All the mysticism, religious devotion, and endeavor to be in the good graces of the Great Spirit, found its ultimate expression in what the Mandans called O-kee-pa. Among the rituals of the peoples of the earth it would be difficult to find any practice of self-imposed penance more excruciating. Sacrifice was an important part of the Plains Indians’ religion. It was widely practiced and took many forms, from the simple offering of a bit of meat cast into the fire before eating, or the burning of the first ear of corn before the harvest, to the inflicting of pain approaching the brink of death. But nothing equaled the ordeal of the O-kee-pa.1
Harold mc cracken, George Catlin and the Old Frontier. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1959, p. 101.
The women of Redpipe’s lodge chatted excitedly as they erected a small buffalo-hide tent. They were preparing for Fast Arrow’s steam bath, which was part of the formalities to be undergone before offering oneself to the Mandan chiefs for the Okeepa Ceremony. Grasshopper waddled off to the Council Lodge of her village for the wicker bathtub that was used for the men’s steam baths. Rosebud had pushed several large stones into the center of a hot fire near the hide tent. Sacajawea gathered sticks for the fire. Redpipe sat nearby smoking and letting his grandchildren climb in and out of his arms. Several villagers walked past, but using the steam bath was a common thing—they did not stop to talk.
Naked, Fast Arrow solemnly climbed into the tub and sat on fresh-crushed sage leaves with his arms wrapped around his knees. Rosebud rolled the hot stones by means of a long stick into the tent, and Sacajawea sprinkled more crushed sage and other medicinal leaves on the hot stones, at the same time dousing them with cold water. Thick clouds of steam rose, extracting the exhilarating aromatics from the sage and feathery green anise shoots. The women left while Fast Arrow inhaled deeply into his lungs, purifying his body so that he would be ready to take his part in the upcoming Poh-khong rites, the torture of the Okeepa. Fast Arrow thought of his great honor in becoming the adopted son of Chief Four Bears.
Before the steam cooled down and completely condensed, he dashed out and plunged into the cold water of the Knife River. Rosebud followed Fast Arrow with a buffalo robe and wrapped him in it for warmth on the way back to the lodge. A few curious eyes watched from the doors of the lodges, but no one was so curious as to come out and ask why he was using the steam bath this particular day. Rosebud rubbed him vigorously with bear grease, while Sacajawea and Grasshopper served him a meal of simmered anise and hard-boiled duck eggs.
After a pleasant nap, Fast Arrow dressed in his finestgarments and paraded himself around the village, stopping once in a while to gossip with passersby.
The following day, Grasshopper fussed over Fast Arrow as though he were her own son, instead of the man of her daughter. She took great care in painting his face and shoulders. “My son should be the finest-looking brave at the Okeepa,” she said, drawing up her mouth and studying the designs she’d just finished painting on his chest. “My daughters will tell me everything, so that I will not miss a thing by staying home with the babies.”
“Ai,” agreed Sacajawea, climbing over Sucks His Thumb as she hunted her moccasins for the trip. The little boy pulled out his clean thumb from his mouth and offered it to his father. Fast Arrow swatted the child and sent him scampering and laughing to the other side of the lodge.
“You are not afraid, are you?” whispered Grasshopper to Fast Arrow.
He looked at her in disbelief, shaking his head no. Certainly Fast Arrow was not frightened—this was going to be the greatest experience he had ever had or expected to have. Attending the Mandan Okeepa Festival and then actually taking part in the holy torture rites was what every brave dreamed of to show his strength and prove he was worthy of being a member of the nation.
They were seated on the ponies, Fast Arrow and Redpipe each on their own and Rosebud and Sacajawea together on a little tricolor, when Grasshopper thought of something she had forgotten.
“Take my good wishes to the wives of Four Bears,” she called, “especially to the one with the silver hair, Sahkoka, the Mint, and the youngest, Sun Woman. Tell them that your sister Sweet Clover is in good health and my grandchildren drive me crazy as a loon. Let’s see how well you can remember to give my greeting.”
They were soon out of sight, and Grasshopper shooed the children back into the lodge and ordered them to sit quietly around the fire.
Chickadee, who was too small to keep her legs tucked under, extended them out front at full length and smiled at Grasshopper, who was now busy sprinkling cornmealat the edge of the lodge fire. Sweet Clover came shyly to the fire to sit with the little ones. She smiled and sat with her legs crossed, not understanding why she did this.
Grasshopper mumbled a prayer to the Great Spirit. Her mind was joyous, yet there was something held back as she thought of Fast Arrow going through the torture rite. It was a ceremony, a ritual to show a man’s bravery to everyone. It had been used for ages beyond remembering. But a man’s spirit came close to that of the Great Spirit at that time, and afterward he was different, never the same as before. Grasshopper pondered this thought: A man comes home wiser, more understanding, if he is fortunate, but a man can become haughty and cruel, then everyone suffers from his change. Good men die. Brave men die. No one will stop the torture, so it must go on each year until one day in the unknown dawn it will wear itself out. Sacred things wear out, just like a pair of leggings that have been worn overlong and seen much abuse.
That wayward something in her mind continued the argument: That is what the Great Spirit is—a faith in something unseen, as a tent peg under the earth. But it is ceremonies and rituals also. That is why men offered smoke in six directions for a successful hunt, or a woman set out a prayer stick for the recovery of a sick child. That is why she was now dancing a prayer into the earth for the safe return of Fast Arrow’s soul. It depended on what was believed.
