Several years following Jake Sacred Hammer’s funeral and after much coaxing by my parents, I sat and sang with William Listener and the other prominent elders of the Red Swans. This secret society consisted solely of firstborns from the Tree-Raking or Claw-Marking Bear clans. My first real experience with the Red Swans came a decade previous when I accompanied my father, mother, grandmother, and William, the Grandfather of All Dream, to a major spiritual gathering in Canada.
In the spring of 1961, almost one year from the time I accompanied Luciano Bearchild to Browning, Montana, for the North American Indian Days celebration, my brother Alan and I took a trip with my father, mother, grandmother, and William to a major spiritual gathering in Canada.
Through the long travel by automobile that spring to Horned Serpent Lake, I got to know William, my half uncle. Sort of. Likewise for my father, Tony. William and my father had been invited by a religious group of Canadian Indians, the Ontarios. Through the “lost tribe” theory my father felt the pilgrimage would lead to an exchange and comparison of rituals.
Even though great distances separated our homelands, our dialects were strikingly similar with this particular Northern tribe. Further, the secret societies of the tribes believed in the same mystical bird, whose transparent and outstretched wings covered the landscape with the color of an amber sunset.
The two-day ride in a dark blue 1949 Mercury Club Coupe to Horned Serpent Lake would have been an incredible waste of a ten-year-old boys time were it not for the Red Swan stick-shooting ceremony. In the first fiery light of dawn, we watched the all-night dancers emerge from the longhouse, to later dance and then fall to the tall prairie grass in convulsions and paralysis after “being struck” by obsidian bullets that came from sticks.
It was fascinating and scary at the same time. But before all that stuff happened, we got lost in the most isolated area of the lake, real Indian country. For miles there were no gas stations, nor were homes visible anywhere. Adding to the confusion were the roads. A single gravel road would split apart in three directions. With only a tattered handwritten map and a Mercury Coupe choking on mossy lake water, we were headed for disaster. Suddenly, at the last desperate moment when we were ready to turn around, the glass reflection of a rusted truck signaled us. Father and William then walked to the fence-enclosed pasture and siphoned the precious remaining fluid from the truck’s undamaged radiator. Grandmother used to say our lives were probably saved that day by kind spirits who were busy watching us from behind a steering wheel of ja ghost truck.
We were welcomed to Canada by an old medicine man, ne a bi a, by the name of Jack Frost who offered us a supper of sweet potatoes, wild rice, biscuits, and warm tea before heading out to the longhouse. Before my father explained we had had radiator problems in addition to being lost, old man Frost began making witty analogies to his own internal ailments and the Mercury’s mechanical problems.
“Maybe Mercury and me sick same time?” he half-chuckled in English.
Touching and gently massaging the wool shirt over his chest, old man Frost saw himself as an overheated Mercury Coupe. I am sure I didn’t understand as much of the Ontario language as the adults, but I listened closely.
He had awoken that morning with unusual chest pains. The dried blisters of his palms caught the shirt, making rasping noises before he inquired in a toothless wily smile: “When radiator get hot? Maybe same time I put medicine in tea?” Making motions as if he was turning the steering wheel of a car, he added, “Me. Car. The same.”
He said our troubles must have gone away as soon as he drank the medicinal tea. “Same time you give coolant, right?”
Through the laughter induced by the Mercury Coupe medicine man, we calmed down and the fatigue went away. That was the point. To humor us and throw us off track from his prescience. (But years later my father and William really didn’t know how long we had driven without coolant. Maybe most of the morning, as soon as we got off the main highway? they would question over the supper table. They conceded it had to have been a long while. Clotelde, my mother, with her daughters—my sisters Sherilyn and Toni—clinging to her skirt, had the question that made them ask no more: How did Jack Frost know what was wrong with the car? Grandmother later indicated there may have been a real connection, a godlike affinity, between the old man’s chest pains and the bothersome radiator.)
By nightfall we were parked with several other cars beside a bark longhouse located in the grassy center of a large but narrow meadow. For all that was expected to take place, I was upset no one had bothered to clear the area of shrubbery and tall prairie grass. Back home, with whites for close neighbors and because of frequent trips into their community, we tended to our lawns with diligence. The tall grass swayed in the breeze and against the car. Before the car doors were opened, we were scolded. “If one sat down here in the grass, a driver would not see you and would run you over. Stay close, it’s dark.”
