his right. Back of me, and all around the right side of the lodge from me, were a number of women. On the other side, opposite them, were the men and Chief Crow’s medicine wife.
The ceremony opened with a prayer by Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, beseeching the gods to look with favor upon what was to be done. Then his wife arose and undid the fastenings of the medicines, and slowly, reverently, laid them on the couch between her and her husband. The opening song then began, the song of Po-no-kai′-ût-sĭn-in-ah (Elk-Tongue Chief). Oh, how I would like to inscribe that song here! Alice Fletcher says—and I know that she is right—that all Indian music is classical. But their tonal scale is far different from ours; we have not one musical instrument that can reproduce it. Never, never lived a white man who could sing these Blackfeet songs. As a boy, year after year, I tried to sing them, and always failed; one has to take them in with his mother’s milk in order to sing them correctly.
The song ended. The medicine woman, with a pair of sacred red-painted willow tongs, took a coal from the fire, placed it just in front of the sacred medicines, and dropped upon it a pinch of sweet grass. It burned, and, as the perfumed smoke arose, she and her man grasped handfuls of it and stroked their bodies, thus purifying themselves before handling the medicines. Then, all present joining in, they sang the song of the real bear, the grizzly, while the medicine woman unfastened the outer wrapping of the medicine pipestem roll, which was bound with a strip of fur from a grizzly’s back; and at the same time, in keeping with the time of the song, they made the sign for the bear, closed hands held upon each side of the head, representing its wide, rounding ears.
That song finished, the song of the buffalo began, the medicine man and the medicine woman clenching their hands and alternately putting one out before the other, representing the deliberate, ponderous tread of the animals as they traveled to and from the water. When that song was finished—and it was one to stir one’s inmost soul—another wrapping, bound with buffalo fur, was undone, and all present besought the gods to have pity upon them.
Next came the fourth and last song, the song of the beaver, chief of water animals. And while it was being sung, the medicine woman unrolled the fourth and last wrapping, and the sacred medicine pipestem lay in sight of us all. At that all the women gave shrill cries of triumph, of victory; and all the medicine men beginning a solemn chant to the Sun, Chief Crow advanced, received from the medicine wife of my old friend the sacred stem, and, extending the fan of feathers drooping from it, held it aloft and danced in time with the song to the doorway of the lodge and back again, and returned the stem to my friend, who reverently took and embraced it, and made a short prayer to the gods for the long life, good health, and happiness of us all, especially the little children of the tribe.
Next came my part in the ceremony. My old relative and friend felt around in his medicine pouch, got out a small sack of a-san′, the sacred red paint, and painted my face with it, at the same time beseeching the gods to give me, his brother, Ap-i-kun′-i, long life, good health, and prosperity in all things. Then, having finished the painting and the prayer, he had his wife hand Chief Crow, his helper, the long red-painted wooden flute that goes with the medicine, and the latter, holding it aloft, danced with it almost to the doorway of the lodge, where he blew several soft, clear notes to the four corners of the earth, and then returned the flute to the woman. This was the Elk Medicine whistle, for imitating the weird call of that animal, and was used just now to call him, the ancient Elk god, to give me his favor, his pity. My friend then facing me, upon his knees began the thunder song, in which all joined, and, spreading his blanket-clad arms wide to represent the thunder bird wings, hovered before me, fanned me with his wings, the intent being to waft to me from him the sacred power. That over, all arose, and passing in line from the lodge, Chief Crow leading, danced through the camp and back again, and the ceremony ended.
I cannot begin to express how I felt all through the ceremony. I honored my people for their sincere faith, their reverence for their gods. And my thoughts went back to the time when they were the lords of these plains and mountains and knew not want. And not so very long ago they were a tribe of three thousand members, and now they number only eight or nine hundred, and those who have gone have mostly gone from want, from their susceptibility to disease because of lack of proper nourishment. Do you wonder that they feel bitterly toward the whites, who have taken from them everything that made their life worth living?
Notes
12 The Sand Hills (Spät-si-kwo). The drear after-life abode of the Blackfeet. Their shadows there had a cold, cheerless imitation of life. Back