She shuffled around the fire. The terror that possessed her now was immeasurably greater than that which she had felt as, smiling, she had sent her beloved ones toward the Mandans asking if Fast Arrow was afraid. That night, it was she, not Fast Arrow, who had a monster to wrestle with. The monster was her inborn mother-love that needed to protect her family from any harm or unpleasantness.
It was midmorning on the way to the Rooptahee village when the sign appeared to them. And according to the nature of such events, it came while everything seemed safe and serene and the thought of such a thing was far away.
Engrossed in talk, the little party did not see the squall line come up over the hill ahead of them. The wind began to blow and the rain beat in their faces. The four of them climbed from the horses and stood beneath a tall pine until the rain stopped. Wet sage filled their noses, and they felt an anticipation of excitement as they mounted to cross the river. The sun was not yet out from behind the clouds, but the sky was pink. Suddenly Sacajawea pointed in awe to the rainbow hanging in the sky. It was suspended with neither foot touching Mother Earth, and the center was filled with crimson-colored clouds.
“My people believed that to be a symbol of strength and peace,” said Sacajawea, breaking the silence.
“You have no people but us,” said Redpipe sharply. “Look, my daughter, this is not usual. The colors do not touch the earth. The Great Spirit cannot touch his feet to the ground when he rides in such a canoe.” Now his face wore a forbidding look and his voice became hard as flint. “It is a sign to us.”
“The sky shows that one of us will rise to great heights,” offered Fast Arrow in a hushed, confidential tone.
“Ai”—Redpipe’s words sounded cold and distant— “that must be the meaning, and it must be you, my son. You are beginning your rise to power with the Okeepa Ceremony. My life is going downhill; it surely is not I.” He deliberately did not mention the women, as they were of no concern in such great events as a sign from the heavens. However, he thought of his friend Four Bears and then remembered how they had agreed that his adopted daughter was unusual. And now this omen. Was it all something that should be put together, connected?
The suspended rainbow began fading. The horses shuffled their feet, anxious to be moving. “Come,” said Fast Arrow. “We can think on this sign another day. We must get to Rooptahee before the sun is under the earth.”
Toward midafternoon they reached the village of Rooptahee. They saw two men dressed only in breech-clouts come plodding up a hill with a log between themon their shoulders. Then two more men brought up another the same size. They disappeared into the Medicine Lodge. Sacajawea heard thumps as the logs were dropped, and then the chuk of bone axes and the noise of digging. She saw in front of the Medicine Lodge three sacrifices offered in behalf of the village for the Okeepa Ceremony. There were long swathes of blue and black cloth, each purchased by the white man, Jussome. The cloth had been folded to resemble human figures, with eagle feathers on their heads and masks on their faces. According to Four Bears, this was the first time Jus-some had made any contribution to the ceremony, although he had lived among them for many winters. “I think he is after something,” said Four Bears to Red-pipe.
Hanging beside these figures, which had been erected about thirty feet over the door of the Medicine Lodge, was the skin of a white buffalo. It was the first white buffalo Sacajawea had ever seen. She stood quite still, looking at it.
“The white buffalo is extremely valuable. In all the herds there is maybe one in five million,” Four Bears explained to her, making the count by sifting earth through his fingers to show thousands upon thousands. “The hide is so scarce that it is possessed only as tribal medicine.”
Nothing seemed to absorb the Mandans’ interest so deeply as the legendry of the past, which was interwoven with the Okeepa rites.
No one but the medicine man knew the exact date when the ceremony was to commence. It was the day when the willow leaves became full-grown, for according to tradition, the twig that the bird brought in across the Great Flood was a willow bough and it had full-grown leaves upon it. In the Mandans’ version of the story of the Great Flood, the bird was the mourning dove, and this bird was never disturbed or harmed in any way by these people.
The four of them slept in the lodge of Four Bears. The women rose at dawn to work. Sacajawea took an immediate liking to Sahkoka, the Mint, who was short and stocky with gray eyes and graying hair, and Sun
Woman, mother of the papoose Earth Woman, whom she was holding.
“She is named so that as she grows she will remember to see the rocks and trees and mountains and flowers and plains,” Sun Woman said.
“We should let her see the Okeepa for something to remember,” said the Mint with a twinkle in her eye. “Four Bears gives all of his attention to this small one, pretending she is a son.”
On the other side of the lodge, amid the smoke from his pipe, Four Bears gave a loud chuckle. His hands were long and slender. The skin was burned a rich brown, and his hands looked very strong.
His voice came easily to the women’s side of the lodge. “The rocks you can count on to be the same. You can always count on the things of the earth. You know what to expect of them. You can count on the wild dogs. But people are not the same. You can’t count on them.” He glanced up, and the corner of his mouth flickered with a grim little smile as he added, “I went to visit the Hidatsa monument built of bones to honor the spirit of a dog.”
Sacajawea felt one hand closing on the clay floor. Her other hand clasped the cooing papoose more tightly.
“I know what you are talking about!” said Fast Arrow, recalling something the man Charbonneau had said to him about a girl and a dog.
Four Bears stood and smoothed over his breechclout front and back, then stepped up beside Sacajawea. “We all know—but it will not go beyond this lodge door.”
Sacajawea pulled at the soft doeskin blanket that wrapped Earth Woman’s feet. She said in a low voice, “I think I should be angry. You were checking into something that did not concern you.”
