VIIGoing on Vision Quest
After putting a chunk of cottonwood in the sheet-iron stove, I sat waiting for the old man to emerge from a reverie that he seemed to be inducing with faint, dreamlike tones from his eagle-bone whistle. Finally, as he had given no indication of emerging, I broke the silence: “Are you sure now that the great voice was not scolding you?”
He peered squintingly at me for a while, and said: “I am very old, and I have learned so many things that I do not know much any more. Maybe I was wiser before my ears were troubled with so many forked words.
“In the old days, it was from the seven tepees and the seven council fires that our teaching came. It was older than the oldest grandfather could remember his grandfather telling him; and more and more grandfathers before that until it was old as hills, old as stars.
“The wisdom of the teaching was from vision and the vision was from Wakon Tonka: The people could not do anything right unless the Great Mysterious One helped them; and for this they prayed and made sacred songs and dances, and had a sacred way for doing everything. When a boy was just beginning to be a man, he had to go on vision quest; for what he saw would show him the good road and give him power, so that his life might be a story good to tell. I was thinking of my vision when you bothered me.”
He was silent again while he filled his pipe and lit it. Then, drawing hollow-cheeked upon the stem, he smoked awhile and brooded in the little cloud he made.
“Dho!” he said at length, uttering with explosive force the syllable of emphasis on something said or thought. “Dho!” Passing the pipe to me, he resumed aloud the tenor of his brooding. “It is so! Are the people good, and do they get along together any more? The hoop is broken and the people have forgotten. There is no voice on any hill to tell them, and they have no ears to hear.
“The hoop was breaking even then when I was happy and a boy; but then I did not know it, for the world was still as big as day, and Wakon Tonka could be found on any hill, and something wonderful could happen.
“After the Attacking of the Wagons the soldiers went away and our warriors burned their towns. And when the grass was new again there was a treaty with the Father in Washington. He said our land would be ours and no Wasichu could ever come there. You can see his tongue was forked. Red Cloud was not with us any more. The Great Father made an Agency for him on the North Platte. And that was bad; for many of our people went down there to eat Wasichu food, and take the many presents the Great Father gave them. And these they traded for theminne sheetsha[bad water, whiskey] that made them crazy, so that they forgot the Mother of all and the bison and the sacred hoop.
“But our Bad Face band that had been Red Cloud’s people would not go. Big Road was with us, and Little Hawk and Black Twin. Also Crazy Horse was ours; and now I see that he was greatest of them all. Sometimes some of our young men would go down there to get new guns and lead and powder, and what they told, the people talked and talked about it, and some of it I heard; but it was like a story. I think there were fifty lodges of us, and we lived the old way in the bison country of the Tongue and the Powder and the Rosebud; and with us were the Miniconjous and the Sans Arcs. I remember how they said the loafers and Wasichus at the Agency made fun of us and called us the wild Lakota; but they were the foolish ones. The hoop we lived in had grown smaller, but it was not broken yet, and the voices of the seven tepees were not still.
“I was getting stronger fast and I think it was about the time when Red Cloud made the treaty that I got my first calf. The treaty was just something people said, a little thing a long way off that maybe was not so; but the calf was very big. I gave the meat to old people, and they praised me, so that my grandmother and my grandfather and my mother were proud of me.
“There were more snows and grasses and I was getting tall when I heard Looks Twice telling my mother about Red Cloud’s long journey to see the Great Father and of the strange things that he saw in the world of the Wasichus where the sun comes from. Looks Twice was my father then, and my grandparents did not live with us, but he took care of them, and he was good to me and taught me many things about hunting and war.
“What he told about Red Cloud was like anohunkastory the oldfolk tell only at night, and it is wonderful to stay awake and listen, but only little children must believe it. There were so many Wasichu towns yonder where the Great Father lived and the sun comes from that they could not be counted; and so big they were that a horseback could ride and ride and always stay in the town. And in those towns the Wasichus were as many as the bison when they follow the grass all together. And the tepees were made of stone, tepee on top of tepee, so that if you would see the top, you must look far up and then look again, and sometimes after that, again. And there was more and more about the great medicine power of the Wasichus. There were big iron horses breathing smoke and fire, and there was a gun so long and heavy that maybe a hundred men could not lift it, and when it shot, there was a great thunder cloud full of lightning, and the whole sky was full of thunder. And the story got bigger, the more it was told; for on the other side of a great water that was like all the prairie without grass, there were more and more Wasichus, more and more towns of stone.
“I could look around and see the world was just as it always was. Maybe Red Cloud was getting to be a Wasichu with a forked tongue like all the others. People said he had worn Wasichu clothes yonder and looked foolish. He was not ours any more and we did not like him.
