Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing: Cheyenne

Below is an account of the life of Sweet Medicine. A plaque at the base of the mountain mentioned that Bear Butte (called Noavosse, the Good Mountain by the Cheyenne) was where the Cheyenne holy man and folk hero came to get the bundle of the Four Arrows, the Four Commandments and also left with a moral code. Sort of like Moses going to Mount Sinai. (Fun Archaeological Fact: The Cheyenne are believed to initially have been an Algonquin-related tribe in what is now New York and New England. Then they moved to modern day Minnesota and finally to the Northwest Great Plains.) I couldn't find much on what was the specific moral code that Sweet Medicine brought down but his story is very interesting. Tales of miracles, and immaculate conceptions and immortality. Sort of like a cross between Buddha, Moses and Jesus, but not. Dramatically shows the universality of the Hero Story that is told among all people.

My heart really goes out to the Cheyenne in particular. History shows pretty clearly that numerous times, many Cheyenne chiefs and holy men petitioned the Federal Government during the time of the Indian Wars, to stop all of the bloodshed and killing. Just let us have some land, some places to hunt and we'll leave the white man alone and you, us. Other tribal leaders and people like some of the Apaches and Lakotas fought to the end. Nothing wrong with that. But I identify more with the Cheyenne, personally. I think I would have tried to negotiate a lasting peace, rather than keep on fighting. But hell if I know. I'm a white 20th Century Man from the suburbs. Time and again, the U.S. Army ignored their overtures and simply killed them, men, women, children. I know it was a long time ago, but it still breaks my heart.

Finally, here are some more of my Bear Butte shots. You may have noticed in the last post, that I wasn't very specific about what and who was prayed for, by me, on top of that peak. Some things need to stay private. In a future post, you'll also find that true of my experience at the holy ground of Devil's Tower. I'll show but I won't tell too much. However at Little Big Horn, they will be an exception.

The Life and Death of Sweet Medicine

(Told by members of the Strange Owl family on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Montana, 1967, recorded by Richard Erdoes)

A long time ago the people had no laws, no rules of behavior- they hardly knew enough to survive. And they did shameful things out of ignorance, because they didn't understand how to live.

There was one man among them who had a natural sense of what was right. He and his wife were good, hard- working people, a family to be proud of. They knew how to feel ashamed, and this feeling kept them from doing wrong.

Their only child was a daughter, beautiful and modest, who had reached the age when girls begin to think about husbands and making a family. One night a man's voice spoke to her in a dream. "You are handsome and strong, modest and young. Therefore Sweet Root will visit you."

Dismissing it as just a dream, the girl went cheerfully about her chores the next day. On the following night, however, she heard the voice again: "Sweet Root is coming- woman's medicine which makes a mother's milk flow. Sweet Root is coming as a man comes courting."

The girl puzzled over the words when she awoke, but in the end shrugged her shoulders. People can't control their dreams, she thought, and the idea of a visit from a medicine root didn't make any sense.

On the third night the dream recurred, and this time it was so real that a figure seemed to be standing beside the buffalo robe she slept on. He was talking to her, telling her: "Sweet Root is coming; he is very near. Soon he will be with you."

On the fourth night she heard the same voice and saw the same figure. Disturbed, she told her mother about it the next morning. "There must be something in it," she said. "It's so real and the voice is so much like a man's voice."

"No, its just a dream," her mother said. "It doesn't mean anything."

But from that time on, the girl felt different. Something was stirring, growing within her, and after a few months, her condition became obvious: she was going to have a baby. She told her parents that no man had touched her, and they believed her. But others would not be likely to, and the girl hid her condition. When she felt the birth pangs coming on, she went out into the prairie far from the camp and built herself a brush shelter. Doing everything herself, she gave birth to a baby boy. She dried the baby, wrapped him in soft moss, and left him there in the wickiup, for in her village a baby without a father would be scorned and treated badly. Praying that someone would find him, she went sadly home to her parents.

