CHAPTER 14

Cante Ishta- The Eye of the Heart

You got to look at things

with the eye in your heart,

not with the eye in your head.

—Lame Deer

Some of our medicine men always say that one must view the world through the eye in one’s heart rather than just trust the eyes in one’s head. “Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things and gadgets,” Leonard always tells me. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of Indian religion.”

The eye of my heart was still blind when I joined Leonard to become his wife. I knew little of traditional ways. I had been to a few peyote meetings without really understanding them. I had watched one Sun Dance, and later the Ghost Dance held at Wounded Knee, like a spectator—an emotional spectator, maybe, but not different from white friends watching these dances. They, too, felt emotion. Like myself they did not penetrate through symbolism to the real meaning. I had not yet participated in many ancient rituals of our tribe—the sweat bath, the vision quest, yuwipi, the making of relatives, the soul keeping. I did not even know that these ceremonies were still being performed. There were some rituals I did not even know existed.

I was now the wife of a medicine man who had been a finder and seer since boyhood, because the elders of the tribe had noticed his spiritual gifts when he was still very young, about eight years old. They had said, “Watch this boy. He’s the one,” and had taught and prepared him for his future life as a medicine man. Because going to a white school would spoil him for the role the elders had chosen for him, Old Henry had driven the truant officers away with his shotgun, telling them, “I will rather go to jail before I let this boy go to your school!” Now Leonard would teach me to be a medicine man’s wife, and I was eager to learn.

I think it was not easy for him to teach his wife. She knows him during the day and during the night, too. Knowing his strengths, she cannot fail to see his weaknesses also. And he knows the good and the bad in her likewise. We were under stress from the outside all the time, and so we had our ups and downs. Also, with the kind of life I had before, I did not respect him just because he was a man, as some Sioux women do. Some of those old macho Sioux proverbs like “Woman should not walk before man” I did not think were meant for me. We loved each other, and sometimes we fought each other. Under the conditions under which we had to live, how could it have been otherwise? But always, always I felt, and was enraptured by, his tremendous power—raw power, spiritual Indian power coming from deep within him. It was raw because, never having been at school and being unable to read or write, there is no white-man intellectualism in him. At the same time, his thinking and ideas are often extremely sophisticated—unique, original, even frightening.

I was at first very unsure about the role of a medicine man’s wife, about the part women played, or were allowed to play, in Indian religion. All I knew from childhood was that a menstruating woman had to keep away from all rituals, and the thought intimidated me. Leonard helped me overcome these feelings of insecurity. He told me about Ptesan Win, the White Buffalo Woman, who brought the sacred pipe to our tribes. He told me about medicine women. He said that in 1964 he went to Allen, South Dakota, to take part in a number of ceremonies. While there he met a medicine woman. She said good things to the people at this ceremony. Her name was Bessie Good Road. She used a buffalo skull in her rituals, and always a buffalo came into her meetings. She had the spiritual buffalo power. Every time the buffalo spirit moved his legs, his hoofs struck sparks of lightning. Every time the buffalo grunted, flashes of light shot from his nostrils. Every time the buffalo swung his tail, one could see a flaming circle. “I took my drum and sang for her,” he told me. “I had never seen a medicine woman before and I was awed by her power.” She told him: “Someday I won’t be here anymore. I want to leave these things, this power for my people to stand on. We are losing many sacred things, losing sacred knowledge, but to this place the buffalo spirit still comes.”

The medicine woman did not talk much. She had to wait a long time until she could use her medicine, until she no longer had her moon time. He was not ashamed to have this holy woman teach him. Hearing this made me feel good.

In this way Crow Dog talked to me. It did not matter where. Riding in a car, at the table eating fry bread and hamburger, around the stove with other people listening, or at night lying by his side. He taught me how to listen. Sound is important. Our sound is the sound of nature and animals, not the notes of a white man’s scale. Our language comes from the water, the flowers, the wild creatures, the winds. Crow Dog believes that the newborn child can understand this universal language, but later he forgets it. He teaches about harmony between humans and the earth, between man and man and between man and woman. He always says: “What’s the saddle good for without a horse? Get the horse, and a saddle blanket, and the saddle together. That’s what the sacred hoop means.”

Tunkashila, the Grandfather Spirit, has filled this universe with powers, powers to use—for good, not for bad. We only have to suffer this power to enter into us, to fill us, not to resist it. Medicine men, Leonard told me, have a sort of secret language. Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet medicine men, before they start talking, they already know what they’ll be saying to each other. I guess that goes for medicine women, too.