Taking their hand drums from the trunk, William and my father strolled gingerly across the meadow and stepped inside the longhouse. Immediately after the blanket-door was sealed, the raspy-throated voice of old man Frost rose and then wavered slightly before creating a roller coaster-like effect with the convocation, the calling of the guardians of the doorways from the four cardinal points.
There was a certain rhythm to his words; it was as if there were short, individual parts of music interspersed throughout the prayer. The drumming and the singing didn’t quit until the next morning. The last thing I remember of the cool evening was the fiery orange thunderhead forming over a distant shore. I marveled at its electrical display. Bolts of lightning shot up to the sky and arced back down into the reddish, sunset-reflecting clouds.
Before closing my weary eyes I wondered if the thunderheads were capable of injuring themselves. Among the deities I envisioned an immature deity, someone unlearned like myself, stealing into the nearby patch of dry brush with a box of wooden matches. “Johnny Angel” sets the hillside on fire, and the pot of water brought to extinguish the flames has a hole in it. Adults from the neighborhood fight the fire for hours. ...
When the thunder’s rumbling could not be differentiated from the drumming or the wave swells crashing onto the rocky shore, my body muscles twitched. There was still a lingering taste of sweet potatoes and tea in my mouth. And the Mercury that had been the source of so much worry hissed to itself. Somewhere inside its gears I thought I heard the steady tapping of metal against metal, a mechanic among the little people.
At daybreak, a gentle tapping on my shoulder woke me up. It was Grandmother whispering in excitement.
“Ki sko, ki sko! Ba se kwi no! I ni ke-e ka ta wi-no we ka wa tti-na ka ni-te be ki-ni mi tti ki! Kis ko, Ids ko! Get up! It is almost time for the people who have danced all night to come out—in dance!”
Looking out through the fogged-up window, I could see it was a dark, blustery morning with a drizzly mist in the cold wind. It looked like the dramatic end of an autumn day, the evening before the first snow flurries. Except for the occasional clattering of tree branches, the hypnotic singing that had lulled us to sleep had apparently stopped. I looked toward the longhouse and saw only spirals of blue smoke dissipating in the loud, rushing wind over the pine-encircled meadow. A cool and harsh season had been regenerated throughout the woodland expanse by this Red Swan gathering.
The only signs of activity were young people bundled up tightly in dull gray and green blankets, walking from their cars to the outhouses. Others seemed to arrive from the opposite direction and appeared as if they hadn’t slept. They held their cigarettes loosely over their red lips and bid each other good-bye.
Among them I noticed a teenage girl who could have been an older identical twin of a Black Eagle Child girl back home. Although this one was dark-complexioned, she was very attractive. She must have been very popular, if one judged by the number of friends who strolled alongside, chatting and giggling.
“Wa ba mi-Ko ko-me to tti-ma na-e skwe se a-Dolores Fox King. Look, Grandmother, this girl looks like Dolores Fox King,” I said.
“Ka tti-be ki-ko me ko-me to tti. Why, this seems to be right,” answered Grandmother, who kept trying to roll down the window to get a better look. We listened to their lively garbled talk and watched the group disappear into taller grass.
With the cold wind biting through our blankets, Grandmother began straightening herself by combing her long white hair. Together, we spotted Clotelde, my mother, her daughter, emerge from the cookshack with a small, steaming cardboard box. Around us, packs of people had converged quietly with chairs, cameras, and blankets to await the dance exit and the “stick-shooting.”
“To ki-ke si me e mo. Ni wa ba me wa-ma a i-me to se ne ni wa. Wake up your little brother. Let him look at these people.”
From one nudge Alan was awake. Clotelde, who had been invited earlier to help cook, brought over boiled eggs, cinnamon rolls, and hot tea. As we huddled in our seats with breakfast balanced between our legs, a single wailing voice lifted into the cloudy sky. It was followed by the loud simultaneous cry of the participants inside the longhouse, whose blanket door had been untied and removed. A young man emerged with a shovel that was smoking.
“I ni ke-me kwe-e ke tti wa tti. Na a wise ki tti i a ta ki. I think this is the moment they come out. Now let us go outside.”