At about the same time, an old woman was out searching the prairie for wild turnips, which she dug up with an animal's shoulder blade. She heard crying, and following the sound, came to the wickiup. She was overjoyed to find the baby, as she had never had one of her own. All around the brush shelter grew the sweet root which makes a mother's milk flow; so she named the boy Sweet Medicine. She took him home to her shabby tipi even though she had nothing to offer him but love.

In the tipi next to the old woman's lived a young mother who was nursing a small child, and she agreed to nurse Sweet Medicine also. He grew faster and learned faster than ordinary children and was weaned in no time. When he was only ten years old, he had already grown-up wisdom and hunting skill far in advance of his age. But because he had no family and lived at the edge of the camp in a poor tipi, no one paid any attention to Sweet Medicine's exceptional powers.

That year there was a drought, very little game, and much hunger in the village. "Grandmother," he told her, "find me an old buffalo hide- any dried out, chewed up scrap with holes in it will do."

The woman searched among the refuse piles and found a wrinkled, brittle piece that the starving dogs had been chewing on. When she brought it to Sweet Medicine, he told her, "Take this to the stream outside the camp, wash it in the flowing water, make it pliable, and scrape it clean." After she had done this Sweet Medicine took a willow wand and bent it into a hoop, which he colored with sacred red earth paint. He cut the buffalo hide into one long string and wove it back and forth over the hoop, making a kind of net with an opening in the center. Then he cut four wild cherry sticks, sharpened them to a point, and hardened them in the hearth fire.

The next morning he said: "Grandmother, come with me. We're going to play the hoop-and-stick game." He took the hoop and the cherry-wood sticks and walked into the middle of the camp circle. "Grandmother, roll this hoop for me," he said. She rolled the hoop along the ground and Sweet Medicine hurled his pointed sticks through the center of it, hitting the right spot every time. Soon a lot of people, men and women, boys and girls, came to watch the strange new game.

Then Sweet Medicine cried: "Grandmother, let me hit it once more and make the hoop turn into a fat buffalo calf!"

Again he threw his stick like a dart, again the stick went through the center of the hoop, and as it did so the hoop turned into a fat, yellow buffalo calf. The stick had pierced its heart, and the calf fell down dead. "Now you people will have plenty to eat," said Sweet Medicine. "Come and butcher this calf."

The people gathered and roasted chunks of tender calf meat over their fires. And no matter how many pieces of flesh they cut from the calf's body, it was never picked clean. However much they ate, there was always more. So the people had their fill, and that was the end of the famine. It was also the first hoop-and-stick game played among the Cheyenne. This sacred game has much power attached to it, and it is still being played.

A boy's first kill is an important happening in his life, something he will always remember. After killing his first buffalo a boy will be honored by his father, who may hold a feast for him and give him a man's name. There would be no such feast for Sweet Medicine; all the same, he was very happy when he killed a fat, yellow calf on his first hunt. He was skinning and butchering it when he was approached by an elderly man, a chief too old to do much hunting, but still harsh and commanding. "This is just the kind of hide I have been looking for," said the chief. "I will take it."

"You can't have a boy's first hide," said Sweet Medicine. "Surely you must know this. But you are welcome to half of the meat, because I honor old age."

The chief took the meat but grabbed the hide too, and began to walk off with it. Sweet Medicine took hold of one end, and they started a tug-of-war. The chief used his riding whip on Sweet Medicine, shouting: "How dare a poor nothing boy defy a chief?" As he whipped Sweet Medicine again and again across the face, the boy's fighting spirit was aroused. He grabbed a big buffalo leg bone and hit the old man over the head.

Some say Sweet Medicine killed that chief, others say the old man just fell down stunned. But in the village the people were angry that a mere boy had dared to fight the old chief. Some said, "Lets whip him," others said, "Lets kill him."

After he had returned to the old woman's lodge, Sweet Medicine sensed what was going on. He said: "Grandmother, some young men of the warrior societies will come here to kill me for having stood up for myself." He thanked her for her kindness to him and then fled from the village. Later when the young warriors came, they were so angry to find the boy gone that they pulled down the lodge and set fire to it.