I had to learn about the sweat bath, because it precedes all sacred ceremonies, and is at the same time a ceremony all by itself. It is probably the oldest of all our rituals because it is connected with the glowing stones, evoking thoughts of Tunka, the rock, our oldest god. Our family’s sweat lodge, our oinikaga tipi, is near the river which flows through Crow Dog’s land. That is good. Pure, flowing water plays a great part during a sweat. Always at the lodge we can hear the river’s voice, the murmur of its waters. Along its banks grows washte wikcemna, a sweet-smelling aromatic herb—Indian perfume.

The lodge is made of sixteen willow sticks, tough but resilient and easy to bend. They are formed into a beehive-shaped dome. The sweat lodges vary in size. They can accommodate anywhere from eight to twenty-four people. The bent willow sticks are fastened together with strips of red trade cloth. Sometimes offerings of Bull Durham tobacco are tied to the frame, which is then covered with blankets or a tarp. In the old days buffalo skins were used for the covering, but these are hard to come by now. The floor of the little lodge is covered with sage. In the center is a circular pit to receive the heated rocks. In building a lodge, people should forget old quarrels and have only good thoughts.

Outside the lodge, wood is piled up in a certain manner to make the fire in which the rocks will be heated—peta owihankeshni—the “fire without end” which is passed on from generation to generation. After it has blazed for a while, white limestone rocks are placed in its center. These rocks do not crack apart in the heat. They come from the hills. Some of them are covered with a spidery network of green moss. This is supposed by some to represent secret spirit writing.

The scooped-out earth from the firepit inside the lodge is formed up into a little path leading from the lodge entrance and ending in a small mound. It represents Unci—Grandmother Earth. A prayer is said when this mound is made. A man is then chosen to take care of the fire, to bring the hot rocks to the lodge, often on a pitchfork, and to handle the entrance flap.

In some places men and women sweat together. We do not do this. Among us, men and women do their sweat separately. Those taking part in a sweat strip, and wrapped in their towels, crawl into the little lodge, entering clockwise. In the darkness inside they take their towels off and hunker down naked. I was astounded to see how many people could be swallowed up by this small, waist-high, igloo-shaped hut. The rocks are then passed into the lodge, one by one. Each stone is touched with the pipe bowl as, resting in the fork of a deer antler, it is put into the center pit. The leader goes in first, sitting down near the entrance on the right side. Opposite him, at the other side of the entrance sits his helper. The leader has near him a pail full of cold, pure water and a ladle. Green cedar is sprinkled over the hot rocks, filling the air with its aromatic odor. Outside the entrance flap is a buffalo-skull altar. Tobacco ties are fastened to its horns. There is also a rack for the pipe to rest on.

Anywhere from twelve to sixty rocks can be used in this ceremony. The more rocks, the hotter it will be. Once the rocks have been passed into the lodge, the flap is closed. Inside it is dark except for the red glow of the rocks in the pit. Now the purification begins. As sage or cedar is sprinkled on the rocks, the men or women participating catch the sacred smoke with their hands, inhaling it, rubbing it all over their face and body. Then cold water is poured on the rocks. The rising cloud of white steam, “grandfather’s breath,” fills the lodge. A sweat has four “doors,” meaning that the flap is opened four times during the purification to let some cool outside air in, bringing relief to the participants.

Everybody has the privilege to pray or speak of sacred things during the ceremony. It is important that all take part in the ritual with their hearts, souls, and minds. When women have their sweats, a medicine man runs them—which is all right because it is so dark inside that he cannot see you.

The first time I was inside the oinikaga tipi, the sweat lodge, when water was poured over the rocks and the hot steam got to me, I thought that I could not endure it. The heat was beyond anything I had imagined. I thought I would not be able to breathe because it was like inhaling liquid fire. With my cupped hands I created a slightly cooler space over my eyes and mouth. After a while I noticed that the heat which had hurt me at first became soothing, penetrating to the center of my body, going into my bones, giving me a wonderful feeling. If the heat is more than a person can stand, he or she can call out “Mitakuye oyasin!"—All my relatives!—and the flap will be opened to let the inside cool off a bit. I was proud not to have cried out. After the sweat I really felt newly born. My pores were opened and so was my mind. My body tingled. I felt as if I had never experienced pain. I was deliciously light-headed, elated, drunk with the spirit. Soon I began looking forward to a good sweat.