We took our food and drink to the car hood and finished peeling the hot eggs. Alan shivered and rolled himself into a blanket ball with only his mouth and eyes showing. I sat next to him with my back resting on the windshield.
Above, breakaway pieces of clouds shot toward the east, following different flocks of birds. Strange ones like seagulls, birds we rarely saw back home.
The first person to come out from the longhouse was a young, lanky-built man they called “Bragi.” He had the responsibility of purifying the dance area. Wearing faded blue jeans, partially beaded moccasins with fur lining, and a tan and maroon high school sports coat, Bragi paced near the entrance, waiting for instructions. In his arms he held a short snow shovel, containing flickering red-hot embers and a clump of cedar twigs. Fanned by the capricious wind, the blue smoke whipped and almost caught fire. Bragi dropped to his knees and physically muffled the flames with his gloved hands. Upon instructions being given from inside, he stood up and nodded, then began to make the four oblong circles around the longhouse, being extra sure the smoke was controlled and steady.
Grandmother described what had happened while we were soundly asleep.
“Before sunup, a young man was appointed to walk up to the longhouse fire, kneel down before it, and scoop out the heart of the all-night fire with a shovel. He then dances with this twelve times around the longhouse, and at every third passing he stokes the fire, replacing the coals and the cedar. If he is overwhelmed by searing heat, the whole affair is weakened. For him there will be lengthy ridicule, and his mentors’ judgment will be questioned.”
From top to bottom—a feat that acquired agility and upper torso strength—the lanky attendant carefully traced the outline of the entrance with the extended shovel. Through his facial grimaces it was obvious he was having a hard time writing with the monster pencil that gagged the delicate lungs with the billowing plumage of the Red Swan’s wings.
Then, from inside, a new set of instructions was shouted out. A song was sung without the aid of a drum or rattle. With a whimsical shrug of his hunched shoulders, the attendant began to mimic a dance. He was embarrassed as he turned and faced the crowd but he continued dancing. In certain places in the drumless song, he cradled and pointed the shovel like a loaded rifle to the audience, to the cars and to the four directions, before he began trotting lightly around the longhouse clockwise, making a large, growing circle that wove through the women cooks, the spectators, and their vehicles.
As his circles got wider on the third or fourth round, he eventually ran beside our open car window, waving the monstrous smoke-writing pencil in a particular way to its imaginary occupants. By ignoring us, we were being acknowledged and blessed. Blessings for the outsiders, in other words, and their transportation. Blessings to their radiator.
Blessings, I added, for wherever in hell we had come to.
With the wind blowing just right, the cedar smoke wafted directly into the front grille of the Mercury Coupe, where it was dearly needed. Bragi’s shovel drew the right messages. Old man Frost wouldn’t have to rescue us again. He would keep his twinkling eye from becoming the sun’s reflection on the rusted truck’s window.
The sweet cedar aroma blew into the car and followed the smooth contour of the gray padded interior. It swirled once inside, peppering us with graceful touches, and then went on through. Something odd occurred when I inhaled the cedar: I was instantly reminded of the childhood sickness I once had. The cedar, I had always thought, cured me. But there were instances when its penetrating aroma conjured frightful mental images of a green Spanish galleon.
From the way Bragi was bent over from the weight of the shovel and with beads of perspiration streaming down his brow, I sensed the shovel was getting heavier. Heavy messages came with heavy responsibility. As Bragi, the attendant, took a pause, I associated his glistening sweat with the cool water that was squeezed out from the washrags and onto my small-boned, fever-ravaged body. I could see the neighborhood women still standing protectively around my bed, listening to my erratic congested breathing. I was disoriented, and hallucinations were born about the fish-headed demon in a suit.
Coming back to consciousness I saw how imperative it was for Bragi to direct the purifying smoke to everyone. Whether the cedar originated from a toy shovel or a large snow scoop, I was confident it would cleanse whoever was in its presence. In my childhood it changed into a hurricane of regurgitation and reversed the direction of the Spanish galleon. For Bragi, the task at hand was to convince Jack Frost that the area was safe. Once that was accomplished, the exit from the longhouse began. Next would come the critical part, the “shooting” ceremony.