The following morning someone saw Sweet Medicine, dressed as a Fox warrior, standing on a hill overlooking the village. His enemies set out in pursuit, but he was always just out of their reach and they finally retired exhausted. The next morning he appeared as an Elk warrior, carrying a crooked coupstick wrapped in otter skin. Again, they tried to catch him and kill him, and again he evaded them. They resumed their futile chase on the third morning, when he wore the red face paint and feathers of a Red Shield warrior, and on the fourth, when he dressed like a Dog soldier and shook a small red rattle tied with buffalo hair at his pursuers. On the fifth day he appeared in the full regalia of a Cheyenne chief. That made the village warriors angrier than ever, but they still couldn't catch him, and after that they saw him no more.

Wandering alone over the prairie, the boy heard a voice calling, leading him to a beautiful dark-forested land of many hills. Standing apart from the others was a single mountain shaped like a huge tipi: the sacred mountain called Bear Butte.

Sweet Medicine found a secret opening which has since been closed (or perhaps is visible to him alone) and entered the mountain. It was hollow inside like a tipi, forming a sacred lodge filled with people who looked like ordinary men and women, but were really powerful spirits.

"Grandson, come in, we have been expecting you," the holy people said, and when Sweet Medicine took his seat, they began teaching him the Cheyenne way to live so that he could return to the people and give them this knowledge.

First of all, the spirits gave him the sacred four arrows, saying, "This is the great gift we are handing you. With these wonderful arrows, the tribe will prosper. Two arrows are for war and two are for hunting. But there is much, much more to the four arrows. They have great powers. They contain rules by which men ought to live."

The spirit people taught Sweet Medicine how to pray to the arrows, how to keep them, how to renew them. They taught him the wise laws of the forty-four chiefs. They taught him how to set up rules for the warrior societies. They taught him how women should be honored. They taught him the many useful things by which people could live, survive, and prosper, things that people had not yet learned at that time. Finally they taught him how to make a special tipi in which the sacred arrows were to be kept. Sweet Medicine listened respectfully and learned well, and finally an old spirit man burned incense of sweet grass to purify both Sweet Medicine and the sacred arrow bundle. Then the Cheyenne boy put the holy bundle on his back and began the long journey home to his people.

During his absence there had been a famine in the land. The buffalo had gone into hiding, for they were angry that the people did not know how to live and were behaving badly. When Sweet Medicine arrived at the village, he found a group of tired and listless children, their ribs sticking out, who were playing with little buffalo figures they had made out of mud. Sweet Medicine immediately changed the figures into large chunks of juicy buffalo meat and fat. "Now there's enough for you to eat," he told the young ones, "with plenty left over for your parents and grandparents. Take the meat, fat, and tongues into the village, and tell two good young hunters to come out in the morning to meet me."

Though the children carried the message and two young hunters went out and looked everywhere for Sweet Medicine the next day, all they saw was a big eagle circling above them. They tried again on the second and third days with no success, but on the fourth morning they found Sweet Medicine standing on top of a hill overlooking the village. He told the two: "I have come bringing a wonderful gift from the Creator which the spirits inside the great medicine mountain have sent you. Tell the people to set up a big lodge in the center of the camp circle. Cover its floor with sage, and purify it with burning sweet grass. Tell everyone to go inside the tipi and stay there, no one must see me approaching."

When at last all was made ready, Sweet Medicine walked slowly toward the village and four times called out: "People of the Cheyenne, with a great power I am approaching. Be joyful. The sacred arrows I am bringing." He entered the tipi with the sacred arrow bundle and said: "You have not yet learned the right way to live. That is why the Ones above were angry and the buffalo went into hiding." The two young hunters lit the fire, and Sweet Medicine filled a deer-bone pipe with sacred tobacco. All night through, he taught the people what the spirits inside the holy mountain had taught him. These teachings established the way of the Tsistsistas, the true Cheyenne nation. Toward the morning, Sweet Medicine sang four sacred songs. After each song he smoked the pipe, and its holy breath ascended through the smoke hole up into the sky, up to the great mystery.

At daybreak, as the sun rose and the people emerged from the sacred arrow lodge, they found the prairie around them covered with buffalo. The spirits were no longer angry. The famine was over.