Once we were in California testifying for an Indian brother on trial in Los Angeles. Some of the local Indians invited us to a sweat somewhere in the desert eighty miles from L.A. As I was hunkering down inside the lodge, they started passing in the rocks. When about twenty were in the pit, the usual number for a woman’s sweat, I expected them to close the flap and start the ceremony. Instead more and more rocks, a big heap, were coming in. I stared at the huge pile of glowing, hissing rocks rising higher and higher. I tried to back away from the rocks, but there was no room. My knees started to blister. Already the heat was terrific and they had not even poured the water yet. I cringed at the thought of what cold water on this big mound of fiery rocks would do. Then it came, the water. I thought I would die. Never, never thereafter would I eat lobsters, knowing what these poor creatures have to go through. I felt I could not cry out to have the flap opened. After all, I represented the Sioux women on this occasion. As the hissing steam enveloped us there rose a chorus of cries: “Ow, ow, ow, Great Spirit, we thank you for making us suffer so. We are suffering for our poor brothers in jail. Make us suffer more!”

“Jesus Christmas,” I thought, “these people don’t sweat to purify themselves. They sweat to suffer.” There were some anguished cries: “All my relatives!” The door was opened, but it was so hot outside in the desert that it brought me no relief. The flap was closed again and more water poured. The prayers started. I was praying too, silently: “Please make the prayers short,” but they were long. When it was all over we could not get out quickly enough. Some women were in such a hurry they did not even wrap their towels around themselves and came out stark naked. The relief of being out of that particular sweat lodge was indescribable. Leonard told me that they had used more stones in the men’s sweat than in ours. I could not see how that was possible.

Once Leonard ran a sweat in New Jersey for New York Indians—just a good, normally hot Sioux sweat. As Leonard poured the water those New York Indians began to scream. They tore apart the back of the sweat lodge, clawed their way out, and ran away in all directions. If that had happened in Sioux country it would have been a serious desecration of a religious ceremony. Leonard just gave the kind of laugh he reserves for tragicomic situations. “I forgive these people,” he said. “They just don’t understand Indian ways. They have to be taught.”

I have to admit that Leonard’s sweats are very hot. He has been in so many of them that he does not seem to feel the searing heat. During a peyote ceremony, I saw him picking up glowing embers with his bare fingers to put them back into place. Because he is no longer bothered by intense heat, he thinks everybody is like him in that respect. People are always dropping in to meet a medicine man, or to learn from him, or simply out of curiosity. One such visitor was a young black man called Jamesie. He made himself into a slave for me, chopping wood, fetching water, helping in the kitchen. That was nice. Then he wanted to take part in a sweat. Unfortunately for him, it was one of those in which men want to suffer for a brother in the slammer. That meant not only that it would be excruciatingly hot, but that there would be no crying “All my relatives!” and no opening of the flap during the ceremony. When the heat got to poor Jamesie he started screaming: “I’m dying, I’m dying!” Crow Dog told him that it was the most wonderful thing in the world to die during this ceremony, the most beautiful end a man could wish for. It was but little comfort to Jamesie.

I often tell Leonard, “Purify them, but don’t cook them!” And Leonard always answers, looking innocent, “But it wasn’t hot at all. I can’t understand these people. There must be something wrong with them.”

Leonard is also a yuwipi man. Yuwipi is one of our oldest, and also strangest, ceremonies. I had never been to a yuwipi until I met Leonard. It is an unexplainable experience. How can you explain the supernatural for which there is no rationalization? When the first yuwipi ceremony that I took part in was being prepared, I became apprehensive, and once it was in progress, I was even scared. I was still reacting like a white woman.

A yuwipi is put in motion when a man or woman sends a sacred pipe and tobacco to a medicine man. That is the right way to ask for a ceremony. Some person wants to find something—something that can be touched, or something that exists only in the mind. Maybe a missing child or the cause of an illness. The yuwipi man is a finder. He is the go-between, a bridge between the people and the spirits. Through him people ask questions of the supernaturals, and through him the spirits answer back. The person who sent the pipe is the sponsor. Yuwipi men do not get paid for their services, but the sponsor has to feed all comers who want to participate and take advantage of the ritual.

A dog feast is part of the yuwipi ritual, and dog meat is the holy food that is served at the end of the ceremony. This did not bother me. I had eaten dog many times as a child—not in a sacred way, but simply because we were so poor that we ate any kind of meat we could get our hands on—dog, gopher, prairie dog, jackrabbits—just about anything that walked on four legs. The dog feast is an almost human sacrifice. In the old days, young men from the warrior societies would go through the camp selecting dogs for a dog feast. Sometimes they would pick the dog of a great chief or famous hunter. It would have been very bad manners for the owner to object or let his face betray his feelings. It was an honor bestowed upon the owner as well as the dog. Whether they always appreciated the honor is another matter. It is because we are so fond of our dogs that the feast takes on the character of a sacrifice. They scent the dog, paint a red stripe on its back, and strangle it so that its neck is broken and it dies instantly.

