"The Life of Sweet Medicine" © 2007 Stu Jenks & the Strange Owl Family
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.
![Laxmii's Flight [Flam Chen]](http://stujenks.typepad.com/photos/circle_stories_vol_1_hoop/./laxmiisflight4-thumb.jpg)