For many nights to come, Sweet Medicine instructed the people in the sacred laws. He lived among the Cheyenne for a long time and made them into a proud tribe respected throughout the plains.

Four lives the Creator had given him, but even Sweet Medicine was not immortal. Only the rocks and the mountains are forever. When he grew old and feeble and felt that the end of his appointed time was near, he directed the people to carry him to a place near the sacred Bear Butte. There they made a small hut for him out of cottonwood branches and cedar lodge poles covered with bark and leaves. They spread its floor with sage, flat cedar leaves, and fragrant grass. It was a good lodge to die in, and when they placed him before it, he addressed the people for the last time:

"I have seen in my mind that some time after I am dead...and may the time be long...light-skinned bearded men will arrive with sticks spitting fire. They will conquer the land and drive you before them. They will kill the animals who give you their flesh that you may live, and they will bring strange animals for you to ride and eat. They will introduce war and evil, strange sickness and death. They will try and make you forget Maheo, the Creator, and the things I have taught you, and will impose their own alien, evil ways. They will take your land little by little, until there is nothing left for you. I do not like to tell you this, but you must know. You must be strong when that bad time comes, you men, and particularly you women, because much depends on you, because you are the perpetuators of life and if you weaken, the Cheyenne will cease to be. Now I have said all there is to say.

Then Sweet Medicine went into his hut to die.

June, 1982:

I went to Bo's wedding in Chicago. Nice girl, Cathy. We were all surprised. (Bo had a long history of dating crazy girls. Cathy wasn't. They recently celebrated 25 years together.) I then proceeded West. Plan was a bit vague. First visit Eric in San Francisco and surprise Lisa while I'm there (She wasn't happy to see me), then swing south to Tucson and visit my Uncle Len and Aunt Virginia for the first time. (My Chevy Two broke down there, I became lovers with my cousin's roommate, had my first real live Déjà Vu in my life and feel in love with the desert. After returning to North Carolina it wasn't six mouths before I was back in Tucson.) I had plenty of Pot, some mushrooms and some acid with me. Ate the psilocybin on the drive up to Chicago, switched to Acid in Minnesota. Saw wheat fields below huge violent storm clouds in South Dakota. Saw the Badlands and more magnificent rain near Wall. And for some reason I stumbled onto Bear Butte. Don't know how I found out about it. I hiked to the top that day and placed a whirligig there as my prayer token. I remember halfway up the mountain, that the acid and the pot had been overpowered by the spiritual energy of the place. I remember a saying by Bo, that Pot is OK for boring things but for exciting, and powerful places, it just takes away from it. He was right. I knew some about the plight of the Plain Indians in 1982. Was deeply moved by all of the prayer bundles on all of the trees. But I was still spiritually and emotional lost and confused. Didn't make me a bad person. Just an artistically flaky guy, who couldn't face his own inadequacies, much less face life on life's terms.

Monday, October 15^th, 2007:

My brain no longer runs on THC and LSD, but my veins do have caffeine and nicotine in them this morning. I have my own tobacco prayer bundles with me this time. Tony instructed me well on how to make them. 'Use the colors of red, black, white, and yellow,' he said. 'Cut the cloth into two to four inch squares, take a pinch of tobacco and as you place it on the cloth and tie the bundle, pray for a specific person or thing.' That's just what I did last week in my studio.

I'm now in the parking lot at Bear Butte State Park. Round 9 a.m. One other car and no one else. Even the visitors' center is closed for the season. The mountain is mostly naked of trees now. Bad fire came though in 1996, but it's still beautiful. I grab my camera gear, my water and my bundles and head for the trailhead. The summit's obscured with early morning rain clouds. I can put up my hand and feel the power of the place.

Immediately I start seeing prayer bundles. I smile. I bet some folk just don't need to get to the top. 'You go, son,' says the old Cheyenne man with bad hips. 'I'll just tie mine here and wait for you at the truck.' It's very cold, around freezing today. Got the heavy coat, hat and gloves on. I pull the bill down of my cap, to shelter my glasses from the drizzle and press on.