I remember a funny incident. We were all staying at: a white friend’s home in New York. Somebody had a strange dream, and that called for a yuwipi ceremony. We had everything necessary for it except the dog. Henry was standing at a window overlooking Broadway. He pointed out to our host a man walking a young, plump dog. “Just the right kind,” said Henry. “Go get him!” “No way,” said our friend. “Go, tell the man,” urged Henry, “what a great honor it is. Also tell the dog that it is a very great honor and that he won’t feel a thing.” “New York dogs have no sense of honor,” replied our friend and we all had to laugh. So we used beef.

The way I remember my first yuwipi, young girls started it by making tobacco ties, tiny squares of colored cloth, each containing a pinch of Bull Durham tobacco, that were being tied into one single string more than thirty feet long. They made four hundred and five of these little tobacco bundles, one for each of the different plants, “our green brothers,” in our Sioux world.

While the girls made tobacco ties, others prepared the biggest room in the house for the ceremony. All furniture was removed, the floors swept and covered with sage. All pictures were taken from the walls. Mirrors were turned around because nothing that reflects light is allowed to remain during the ceremony. For this reason participants must remove jewelry, wristwatches, even eyeglasses before entering. All windows were covered with blankets because the ritual takes place in total darkness. Blankets and bedrolls were placed all along the four walls for everybody to sit on.

The string of tobacco ties was laid out in a square within the room. Nobody was allowed in this sacred square except the yuwipi man. All others remained outside. At the head of the square, where the sponsor and singer with his drum had taken their seats, were put a large can filled with earth and two smaller cans on each side. Planted into the big can was the sacred staff. It was half red and half black, the colors separated by a thin yellow stripe. To the top half of the staff was fastened an eagle feather and to the lower half, the tail of a black-tailed deer. The red of the staff stands for the day; the black, for the night. The eagle feather represents wisdom because the eagle is the wisest of all birds. An eagle’s center feather will make the spirits come into the ceremony.

The deer is very sacred. Each morning, before any other creature, the deer comes to the creek to drink and bless the water. The deer is medicine. It is a healer. It can see in the dark. If any doctoring is to be done, the deer’s spirit will enter. Leonard uses a certain kind of medicine from behind the animal’s ears to cure certain diseases. It is very powerful. So that is what the deer tail stands for.

In the smaller, earth-filled tin cans were planted sticks with colored strips of cloth, like flags, attached to them. These represent the sacred four directions, red for the west, white for the north, yellow for the east, and black for the south. In front of the staff was put the buffalo skull, serving as an altar. There was also a small earth altar, representing Grandmother Earth. On it was placed a circle of tobacco ties. Inside this circle, with his finger, Leonard traced a lightning design, because on this occasion he also wanted to use lightning medicine. It is believed that if a spirit comes in and then backs away from a person, that person cannot be cured.

Against the horns of the buffalo skull rested the sacred pipe. Also used were two special, round finding stones and three gourd rattles. Out of the tiny rocks inside the gourds come the spirit voices. These rocks, not much bigger than grains of sand, come from ant heaps. They are crystals, agates, and tiny fossils. They sparkle in the sunlight. Ants are believed to have power because they work together in tribes and don’t have hearts but live by the universe.

Everybody then received a twig of sage to put behind their ears or into their hair. This is supposed to make the spirits come to you and to enable you to hear their voices. Then the yuwipi man was brought into the center of the square. His helpers first put his arms behind his back and tied all his fingers together. Then they wrapped him up in a star blanket, covering him completely. A rawhide thong, the kind once used to make bowstrings, was then wound tightly around the blanket and secured with knots. Then the yuwipi man was placed face down on the sage-covered floor. On this occasion it was Leonard who had been tied up. He lay there like a mummy. I could not imagine how he could breathe. Then the kerosene lamps with the big reflectors were extinguished, leaving us sitting in absolute, total darkness. For a short while we sat in utter silence. Then, with a tremendous roar, the drum started to pound, filling the room with its reverberations as the singers began their yuwipi songs. It sent shivers down my spine.

Almost at once the spirits entered. First I heard tiny voices whispering, speaking fast in a ghostly language. Then the gourds began to fly through the air, rattling, bumping into walls, touching our bodies. Little sparks of light danced through the room, wandered over the ceiling, circled my head. I felt the wing beats of a big bird flitting here and there through the darkness with a whoosh, the feathers lightly brushing my face. At one time the whole house shook as if torn by an earthquake. One woman told me later that in one of the flashes of light she had seen the sacred pipe dancing. I was scared until I remembered that the spirits were friends. The meeting lasted almost until the morning. Finally they sang a farewell song for the spirits who were going home to the place from which they had come.