“It did concern me,” said Four Bears. “You did not act in the manner that women do. You peered into the sacred ark and asked what the objects were. No woman is that curious. No woman questions a chief, even a subchief. I supposed that day that you had used the name of my old friend Redpipe in some kind of spell, for the story being told is that the Dog Girl is some kind of Shaman.”
“Oh, no!” said Sacajawea, aghast.
“It was something of a joke on me when I found you the true daughter of Redpipe, and only an ordinary woman.” He spread his hand to indicate his lodge. “With women I am at ease.”
Sacajawea was moved by his words.
Fast Arrow addressed himself to Four Bears. ‘The white trader called Charbonneau suspects my sister is the Dog Girl. I told him his words were like birds chirping in the wind. But it is true?”
“True.”
“Well, so. That is gone now, and she is one of us. He cannot bother her. He is only one of those poor white traders. My woman treats her like a sister. She works hard in our lodge. She was unhappy and sickly when she came to us. Now she is singing and her arms are plump. Ai, if I am ever asked, I will not know anything about a Dog Girl.” Fast Arrow’s face puckered in concern.
Sacajawea shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. She did not wish either man to see the emotion there. The feeling ran deep.
The Mint came to fuss with Earth Woman while Sacajawea composed herself. She was smiling and not at all embarrassed by the display of emotion.
Sacajawea raised her eyes to meet Four Bears’s. To her surprise she found she could speak steadily.
“What did you find when you visited the Hidatsas?”
“No one knows what has become of the girl. She has disappeared into the air.” His powerful hands swirled about him, and he chuckled. “They would kill her if she came back because she is more valuable as something to talk about. They have forgotten she was like themselves. They speak mostly of the spirit of the great dog. It is remarkable. So—you can’t foretell the ways of people.” Four Bears’s still face lighted; unsmiling, it seemed to smile.
Sacajawea thought she had never seen a man who gave out such a feeling of quiet strength. He put his arm around the oiled shoulder of Fast Arrow. “Now we shall never refer to this matter again unless one of your family tells me they want to talk about it. It is washed away. That is all.” He smiled briefly at Sacajawea and said as he turned to go with Fast Arrow, “I have respectfor you, but men do not show that they think about women more than they think about a piece of property. So, this talk is ended. That Hidatsa girl is gone.”
Sacajawea sat still. She looked around at the seven wives of Four Bears, busy with their girl-children and smoothing out the sleeping couches, preparing for a new day. She pulled off her headband, made from grasses with a raven’s feather woven into it for good fortune, and tied the headband to Earth Woman’s cradleboard.
Sun Woman’s eyes shone. “Thank you. It is baby boys who are given gifts. Now 1 can see why Redpipe’s family has such a strong feeling about you. Earth Woman is greatly honored.”
Early the next morning, the sound of a single drum came from the council area.
“So, this is the day,” announced Four Bears. “Are you ready, my son?”
“Ai.” Fast Arrow’s hand poked out and caught Rosebud by the elbow. “Please make my face paint bright today,” he said.
By afternoon the Mandans had assembled at the Council Lodge, their hair combed neatly, their clothing elegant.
Redpipe and Fast Arrow sat next to Four Bears in the council circle, each painted and dressed magnificently. They were next to Chief Black Cat, who was elegant in his beaded shirt and leggings and headdress of snow-white eagle feathers. Fast Arrow was the son of Black Cat. When Fast Arrow took the woman Rosebud, he left his own family to live with the mother and father of his woman. This was the custom. His woman’s parents were now his parents.
Rosebud and Sacajawea sat in the women’s circle with Sun Woman and the Mint. Suddenly someone yelled, and all eyes were turned to the prairies in the west, where a lone figure made his way toward the village. Sacajawea joined in the excitement, waving her arms and pointing. Along the clear shoulder of the hill, the lone figure climbed the lower slopes, coming toward them now with swift, purposeful strides. Soon all were standing, gazing at the figure and expressing a pretended great alarm. The men strung their bows andtested their elasticity. Horses were caught by the young boys and run into the village. Warriors were blackening their faces, and every preparation was being made, as if for a fight. During all this confusion the lone figure came on. His long legs moved with their knees bent, with the smooth, slouching glide of a woods-runner used to husbanding his strength. He moved as if his legs were circles, and his body rode on them erectly. Easily, effortlessly, his body held itself as straight as a young sapling. His shoulders had a squareness to them, a lean confidence, that gave an air of grace to his loose-fitting white wolfskin robe. In his left hand was a long-stemmed clay pipe, the long diagonal rising behind his head, covered with raven’s wings.
His features were still unclear, but his face was white, almost the color of birchbark, and painted with river clay. The crowd parted as he came into the council circle and touched the hands of the chiefs and men of importance.
“That is really Old Bear, the Medicine Man,” whispered the Mint.
Again the crowd parted. The runner went to the Medicine Lodge and officially opened the door. His robe of four white wolfskins was dropped on the ground; his entire body was a glistening white.
“The First Man, Mumohk-muckanah, Madoc,” chanted the Mandans.
The First Man designated four men to enter and clean the Medicine Lodge. Willow boughs were brought to place on the floor, and wild sage was scattered over the boughs. Buffalo and human skulls and the articles used in the torture rites were positioned. The First Man stood silently, overseeing the work, his body harsh in its whiteness.
