SIXTH CHAPTERCHILDHOOD GAMES AND BELIEFS
SIXTH CHAPTER
White people seem to think that Indian children never have any play and never laugh. Such ideas seem very funny to me. How can any child grow up without play? I have seen children at our reservation school playing white men’s games—baseball, prisoners’ base, marbles. We Indian children also had games. I think they were better than white children’s games.
I look back upon my girlhood as the happiest time of my life. How I should like to see all my little girl playmates again! Some still live, and when we meet at feasts or at Fourth-of-July camp, we talk of the good times we had when we were children.
My little half sister was my usual playmate. She was two years younger than I, and I lovedher dearly. She had a pretty name, Cold Medicine. On our prairies grows a flower with long, yellow root. In old times, if a warrior was running from enemies and became wearied he chewed a bit of the root and rubbed it on his eyelids. It made his eyes and tongue feel cold and kept him awake. The flower for this reason was called cold medicine. When my father spoke my sister’s name, it made him think of this flower and of the many times he had bravely gone out with war parties.
For playgrounds my little sister and I had the level spaces between the lodges or the ground under the corn stage, in sunny weather; and the big, roomy floor of the earth lodge, if it rained or the weather were chill. We liked, too, to play in the lodge in the hot days of the Cherry moon; for it was cool inside, never hot and stuffy like a white man’s house. In the fall, when the air was frosty, the sun often shone, and we could play in the big yellow sunspot that fell on the floor through the smoke hole.
We liked to play at housekeeping, especially in the warm spring days, when we had returned from winter camp and could again play out-ofdoors.With the help of the neighbors’ children, we fetched long forked sticks. These we stacked like a tepee frame and covered with robes that we borrowed. To this play tent we brought foods and had a feast.
Sometimes little boys joined in our play; and then it was like real housekeeping. We girls chose each a little boy for husband. To my little husband I said, “Old man, get your arrows, and go kill some buffaloes. We are hungry. Go at once!”
My little husband hastened to his mother and told her our needs. She laughed and gave him a boiled buffalo tongue; or perhaps pemmican, dried meat pounded fine and mixed with marrow fat. This and the foods which the other little husbands fetched us, we girls laid on fresh, clean grass that we pulled. Then we sat down to feast, the little girls on one side of the fireplace, the little boys on the other, just as we had seen men and women sit when they feasted. Only there really was no fireplace. We just made believe there was.
In summer, my little sister and I often went to the river for wet clay, which we modeled into figures. There is a smooth, blue clay found in places at the water’s edge, very good for modeling. We liked best to make human figures, man, woman, or little child. We dried them in the shade, else the sun cracked them. I fear they were not very beautiful. When we made a mud man, we had to give him three legs to make him stand up.
I had a doll, woven of rushes, that Turtle made me. It really was not a doll, but a cradle, such as Indian women used for carrying a small child. In winter I had my deer-skin doll, with the beads for eyes. My grandmother had made me a little bed for my dolls. The frame was of willows, and it was covered with gopher skins, tanned and sewed together. In this little bed my sister and I used to put our dollies to sleep.
We had a game of ball much like shinny. It was a woman’s game, but we little girls played it with hooked sticks. We also had a big, soft ball, stuffed with antelope hair, which we would bounce in the air with the foot. The game was to see how long a girl could bounce the ball without letting it touch the ground. Some girls could bounce it more than a hundred times. It was lots of fun.
We coasted in winter, on small sleds made of buffalo ribs; but coasting on the snow was rather for boys and older girls. There was another kind of coaster that we girls liked. A buffalo skin has the hair lying backwards, towards the flanks. I would borrow a skin of my mothers and tie a thong through two of the stake holes at the head or neck, to draw it by. Such a skin made a good coaster evenin summer on a steep hillside; for, laid head forward, it slid smoothly over the soft grass.
Girls of thirteen or fourteen were fond of playing at “tossing in a blanket,” or “foot-moving,” as we called it. There were fifteen or twenty players. A newly dried skin was borrowed, one that was scraped clean of hair. There were always holes cut in the edges of a hide, to stake it to the ground while drying. Into each hole a small hard wood stick was now thrust and twisted around, for a handle.
Along the ditch at the edge of the village grew many tall weeds. The players pulled armfuls of these and made them into a pile. They laid the hide on this pile of weeds; and, with a player at every one of the stick handles, they stretched the hide taut.
A girl now lay downward on the hide. With a quick pull, the others tossed her into the air, when she was expected to come down on her feet, to be instantly tossed again. The game was to see how many times she could be tossed without falling. A player was often tossed ten or more times before she lost her balance.Each time, as she came down, she kept turning in one direction, right or left. When at last she fell, the pile of weeds saved her from any hurt.