“I think I was about thirteen winters old, and I was a big boy. You can see that I was tall before so many snows bent me down, and then I was almost a man. I could swim farther under water than most boys, and when we played throwing-them-off-their-horses, only an older boy could throw me off. I liked to fight, and I wanted to go to war; but Looks Twice, who was my second father, said I would be ready after another snow and that I ought to go on vision quest first. It made me feel bad when he went with a war party against the Shoshonis and told me to stay at home and look after the horses. And I felt worse when he came back with a scalp on his coup-stick and some more good horses. He always took me hunting with him, and I could kill a cow, but it was not easy for me yet, and he would come and finish killing one that was getting away from me. Sometimes he could shoot an arrow clear through a cow if the point did not strike a bone.
“Of course, I played all the games with the other boys, but we all wanted to go to war, and we would get tired playing. In the winter before the deep snow had covered the ice, we would playchun-wachee-kyapi[make-the-wood-dance]. We had short round pieces of wood with sharp points on them [tops], and when we wrapped them with a long piece of sinew and threw them, they would spin on the ice, and we tried to break the dancing woods of the other boys by making ours danceagainst theirs. Or we would get tired doing that and maybe play ice-mark. We would fasten pieces of hard rawhide on our moccasins, then run and slide to see who could slide farthest. Or we would make little sleds with two buffalo ribs fastened together, with two feathers to guide them; and these we would throw on the ice to see whose would go farthest. We called thishuta-nachuta, but I never knew why. Then maybe if we got tired doing that we would have a war, dividing up and fighting with blunt arrows; or maybe we would put mud balls on willow sticks and throw them at each other. Sometimes we would have very hard fights, and boys would get hurt; but they did not care.
“There was another game that showed how brave we were. It could be played with dry sunflower seeds or pieces of dry rotten wood that would keep on burning without a flame. A boy would hold out his hand and they would put the burning piece on the back of it. If his hand shook or he made a face or brushed the piece off, he lost the game and some other boy tried it. Sometimes when a boy was very brave this made a big sore, and he was very proud of it.
“When the snow was deep and it was very cold, it was good to lie back against the tepee wall with the wind outside sending forth a voice like a bull, and listen to the men telling stories about war and hunting and brave deeds. They would come over to eat and smoke, and sometimes they would stay so long I did not know when they went. If they got to arguing about something, I would just roll up—and go to sleep; then it would be morning and they would not be there. I was hungry for the stories, but they made me want to go out and do something that would make a story with me in it.
“We had been camping on the Greasy Grass. The tender grasses had appeared and were a handbreadth high in the valley; and the tops of the hills were greening a little. Then my grandfather came over and talked about me with my new father; and they said it was time for me to seek a vision. So my new father caught a couple of his best horses—both of them young—and took them as a gift to an oldwichasha wakon[holy man], whose name was Blue Spotted Horse. When the old man had accepted the gift for what he was going to do, my father and grandfather took me over to his tepee. He could not see very well, and he was so old that he had something like new moons in his eyes. He looked at me a long while, and it made me feel queer, because I thought it might be a ghost behind me that he was seeing. Afterwhile he said: ‘Let a sweat-lodge be prepared for this young man, and when he has been cleansed, bring him here, and I will teach him.’
“So there were two friends who made a sweat-lodge for me with willowboughs bent over like a cup upside down, and over this they fastened rawhide. At the opening of the lodge they set a stick with a piece of red cloth at the top for a sacred offering to the Spirit. Then they heated rocks in a fire, and when they had put these in the center of the little lodge, they poured water on them, and I had to go into the steam and close the flap tight. I felt like crying when I was in there again, because the other time was when my father went away and I saw him in my dream under the scaffold. Afterwhile they told me to come out. Then they rubbed me with sacred sage until I was dry and felt good all over. After that they gave me a buffalo robe to put around me and took me back to Blue Spotted Horse, and went away.
“I felt queer again and a little scared while I sat there all alone with the old man in his tepee, and maybe a ghost behind me that he was seeing. When he had looked at me that way for a long time and I wanted to get up and run away, he said: ‘This is a sacred thing you are doing, and if the heart is not good something very bad will happen. But do not be afraid, for I have seen into your heart. Already you have fed old people, and you want to be a man they all praise. While you were in the sweat-lodge your father came to me, and he will help you on the hill. So do not be afraid, and I will teach you.’
“Then he filled a pipe and lit it; and after he had presented the stem to the four quarters of the world and the Great Mysterious One above and Maka, the mother earth, he held the stem to me and I touched it with my mouth. When I did that, I could feel a power running all through me and up my backbone into my hair.
“Then he taught me what I must know to go on vision quest. I did not learn it all then, but I heard it again when I was older, and this is what he told me.