After a time, the First Man began to move through the crowd, screeching until all were listening. Then he related the catastrophe that had happened on earth when the waters of the rivers overflowed, saying that he was the only person saved from the calamity. He had landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the west, and had come down to open the Medicine Lodge. For this he demanded a present from each lodge of somesharp cutting instrument as a sacrifice so that the water of the Great Flood would not come again.2
Sacajawea leaned toward Rosebud and the Mint. “The Shoshonis have a story of the waters overflowing,” she whispered. “It was the mightiest buffalo who was saved from the waters, and he was instructed by the Great Spirit to make all the other animals from mud and sticks and give them names. He made two of each and gave them names, and he made the Shoshonis and called them brothers, so that the People and the buffalo have helped each other ever since.”
Rosebud was delighted with the story. “So, our stories are similar. We are indeed sisters.”
The Mandans had shifted their gaze to the Medicine Lodge for the next event, the Bellohck-nahpick, or Bull Dance. This was more elaborate than the Buffalo Dance and was repeated the sacred number of times this day, four.
The next day the Bull Dance was repeated eight times, then twelve times on the third day, and sixteen times on the fourth and final day of the ceremony. Twelve men, the village’s bravest, danced around the sacred wooden ark. For this ritual the ark was called the Big Canoe and represented the boat used to float in the Great Flood. The dancers wore buffalo skins with horns, hooves, and tail. They imitated the movements of the animal, twisting and contorting their bodies.
Their bodies were nearly naked, and painted black, red, and white. Each man carried a gourd rattle and long white staff. On each man’s back was a large bunch of green willow boughs. The men were grouped in pairs, occupying the four cardinal points around the wooden ark The pair toward the south represented Mother Earth. Separating the pairs were single dancers, naked except for a large headdress and an apron of eagle’s feathers, and carrying a rattle and staff. Two of these men were painted black with pounded charcoal and grease to represent the night; white spots of oiled clay were the stars. The other men were painted vermilion to represent the day, and were streaked with white ghosts, which the rays of the sun were chasing away. During intervals between dances, the men went intothe Medicine Lodge to rest and repaint for the next performance.
Each day the villagers came back dressed and painted in their finest for this celebration. Some brought strips of dried meat and passed them among their friends; others brought small hard cakes of corn-meal. There was much shrieking as the performing figures catapulted themselves in gigantic leaps, the clatter of their rattles making weird sounds.
Sacajawea responded easily to the mass hypnotism of this final night of preparatory chanting and frenetic dancing. Her blood beat with the drums. She shuddered in the violence of the assault on her rationality, the gyrations and weird intermingling of light and dark shadows, of noise and silence, of grace and violence.
When the First Man appeared carrying the hatchets and knives he had collected, the sudden, complete silence fell upon her like a blow. He deposited the collection in the Medicine Lodge; then this strong, ghostly white First Man slipped away to hide through the night. When the dancers, too, had disappeared into the blackness, the people of the audience quietly strolled back to their lodges. There was to be no more talking until the First Man reappeared at sunrise.
Sacajawea and Rosebud slept late into the morning. Redpipe and Four Bears were up talking and smoking when they awoke. Fast Arrow was meditating.
“My son is preparing himself for the severe ordeal he will pass through,” said Four Bears. His long hands tapped nervously on the pipesteam. “I do not feel hungry, but my guests shall eat well before going to the council this day.”
His women had prepared a feast. Parched corn had been pounded in a mortar and made into rolls, which were not cooked, but pleasant to taste. The Mint, flushed from blowing on the lodge fire coals, brought Redpipe a kind of hominy made of corn bruised in a mortar and soaked in warm water. The tastiest dish was roast goose. Three geese had been smeared with thick coats of mud. Then the birds were put into a hot fire and covered with live coals. When the clay coverings became red hot, they were cooled gradually untilthe fire died out. The shells were cracked with an ax, and the feathers and skin came off with the clay, leaving the flesh of the birds clean and well done. The women and children ate after Redpipe.
Rosebud was unable to eat, and left the lodge. A peculiar mood had drifted over her. It seemed to float on the morning breeze, to issue out of the heart of the untamed nature around her. It lurked in the very vast-ness of the prairie surrounding the village on every hand; it even seemed to rise like an impalpable mist out of the ground on which she now sat in the women’s circle. Other women had also begun to gather. The mood was difficult to interpret, but all knew that anything might happen during the Pohkhong, the torturing rites. A shiver passed over her, as if she were having a child.
Four Bears walked to the edge of the arena and picked up a large stone with a broad end in which a groove had been filed. The stone was round. When he returned to his place in the council circle, his eyes were burning. He turned to survey the people of his village; then he spoke. His words had an emphasis that seemed like the beating of a drum.
“We are small. Lost in time. What we do is of as much importance as what two fleas do. How many men have gone through this rite, and now what is left of them, their good, and their thoughts? Each man has his limit. He can go no farther than his own manhood. But in new experiences and feelings and exchanging of ideas with another, a man may go a step beyond himself to gain strength and wisdom. That is a great step upward for man—but not much in the face of the strength and wisdom of the stone I hold.” He raised the stone for all to see.
“A man moves toward his death each dawn. This stone has looked upon many men. The life of a man must be less to a stone than the life of a flea to us. Each man believes that lesser things are of lesser importance, and things of long ago are less important than things now or things in the future. But men do not reach the final wisdom of rocks. A rock knows nothing of time, whether of long ago or yesterday or whether the sun will rise again. All things are equally meaningful and meaningless.”