In the quiet that followed the singing and dancing, Bragi stood erect and breathed deeply with limp arms. His apparel, especially the large n on his sports coat, seemed incongruous. Like the tall unkempt grass, it didn’t seem appropriate for so serious an occasion. been touched on their shoulders with the peeled sticks. Their respective places were quickly taken over by “strong-medicined” dancers whose victorious cries and spurts of wild dance filled the smoky air.
I couldn’t get over what I had witnessed: Before Bragi even had a chance to consider “shooting,” old man Frost, crouched in dance behind the doorway, shot him from behind where his heart, 0 te i, is located, and caused him to fall sideways, falling face-first into the moist, freshly trampled grass. There was a loud gasp from the audience as the sports coat-clad body hit the ground like petrified timber.
“They will wait one round before trying to shoot someone else again. Look, the dancers will rotate their sticks and take aim before lunging to someone’s vulnerable shoulders. Over there on the side are the ones who deflected shots.”
With all attention on Bragi, I didn’t see the six to eight other dancers who stood outside of the circle in a half-bent position. They stood by themselves, “trying to shake off the effect of the medicine-bullets.” On the ground the young and “weak-medicined” middle-aged people were scattered, some going into violent convulsions.
As the dance intensified iri song and drumbeat, other dancers shot each other. Those shot broke from the circle, staggered like drunks, and then dropped to their knees, trying to recuperate. Behind each victim would be a retreating stick-shooter who was blowing short breaths of air to the base and tip of the four rattling sticks. These were the older “strong-medicined” ones, who simply slumped over for a few seconds when they were shot, and promptly got back in line.
At the conclusion of the chaotic free-for-all, my father and William were surprisingly among the six remaining dancers. I couldn’t believe they had made it through. I had seen them earlier, but lost sight of them. It was as if they had disappeared into the spaces between the dancers, eluding the older and more powerful stick-shooters.
Downed dancers were spread out over the shiny grass near the cars. Concerned relatives and friends walked out and revived them with a gentle shake, words, or cold water. There were a few, like Bragi, who had to be lifted up and supported until he fully regained his balance.
In extreme cases where the trance couldn’t be broken, old man Frost was called upon. He would kneel down and gently brush their expressionless faces with his callused hand and talk to them in a normal manner. As they.were slowly waking from their unconscious state, he would inspect their shoulders and act as if he was searching for an object lodged between the shirt or blouse and skin of the dancer. He would eventually remove shiny, black pieces of rock— obsidian—and place them in his twin bandolier bags.
“That is what they use: bullets” said Grandmother.
On the long drive back to the States, I found it hard to discount the ritual we had witnessed. For Alan, though, there was pleasure in sneaking up and jabbing my shoulders with dry, sharp twigs. I played the shooting game with him despite Grandmother’s repeated objections, and I was fascinated by the prospect of shiny, black bullets— talons—that couldn’t be seen, tumbling end over end in a flurry of sparks. At each roadside stop we reenacted the stick-shooting. The black talons flew from four rotating sticks and impaled themselves in the necks, shoulders, and spinal column of the Red Swan carriers.
William must have sensed my curiosity, for before we got back to the Settlement, he inquired if I harbored any intentions of becoming a member.
I must have nodded
Many years after the pilgrimage to Horned Serpent Lake, I found myself in an earthlodge at sundown, beating the hand drum with a loop-tipped drumstick. The Red Swan Society songs, we were told by William, had to be memorized and sung in the right manner. Furthermore, they could be learned only through frequent attendance of ceremonies. I knew then that no matter how much I beseeched the Holy Grandfather to guide me as He had done with my father and William, it wouldn’t happen. At least not right away.
Because of this religious deficiency I sometimes wonder whether a stray obsidian bullet grazed my heart that morning in Canada at the “stick-shooting” ceremony. Instead of empowering me, the ricochet talon ripped me apart from responsibility.
When William Listener passed away six years ago, he took with him many songs and prayers of the Red Swans. A human-shaped presence consisting of hundreds of tiny lights evidently emerged from the intensive care unit and floated down the hallway of the Heijen Medical Center. These lights were said to be all the songs that only he knew, the total embodiment of religion leaving, for there was nothing around here for them anymore.
I knew this, and so what was I to do?