All the way up, I see bundles. Small ones, large ones, long ones, short ones. I fell pulled up the mountain as if by unseen hands. 90% of the trees were destroyed in the fire but that just means that almost every surviving Pine has a prayer bundle or two or twenty tied to its branches. It's pretty easy hiking until I accidentally get off the trail near the top and have to crab it up the final hundred yard of talus rock to get to the summit. But that's fine. A little healthy struggle is a good thing. In no time, I'm 1200 feet above the Great Plains below.

What is it about a spiritual place be it Bear Butte, a holy place for Lakota, Cheyenne and other Indians for hundreds of years, or St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral in Santa Fe, or Norte Dame in Paris or The Standing Stones of Callanish in Scotland. Is it about the place alone? The rocks, the buildings themselves? I don't think so. I think it's the collective prayerful energy over many years that transform a mountain or a church into a deeply holy place. It's the people bringing their energy, day after day, leaving their hopes, sadnesses, joys and fears that makes Bear Butte and other holy places the psychically glowing spots they are. It's the product of a 100,000 prayers by 100,000 people.

Sometimes I just can't speak about what I experienced. The talking just doesn't work. And coming from me, that's saying something, that speech become limited. It's like trying to describe what a Chopin Nocturne sounds like to someone who can't hear. Like attempting to specifically quantitate the chemistry between lovers, and tell someone else who has never felt that passion. It's seems wanting, words do sometimes. Music sometimes can do it. Art, Dance too. Words are far down the line I think, at least to me. Maybe Charles could brew up some phrases, but I'm having a hard time.

So:

I had some experiences on top of Bear Butte. I took some pictures. I have no adequate words.

I can tell you this. This has words.

On the way down, I said to myself, " I want to come back here and hike this peak again, in 25 years, when I'm 77 years old."

Without hesitation, the quiet still voice within and without said, "You keep doing what you are doing, and you ain't going to make it to 77."

I didn't even have to ask but I did.

"You need to quit smoking. Not today, not next week but within a year," it said.

"I figured it was that," I said to the disembodied voice.

"And you also need to get more sleep. That's hurting you too."

"OK, OK!"

"And finally."

"There's more?"

The still voice repeats, "And finally, you need to stop eating so late at night."

"Anything else I need to change?" I was mildly pissed, but mostly amused. I figured the smoking, but I didn't expect a little list of inadequacies.

"That's it. Quit smoking, sleep more, and eat earlier."

I'm smiling but it's a weak grin. I sometimes forget that when you visit a holy place, what God, Goddess or your Gut has to say, will at least half of the time be things you'd rather not hear. But on the flip side, the benefits are greater and magnificent yet difficult to describe.

Like the power of the colorful bundles on Bear Butte.

Halloween, 2007:

I was inspired by what I saw at Bear Butte. Could see that objects I want to make in my mind's eye. Mentioned the new project to a friend or two. They didn't seem too excited about it, or maybe they were worried about the fallout from the Indian community.

Usually I don't write about art projects before I do them, but it feels right here, or maybe I'm just want validation from the blogosphere. Probably I just need to say it alound and see what hell or heaven transpires.

Well, here goes:

I going to make my own prayer bundles, different from the Plains Indians but similar enough that I'll probably be accused of ripping them off, or different enough that I'll catch shit either way. But again, I've seen them in my mind for days, weeks, while on my trip and after. They're big, long, colorful, made not with tobacco but with lavender flowers. Hung from walls as well as from trees. Hung in homes and in the desert. And they will be both give away also sold. Flame on.

In my defense, the reason I'm moved to make these Lavender Bundles is to make objects that are specifically spiritual, not just implied like in my circle, hoop and spiral photos but explicitly for worship, meditation and prayer. It will give me great joy to see one of these hung in a friend's bedroom or a stranger's hallway, as an object of prayer. I'll take the risk of heat. I'm not using tobacco. I'm not trying to be an Indian. I'm just going where the Muse takes me, and I think it's going to take me to Aqua Vita to buy lavender and Jo-Ann's to buy fabric this weekend.

Stay tuned. We'll see what happens.

And Happy Halloween to you all and Happy Birthday to my mother Mary.