His voice took on fire. “There is nothing we do ourselves. We are each driven. Man is like an arrow. The string is pulled and at a certain instant it is released and the arrow goes in the direction it is pointed. The arrow, which so shortly before has been flying through the air like a bird, falls to the ground and is lifeless.” Four Bears leaned forward, his face sober, earnest, his arms flung out in a sort of benediction, his hands gripped together. Then he sat, his arms folded across his legs, which were folded underneath him.
The crowd turned to the white figure of the First Man, who now beckoned the candidates for the rites to enter the Medicine Lodge and be prepared.
Rosebud sucked in her breath and held it when Fast Arrow reappeared. On his left arm was his war shield and his bow and arrows, with a quiver slung on his back. He was covered with red, blue, and yellow clay paint mixed with bear’s oil, and he carried his personal medicine bag in his right hand. His face was sober, with a look of strength and determination on it that told of an inward resolve to keep full control of himself during the Okeepa Ceremony.
The candidates paraded around the arena, the sun glistening on their oiled skin. Rosebud drew a half breath, keeping her eyes on Fast Arrow. He moved with noiseless and gliding quickness, like an animal or a ghost. Then the young men moved back inside the Medicine Lodge. Four Bears, Redpipe, and the other chiefs and subchiefs of the village followed the candidates into the Medicine Lodge. All had gone through this same ordeal in their youth. This day, they were witnesses.
The women were forgotten. None was permitted inside the lodge. Some of the women began to moan and wail.
“Why do they do that?” asked Sacajawea.
“They know what is to take place inside,” answered Rosebud, her face graying with each woman’s cry.
The First Man lit and smoked his pipe and then delivered a short speech to the candidates, who were seated beneath wall pegs on which they had hung their weapons. He encouraged them to trust in the Great Spirit for protection during the ordeal they were aboutto undergo, and then passed authority in the form of a special medicine pipe to Okeeae Kaase-kah, the Conductor, an aged Medicine Man who would continue the ceremony. The First Man then shook hands with the Conductor and performed his ritual departure for the mountains in west, whence he had come to begin the Okeepa.
The Conductor, whose body was painted yellow, lay down by the blazing center fire and began crying out to the Great Spirit. He held his pipe toward the heavens. From this moment, the candidates were permitted communication with no one, and were to abstain from food, drink, and sleep until the end of the four-day ritual.
Fast Arrow’s eyes wandered from the arrangement of buffalo and human skulls on the floor to examine the scaffold. Tree trunks had been set into the ground. The dirt was scuffed in around the butts and tramped on until the posts stood as solidly as the upright corner posts of a Mandan mud lodge. On top of the posts were slabs set in notches, wedged tight with wood chips. On one of the slabs, not more than a man’s length and a half above the ground, rested his small medicine bag. He forced himself to look away.
The Conductor had moved under the scaffold to place a scalping knife beside a bundle of bone splints or skewers that rested on the center of the ring of skulls. He had brushed past the stout rawhide cords that hung from the top of the scaffolding, and set them in motion. Fast Arrow shuddered, once, twice, before he took firm control of himself.
Outside the Medicine Lodge, the women kept a staggered vigil, punctuated by shrieks and screams, accompanied by the barks and howls of the dogs. Rosebud and Sacajawea spent time in Four Bears’s lodge, helping the other women with the meals and caring for the children. As the evening shadows deepened each night, they joined the people gathered around the fires in the arena.
On the second night, Sacajawea and Rosebud unexpectedly met Broken Tooth and her children. None of the women was pleased by the meeting. On Broken
Tooth’s face there was open animosity; her greeting was curt, and she walked hurriedly past, swinging her hips. She was followed by a young woman who seemed quite unsure of herself, as if unable to understand the meaning of the words Broken Tooth spoke to hurry her along. In her anxiety to be gone from Sacajawea, Broken Tooth pushed through the crowd, and the timid girl, whose eyes had been on the ground, looked up to find herself abandoned. She was not more than eleven or twelve summers old. She was wrapped in red cotton trade cloth, and she looked frightened, like a doe. Her face was round and her legs short and stocky.
On an impulse, Sacajawea spoke a greeting in Shoshoni. The young woman looked startled, then a smile crept to her lips and she responded. Breathlessly, Sacajawea translated for Rosebud. “This woman once lived with the People, the Shoshonis! Hear her tongue!”
Rosebud looked at the round-faced woman. “Who is she with? Broken Tooth?”
Sacajawea repeated the question in Shoshoni.
“The Blackfeet were paid a good price for me three moons back—a beautiful shining knife. I am now the woman of Charbonneau.”
“Charbonneau!” gasped the two women.
“Ai,” the stranger said. “He does not scold too much and does not often hit with a piece of firewood, like Jussome and his woman. He leaves me with them when he goes. He is gone much and brings back plenty of food.”
“But you are not old enough to be a man’s woman,” said Rosebud.
“Ai, my man likes them very young. He prefers me to his other woman. Corn Woman, who is older now.” She shrugged. “It is not bad.”
“What are you called?” asked Sacajawea.
“Otter—Otter Woman,” said the stranger. “Charbonneau gave me that name. The Blackfeet only called me Squaw.”
“And this Jussome, he beats you? Why?”
“Every day, almost, he hits me, because I do not speak his tongue.”
“And so, Broken Tooth beats you also, because you cannot understand her talk?”