“There is a great hoop; and so big it is that everything is in it, for it is the hoop of the universe, and all that live in it are relatives. When you stand on a high hill and look all around, you can see its shape and know that it is so. This hoop has four quarters, and each is sacred, for each has a mysterious power of its own, and it is by those powers that we live. Also each quarter has its sacred objects and a color, and these stand for its power.
“First is the place where the sun goes down. Its color is blue like the thunder clouds, and it has the power to make live and to destroy. The bow is for the lightning that destroys, and the wooden cup is for the rain that makes live.
“Next is the place where the great white giant lives, and its color is white like the snows. It has the power of healing, for thence come thecleansing winds of the winter. The white wing of the goose stands for that wind of cleansing and a sacred white herb for the healing.
“Next is the place whence comes the light, where all the days of men are born; and its color is red like the sunrise. It has the power of wisdom and the power of peace. The morning star stands for wisdom, for it brings the light that we may see and understand; and the pipe is for the peace that understanding gives.
“Next is the place of the summer, and the color of it is yellow like the sun. Thence comes the power to grow and flourish. The sacred staff of six branches is for the power to grow, and the little hoop is for the life of the people who flourish as one.
“Then at the place whence comes the power to grow, a road begins, the good red road of spirit that all men should know; and it runs straight across the hoop of the world to the place whence comes the power of cleansing and healing, to the place of white hairs and the cold and the cleansing of old age.
“And then there is a second road, the hard black road of difficulties that all men must travel. It begins at the place whence come the days of men, and it runs straight across the hoop of this world to the place where the sun goes down and all the days of men have gone and all their days shall go; far beyond is the other world, the world of spirit. It is a hard road to travel, a road of trouble and need. But where this black road of difficulties crosses the good red road of spirit at the center of the hoop of the world, that place is very holy, and there springs the Tree of Life. For those who look upon the Tree, it shall fill with leaves and bloom and singing birds; and it shall shield them as asheo[prairie hen] shields her chickens.
“While Blue Spotted Horse was telling me this, he drew the hoop and the roads with his finger in the ashes by the fire, and I could see it all as from a high place, like a picture.
“Then he told me how I must pray on the hill. Always before I pray I must lift both hands high with my pipe in the right, and send forth a voice four times—‘hey-a-hey, hey-a-hey, hey-a-hey, hey-a-hey!’ First I should pray at the place where the sun goes down; then at the place whence come the cleansing and healing; next where the light comes from and the days of men begin; and after that where lives the power to grow; and I should ask each power in turn to help me.
“Then I must walk the red road of spirit to the center of the hoop of the world, and there I must present my pipe and pray for help to Wakon Tonka. And when I have done this, I must remember the ground, the mother of all, who has shown mercy to her children; I mustlean low and present my pipe to Maka, the earth, the only mother, and ask her to help me; for my body is hers and I am her son.
“When I have done all this, I have only begun; for after I have rested awhile, I must do it all over again. I must walk the black road to the sundown and pray; then back to the holiest place in the center; then up the red road to the quarter of cleansing, and pray; then back again to the center and over the black road to the light and the beginning of days. I must pray there, and return; and last, I must walk the red road to the place where lives the power to grow. And when I have returned to the holiest place at the center and prayed, I can rest awhile and think hard about what I am doing.
“I cannot eat anything while I am on the hill, but I can have some water; and I must stay awake as long as I am able. Afterwhile I shall be crying, but I must keep right on, for that is when the praying begins to have power.
“Then Blue Spotted Horse taught me a prayer that I must offer to Wakon Tonka at the center of the hoop, and I said it after him six times. There is great power in that prayer, and I could feel it even then when I was a boy. Maybe you will learn it, Grandson, Wasichu though you are, and it will help you to find the good red road and to do what you must do in this world. But when I had said it six times, all at once I was afraid; for what would happen if I could not remember it all!
“I did not say anything about this, but Blue Spotted Horse looked hard at me awhile; and then he smiled, just like my own grandfather, and he said: ‘Do not be afraid, Grandson, for Wakon Tonka will remember all that you forget. There is one, there is no other, and all things are in Wakon Tonka. The powers are only the ways the one makes all things live. Take this pipe; hold fast to it and never let it go, for on this will you depend. Now you will go forth to the hill, and do as I have taught you. I will be with you there unseen; and when your prayers are heard, I will send the friends to bring you here. To me alone the vision shall be told.’
“He looked so kind when I took the pipe that I was not afraid of him at all. So I said: ‘Palamo yelo, tonka schla—thank you, Grandfather.’ And as I got up and went forth into the slanting day I felt lighter on my feet than I had ever felt before.”