The lamp was lit and revealed Leonard sitting in the middle of the sacred square—unwrapped and untied. He was weeping from emotion and exhaustion. He then told us what the spirits had told him. Then we ate the dog, and afterward wojapi, a kind of berry pudding, drank mint tea and coffee, and of course smoked the pipe, which went around clockwise from one person to the next.

The white missionaries have always tried to suppress this ceremony, saying it was Indian hocus-pocus and that the yuwipi men simply were mountebanks after the manner of circus magicians. They tried to “expose” our medicine men, but the attempt backfired. During the 1940s the superintendent at Pine Ridge had Horn Chips, our foremost yuwipi man, perform the ceremony in full daylight in the presence of a number of skeptical white observers. He had Horn Chips tied and wrapped by his own BIA police. To the disappointment of the watching missionaries, the mystery sparks appeared out of nowhere and the gourds flew around the superintendent’s head. The result was that many Christian Indians went back to the old Lakota religion.

One of the strangest yuwipi ceremonies took place in New York when Leonard was visiting there. Dick Cavett some-how got wind of a yuwipi man being in town and asked for a ceremony in the proper ritual way. Cavett was born and raised in Nebraska, close to the Pine Ridge Reservation, and he believes in the power of yuwipi. As usual Leonard had all his sacred things with him, but he had no drummer or singer and, of course, no dog meat. The dog could be dispensed with, but having neither drummer nor singer was a problem. Leonard solved it by getting hold of a tape recorder and taping his own drumming and singing before the ceremony. He instructed one of the New York Indians to turn the recorder on the moment the lights went out. He had timed the whole ceremony on his watch. He also taught some Mohawk Indians how to tie him up. He told Cavett and the Indians who had come to participate that he doubted very much that the spirits would come in under such unusual circumstances, but they did appear and it turned into a very good meeting. As Leonard used to say: “I am a guitar and the spirits are the strings who make the music.”

In May 1974, Old Henry and Leonard put on a Ghost Dance. After the one at Wounded Knee this is only the second time during this century that the dance has been performed. We held it on a lonely mesa which has served the Crow Dogs as their sacred place and vision-quest hill for generations. It was supposed to be a ritual for Sioux only, but somehow, through the “moccasin telegraph” which always spreads news among Indians in a mysterious way, everybody seemed to know about it, and many native people from as far away as Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and Arizona suddenly appeared in order to participate. Strange things happened. Observation planes flew over the sacred dance ground. One of our young security men pointed his gun at them to drive them away. The pilots finally took the hint. Two FBI agents were discovered hiding behind some nearby trees. They wore very stylish, mod clothes and told us they were insurance agents. Though we were angry at their desecration of our ceremony, we had to laugh. It was so ridiculous. There is no house for miles up there, and no road. The only living things to sell life insurance to on that pine-studded hill are coyotes and porcupines. We made a citizens’ arrest and took the two snoopers to tribal court, where they were put on bail for peddling on Indian land without a license. They bailed themselves out with hundred-dollar bills which they peeled off from a fat roll of green frogskins that they carried in their pockets. It was funny, but the presence of the planes and the agents gave me premonitions of bad things to come.

The weather was fine throughout, with the sun shining all the time. We had a great many dancers, among them a sixteen-year-old white girl, the daughter of friends from New York. We also had two Mexican Indians taking part, one a Nahua from Oaxaca, the other a Huichol from Chihuahua. They had come in their white campesino outfits. The Huichol brother said that his name in Indian was Warm Southwind. So, of course, we renamed him “Mild Disturbance.” About a dozen dancers got into the power and received visions. One young Navajo with a red blanket wrapped around him suddenly began to dance with the movements of a bird. It seemed almost as if an eagle had taken possession of his body. The best thing that happened was the appearance of a flight of eagles toward the end of the dance. Nobody had ever seen so many of these sacred birds together at one time. They circled with outspread wings over the dance ground and then flew off in an undulating line, like a long plumed serpent gliding through the clouds. It made us happy.

The Crow Dogs have always believed that they are under a kind of curse on account of the first Crow Dog killing Spotted Tail over a hundred years ago. They see the face of the dead chief in their drinking bowls. Leonard always says that Spotted Tail’s blood is still dripping on him, loading him down. He says that the guilt lasts for four generations, that only his sons will be free from it. Thinking of all the bad things that happened in the months following the Ghost Dance, one could almost believe that Spotted Tail’s anger is still unappeased. (At a give-away feast in 1989, Crow Dog put a war bonnet on the present chief Spotted Tail, and both families decided to be friends forever from that day on.)