“Sometimes I do not know why she beats me.” Otter Woman felt for the welts on her back, and fear crawled across her face. “If she catches me, she’ll do it again.” She looked longingly at Sacajawea, and then she edged away. “I am glad to find one who understands my tongue,” she said.
Broken Tooth returned just in time to hear this. “You talk crazy like her!” she screeched at Sacajawea, and she gave Otter Woman a vicious look.
Otter Woman did not look again at Sacajawea, but followed Broken Tooth sadly, her eyes downcast.
Rosebud grabbed Sacajawea’s arm. ‘That man Charbonneau has two women, and still he chased you in the woods,” she said. “I see that you would help Otter Woman; but if you follow, it will only anger Broken Tooth, it will not help her.”
“For a moment it was like finding a relative, someone of my own blanket,” admitted Sacajawea. “She is of the Sheep Eater Shoshonis. I can tell by her talk. Maybe I will see her again.”
The final day of the Bull Dance began with the coming of the sun’s rays.
The whole village, their faces painted, red lines down their center hair parts, gathered in the arena or on the crowded dome tops of the lodges nearest the large Medicine Lodge. Suddenly a terrible scream burst above the shouting and singing, and a strange character appeared. He was running across the open prairie, darting about like a boy chasing a butterfly, heading for the entrance to the village stockade. His body was painted black, with white rings here and there. He had large white markings, like canine teeth, drawn on his face. The hideous creature uttered frightful shrieks as he dashed toward the crowd, and now it could be seen that an artificial penis of colossal dimensions, carved in wood, descended from the buffalo hair covering his pelvis. The penis moved as he ran, extending below his knees. It was painted as jet black as his body, with the exception of the glans, which was a glaring vermilion. Women and children screamed and ran for protection, dodging from his path. If a woman was not fast enough, hewaved a wand over her hands, and as he did so, the penis rose.
“That is Okeeheede, the Devil, the Satanic majesty of the Evil Spirit!” shouted Rosebud. “To be caught by him is worse, much worse, than being caught by the white man!”
When the bizarre character entered the arena of the dancers, Sacajawea saw that he had a small thong encircling his waist, and a buffalo’s tail behind.
The Conductor of the Bull Dance thrust his pipe before the eyes of the Devil, and its charm held him temporarily motionless. The women and children took this opportunity to retreat a safe distance. Seeing that he had lost the women, the Devil placed himself in the attitude of a buffalo bull in the rutting season, and approached the dancers. One by one, he mounted four of the dancers as the crowd shrieked in high amusement. When the Devil finally appeared fatigued, the women and children slowly surrounded him, no longer afraid, coming closer and closer until someone broke his wand. Then he was driven away. A huge crowd of women followed, pelting him with clods of dirt, until he was in the prairie and the frightful appendage was wrested from his black body.3
The triumphant captor, none other than Broken Tooth, brought the huge penis proudly into the arena. She was lifted onto the scaffolding on the front of the Medicine Lodge, directly over the door. She harangued the people about the evils of this powerful counterpart of the Great Spirit. Her voice was high-pitched and raspy.
“I see clearly now,” whispered Rosebud, “why it was that the white trader, Jussome, contributed the trade cloth to the ceremony. His woman is the one to capture the Devil and thus be an important person in this village.”
“Ai.” Sacajawea nodded.
From the east side of the arena came a steady beating of drums and rattling of gourds, but Broken Tooth continued to talk, pushing her stringy hair over her eyes, telling how the Evil Spirit can come into anyone if he is not suspecting and watchful at all times. Then she did a fantastic thing. She positioned the black penisupward and spread her legs to straddle it. Slowly she sat down until the thing disappeared, her eyes blazing.
And even as the watchers roared and clapped and made coarse jokes and obscene signs with their hands, laughing and screeching in fever-pitched voices, the solemnity of the Okeepa came to claim the village.
Calling through a thin-walled wild goat horn, the Conductor of the Bull Dance ordered the dancers to halt. The official witnesses entered the Medicine Lodge to judge the bravery of the candidates.
Fast Arrow noticed the Wolf Chief and Chief Black Cat come into the lodge. He felt he was in great danger, but he could not rouse himself to stand on his feet. He was shaking so badly that he could not move. He had suffered hallucinations for some time now, the result of the strict four-day fast and no sleep. Brightly colored images, larger than life, floated past his eyes. He wondered if he had truly seen others enter the lodge. He was lying on his back on a robe. The leather thongs hanging from the top of the scaffolding became long, black bull snakes, writhing. He could not concentrate on the reasons for his fear. He seemed to turn to water inside himself. He had never felt this way before. Finally, with great effort, he turned his head from side to side and saw other candidates lying upon robes. Some seemed asleep. But that could not be. They were watched by seated officials.
Attendants singing a song about bravery worked under the scaffold. One worked on the scalping knife with a stone grinder. Another was sorting the bone splints into separate small piles. Now names were being called.
Fast Arrow managed to stand when it was his turn to go forward, although it did not seem that his bones were stiff enough to support his body. He swayed from side to side, and he felt as if he would fall down. Then a circlet of thorns, prickly pear spines, was jammed onto his head by the Conductor, as one had been placed on each man called before him. He felt a trickle of blood seep over his forehead as the thorns tore into his skin. He imagined the blood oozed onto the dirt floor and inundated his bare feet. From far away the Conductor was speaking about bravery, and of a man many sea-sons before who had worn thorns upon his head and hung high above the crowd.