We called the gameeetseepadahpakee,[7]or foot-moving, from the player’s habit of wriggling her feet when in the air. We thought this wriggling, or foot moving, a mark of skill.
[7]ēēt sēē pä däh´ pä kēē
But, if my mothers let me play much of the time, they did not forget to teach me good morals. “We are a family that has not a bad woman in it,” they used to say. “You must try hard not to be naughty.”
My grandfather Big Cloud often talked to me. “My granddaughter,” he would say, “try to be good, so that you will grow up to be a good woman. Do not quarrel nor steal. Do not answer anyone with bad words. Obey your parents, and remember all that I say.”
When I was naughty my mothers usually scolded me; for they were kind women and did not like to have me punished. Sometimes they scared me into being good, by saying, “The owl will get you.” This saying had to do with an old custom that I will explain.
Until I was about nine years old, my hair was cut short, with a tuft on either side of my head, like the horns of an owl. Turtle used to cut my hair. She used a big, steel knife. In old times, I have heard, a thin blade of flint wasused. I did not like Turtle’s hair cutting a bit, because shepulled.
“Why do you cut my hair, grandmother?” I asked.
“It is our custom,” Turtle answered. “I will tell you the story.”
“Thousands and thousands of years ago, there lived a great owl. He was strong and had magic power, but he was a bad bird. When the hunters killed buffaloes, the owl would turn all the meat bitter, so that the Indians could not eat it, and so they were always hungry.
“On this earth then lived a young man called the Sun’s Child; for the sun was his father. He heard how the Indians were made hungry, and came to help them.
“The owl lived in a hollow tree that had a hole high up in its trunk. The Sun’s Child climbed the tree, and when the owl put his head out of the hole, he caught the bird by the neck.
“‘Do not let the Sun’s Child kill me!’ the owl cried to the Indians. ‘I have been a bad bird; now I will be good and I will help your children.
“‘As soon as a child is old enough to understand you when you speak to him, cut his hair with two tufts like my own. Do this to make him look like an owl; and I will remember and make the child grow up strong and healthy. If a child weeps or will not obey, say to him, “The owl will get you!” This will frighten him, so that he will obey you.’”
Plate I.—Offering food before the shrine of the Big Birds’ ceremony
It was thus my mothers frightened me when I was naughty. Red Blossom would call, “O owl, I have a bad daughter. Come.”
“I will be good, I will be good!” I would cry, as I ran to my father. I knew he would not let the owl hurt me.
My old grandfather, Missouri River, taught me of the gods. He was a medicine man and very holy, and I was rather afraid of him. He used to sit on the bench behind the fire, to smoke. He had a long pipe, of polished black stone. He liked best to smoke dried tobacco blossoms which he first oiled with buffalo fat.
One day, as he sat smoking, I asked him, “Grandfather, who are the gods?”
Missouri River took a long pull at his pipe, blew the smoke from his nostrils, and put the stem from his mouth. “Little granddaughter,” he answered, “this earth is alive and has a soul or spirit, just as you have a spirit. Other things also have spirits, the sun, clouds, trees, beasts, birds. These spirits are our gods. We pray to them and offer them food, that they may help us when we have need.”
“Do the spirits eat the food?” I asked. I had seen my grandfather set food before the two skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony.
“No,” said my grandfather, “They eat the food’s spirit; for the food has a spirit as have all things. When the gods have eaten of its spirit, we often take back the food to eat ourselves.”
“How do we know there are gods, grandfather?” I asked.
“They appear to us in our dreams. That is why the medicine man fasts and cuts his flesh with knives. If he fasts long, he will fall in a vision. In this vision the gods will come and talk with him.”
“What are the gods like?” I asked.
“Like beings that live on this earth. Some are as men. Others are as birds, or beasts, or even plants and other things. Not all the gods are good. Some seek to harm us. The good gods send us buffaloes, and rain to make our corn grow.”
“Do they send us thunder?” I asked. There had been a heavy storm the day before.
“The thunder bird god sends us thunder,” said my grandfather. “He is like a great swallow, with wings that spread out like clouds. Lightning is the flash of his eyes. His scream makes the thunder.
“Once in Five Villages,” my grandfather went on, “there lived a brave man who owned a gun. One day a storm blew up. As the man sat in his lodge, there came a clap of thunder and lightning struck his roof, tearing a great hole.
“This did not frighten the man at all. Indeed, it angered him. He caught up his gun and fired it through the hole straight into the sky. ‘You thunder bird,’ he shouted, ‘stay away from my lodge. See this gun. If you come, I will shoot at you again!’”
My grandfather paused to fill his pipe. “That was a brave man,” he said as he reached for a coal. “Perhaps the thunder bird loves brave men, and did not harm him. But it is not well to provoke the gods. My little granddaughter should never laugh at them nor speak of them lightly.”
My grandfather spoke very solemnly.