Fast Arrow did not understand; he could not gather his thoughts enough to make sense of the story. He was frightened and could hardly control himself. He felt as if he must run away, but he was not able to do so. An attendant placed his hand upon Fast Arrow’s shoulder and handed him his medicine bag, directing him to hold it tight no matter what he felt or thought. The man spoke in a low voice. He explained that the center poles from which the rawhide cords hung were set deep into the ground and great stones had been put on the earth around them so that the poles would be held firmly, but Fast Arrow did not hear. He saw only the yellow-and-white diagonal stripes decorating the man’s chest. The stripes wove in and out like small worms crawling over his oiled body.
The man placed the scalping knife under Fast Arrow’s nose so that he could see it. Then he held it up to the sun coming into the lodge from the smoke hole, and he prayed to the spirits of the air. He prayed to the spirits of the earth, and to the spirits of the water. Then he took hold of the skin on Fast Arrow’s right breast, pinched it up, and passed the knife through it. The knife was not sharp; it had been hacked and notched with the stones to produce as much pain as possible. Fast Arrow gritted his teeth and spread his feet to steady himself.
An attendant forced one of the wide bone splints through the wound underneath the breast muscles to keep it from being torn out. A rawhide cord was lowered from the top of the scaffold and fastened to the splint. In the same way, the attendants fastened a cord to Fast Arrow’s left breast. The pain was deep and caused his whole body to throb. Fast Arrow kept his eyes open, but his mind seemed outside somewhere, seeing but not fully believing that this was taking place on his own body.
The knife and additional splints were passed through the flesh on each arm below the shoulder, below each elbow, on each thigh, and below each knee. Fast Arrow could not perceive all this happening. He could hear a candidate groan, and another go “Ai-ii-iee, ai-ii-iiee” nearly as fast as he could breathe. He was determined to remain silent. He felt himself falling into a deep pit that was as black as the night. His mind could not bring him out of the pit into the light. His mouth was dry.
The rawhide cords were pulled, and he was suspended just off the ground, blood streaming down his body. His shield, bow, and quiver hung on the splints below his shoulder, elbow, and thigh. A single buffalo skull was hung to the splints below one knee. When the weights were hung on the splints, his mind came back to life. His cheeks pulled up as if trying to lift him out of the pain. His breath sucked into him in little gasps that got louder and louder as his weights bore down. The weights swung clear of the ground.4
Fast Arrow’s head swung forward on his breast, but some of the young men’s heads were thrown backward by the suspension. One young man suspended thus was already dead. His soul was carried away by the beat of the death drums. The warmth of his body left as the blood coagulated on his arms and legs and no longer dripped to the ground. The shrill wailing of women outside could be heard as the death drums beat.
“Y?-hay. “The ominous phrase of ending rolled around the circle of witnesses. There was silence, broken by an outcry from the father of the young man. It was drowned by the heavy, ruthless beat of the death drums. There was no more to be done for that one. His body was pulled down and laid on a clean robe in front of the fire. He was lean and angular. His thin brown arms were laid straight beside him, and his hair freshly greased. On his face was still the echo of horror and agony; they had not been able to shut his eyes. The tireless, heart-shaking monotony of the drums went on. The young man’s face was painted as if for a feast.
Outside in the open arena, the waiting women took up the death chant, each one mourning as though it were her relative that had started his journey to the Land Beyond Sunset. A shell containing the black paint for mourning was passed. Rosebud and Sacajawea painted their faces and loosened their hair. Rosebud ripped her tunic to the waist and, with naked breasts and shoulders, moved quietly to the swaying beat. Thearena fire was built higher, lest the soul not know its way home.
The death drums beat on; they beat in the women’s blood. Sacajawea heard not the singing of the women, only the drums leap and change their rhythm. The women began their circling dance; voices began to chant to the rhythm of the drums. The arena fire gave heat. Even so. Rosebud pulled her tunic up and fastened it with a small stick. She pulled Sacajawea along to the swaying beat. Now they were rising, stealthily, slowly. They were crouching and rising and stepping behind the others, their high voices rising and falling in the terrifying cries of the chant. Swept by the vibrancy, by the pulling of Rosebud, Sacajawea leaped into the circling dance. She was deeply one with the drums and cries; she was singing as she moved in the repeated rhythms. She forgot all but the sound of her own voice, crying with the others, “We shall also follow!” as her arms flung up and her feet stamped with other feet.
The dance slackened, then swept on.
The fortitude with which the finest young men of the Mandans bore the final torture of the Okeepa surpassed credulity. They were completely suspended from wounds in their flesh, and now the attendants turned each around with a pole, gently at first, and then faster and faster until the candidate could control the agony no longer and burst out crying to the Great Spirit to support him.
If death should come to me, Fast Arrow thought, let it be quick.
The attendant and the witnesses now watched each candidate intently, until he hung as if dead, and his medicine bag, which he clung to, dropped to the ground. Then the signal was given and the young man was lowered to the floor of the Medicine Lodge. The cords by which he was suspended were pulled out, leaving the weights hanging to the splints.
No assistance was allowed to be given any man in any way, for each now trusted his life to the keeping of the Great Spirit.
Little by little, the strips of skin and muscle on Fast Arrow’s breast, legs, and arms stretched out longer andlonger. His legs jerked involuntarily under him. He knew that if he had not fasted he would have been incontinent, unable to control the bowel spasms that shook him; if his bladder had been full, that would have emptied without his will long ago.
The drums beat on. Fast Arrow sensed that one candidate was crawling on the ground, screaming, past the witnesses. The witnesses spoke low among themselves; he could not know what they said.
There was silence as the attendants lowered another candidate to the ground and loosened his bindings.
Fast Arrow’s mind wondered if the last man’s skin had broken or if he had dropped his medicine bag. Horrified, he noticed that his hand no longer squeezed hard on the soft leather pouch that held his own medicine collection. He pushed his finger against his palm; there was no feeling. He could not tell if he held the bag, although his fingers seemed circled stiffly around something. He dared open his fingers a little. Nothing; there was nothing! Just as he had thought at first! An attendant suddenly was lowering him to the floor. The dark pit rushed past his ears and swallowed him up. The blessed darkness.
Fast Arrow did not know how long he had been on the ground. He did not care. He felt the vibrations of the drums, and the rhythm of the dancers’ feet pounding on the earth. He gathered the strength and courage to get up on his hands and knees. He knew he could never stand. He crawled to where Redpipe and Four Bears sat by a dusty buffalo skull. He collapsed in front of them, his eyes shut; then he sensed that he was surrounded by light. His ears were sharply aware of a mounting chant and exultant shrieks inside the Medicine Lodge, and the drums—the drums. Finally he opened his eyes. It was too bright! He puzzled over it and squinted his eyes down for a better look. His eyes burned, and he thought he had his face in the fire. But when he tried to see why the fire was in his face, all he could see was a long ray of the afternoon sun coming in through the smoke hole.
Four Bears leaned down and looked at him. He held a sharp hatchet. Fast Arrow did not understand. Had he been a coward?
Four Bears grunted and placed the little finger of Fast Arrow’s left hand on the earth, spread away from his other fingers. Then Four Bears prayed, saying, “Listen, Great Spirit, this is the sacrifice that my son is now making to you. You have heard how he cried to you for help in his deepest agony. Now hear this last prayer.” The hatchet was raised and down before Fast Arrow could wake up his mind. His little finger had been chopped off at the first joint as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit for sparing his life and permitting him to be the adopted son of Four Bears.
Rosebud and Sacajawea both screamed as the first candidates were led outside the Medicine Lodge. All the weights still dragged from their mutilated bodies. Fast Arrow was among these first men. Rosebud tried to go to him, but she was restrained. The Ehkenah-kanahpick, the Last Race, was yet to be endured—and endured within public view.
Each man was taken in charge by two attendants. Rawhide straps were wrapped around his wrist, and these straps were used by the attendants to race him furiously around the sacred ark in the center of the arena. The men struggled to remain on their feet as long as possible. The skulls and other weights dragged behind.
When his endurance could carry him no farther, Fast Arrow fell like a dead man on the ground. His face was blotched green and white, like a peeled sycamore.
He had survived the Last Race of the Okeepa.
Fast Arrow was left to lie where he fell until he could get to his feet without aid. Then, staggering like a drunk, he made his way to Four Bears’s lodge. The crowd opened silently to let him through.
Redpipe, waiting in the lodge of Four Bears, was exultant. His mighty son-in-law had passed the ordeal with bravery and was now considered the Mandan son of Chief Four Bears. He danced, sang, smoked, and danced again.
Fast Arrow crawled through the lodge door that had been left wide open. He could go no farther. The darkness enveloped him again.
Redpipe roused him with water from a buffalo paunch.
What little he was able to drink came back up. “Now, my son,” he said, “you shall sleep in this lodge until your legs once again hold your body up.” Redpipe placed the shield, medicine bag, bow, quiver, and arrows near the couch to which the women carried Fast Arrow. “If you are spoken to in your sleep, remember carefully what is said to you,” he said.
But Fast Arrow was asleep and did not hear the prayers that were said for him.
Sacajawea felt a great nausea engulf her at the sight of Fast Arrow’s mutilated body. She moved out of the lodge and vomited. She felt pride for Fast Arrow, who, Redpipe said, had taken the ordeal without an outburst of protest, but a single thought stayed in the front of her mind. Was this ceremony necessary to prove bravery? This torture that took a man so close to death— why did they do it? Fast Arrow would bear permanent scars. She prayed to the Great Spirit that his muscles would heal properly so that he would not limp and that his arms would not remain so defective they could not be raised past his ears for the rest of his life. Her pride was not filled with elation for Fast Arrow, but with grief. She looked at the silhouetted lodges in the moonlight and felt as though she were passing into another time. The great rocks on the plains and the juniper and sage jutted arrogantly against the pale prairie and were at once older than now. She felt the passing of time within herself, as though it had a demanding quality. It seemed to her that she had lived many lives already; in each one she had done nothing but wander and wander, always straying farther from the People that had been so dear to her.
Inside the lodge, the women of Four Bears brought out leather boxes of healing salves. They helped Rosebud untie the weights, pull out the splints, and bathe Fast Arrow’s wounds.
Redpipe and Four Bears were showing their old torture scars, laughing and slapping each other across the knees. Rosebud sat limply beside her man’s couch. Fast Arrow slept deeply, with his mouth open. He snorted loudly. His tongue was swollen and his lips cracked from lack of water. Rosebud bent over him and moistened his lips with her tongue. He did not know they celebrated his victory over death.
Gently Rosebud began to stroke Fast Arrow’s forehead with a soft, damp leather cloth. She talked to him on and on, in a voice as soft as drifting feathers. Again and again she bent and moistened his lips with her tongue, letting a little of the saliva trickle down his parched throat.