The Native American Church is a religious movement which
originated among the Indians of the Southwestern United States. Its main
features involve the use of peyote, a psychedelic, or mind-manifester, drug
obtained from the dried tops of a cactus that contains mescaline, in a ceremony
combining Indian religious motifs with certain Christian themes. The drug and
the ceremony are fused together in a manner acceptable to many Indians today. My
interest in this church was a professional one, springing from my researches
into psychedelics, the vision-producing drugs the Indians use in a group
setting. So far as our research group could make out, the Indians were the first
people who used these substances together with certain aspects of Christianity.
We had heard about them in different ways. Religious people who wanted this sect
suppressed had published complaints in various newspapers. In my country,
Canada, there had been questions and statements from a Minister in the House of
Commons at Ottawa. A police report we read suggested that peyote was both a
dangerous poison and a drug of addiction. Professor Charles Seevers of Ann
Arbor, one of the world's leading authorities on both peyote and mescaline, one
of its active principles, has frequently stated that it was of low toxicity and
that he had no evidence of anyone becoming addicted to it. The U. S. Public
Health Service Narcotics Section at Fort Leavenworth have never treated a peyote
addict.
One of the clearest and kindest accounts
of them and their religion came from the late Professor J. S. Slotkin of the
University of Chicago. He had visited the Canadian branches of the Native
American Church of North America in the summer of 1956. He told us they were
being persecuted, not very obviously, thoroughly or determinedly, but although
it was mild and intermittent, it was persecution all the same. Some of these
persecutors did not deserve the label, for they were good people genuinely
concerned about the Indians, who had been misinformed about the nature of the
peyote rite. They were naturally worried by reports that the Indians were
obtaining a dangerous and addictive substance and engaging in wild orgies. There
was reason to be concerned after the damage liquor has done to some Indians in
the past. Along with these people who had a real interest in the Indians, there
were others who never lose an opportunity to meddle in other people's affairs.
There is not too much scope for this hobby in western Canada today, but the
Indians, being government wards and a special minority group, are particularly
susceptible to this sort of interference. As the scholarly Slotkin explained to
us, "Their conditions are wretched. They are demoralized. Many of them hate and
despise farming. The Native American Church is something of their own, born of
their misfortunes and developed from their pre-Columbian traditions. It has
grown and flourished in spite of white men, and this makes it even more precious
to the Indians."
Slotkin thought we could do no harm by
attending one of their services, and we might help. It would at least show them
that all white men were not hostile. Their services have been described as
orgies only by those who have never attended them. It is curious that the early
Christians had much the same accusations leveled at them by the Romans, whose
staid, formalized, official religion had become little more than an annex to
politics, devoid of enthusiasm and feeling. Any young religion (Quakers in Fox's
day or the Methodists in Wesley's are examples) usually manages to offend
longer-established churches, just as young lovers are something of a reproach to
long-wed people, for they reflect a vision of love that time has more or less
dimmed. Long-married people in whom time does not produce this dimming can be
embarrassing to their more habituated contemporaries.
We
corresponded in a desultory way with the Indians of the Red Pheasant Band, from
among whose members most of the congregation of the Native American Church of
Canada was drawn. The Church had been duly registered as a religious body and so
was safe from direct persecution. But the supply of peyote, their ceremonial
cactus, came from the United States, and this made them vulnerable to
administrative pressure, as later events have shown.
In
September 1956, we learned that Mr. Frank Takes Gun, President of the Native
American Church of North America, was planning to come north from his home in
Montana to see how his fellow church members were faring in Canada. Shortly
after this, we were invited to North Battleford. We drove north, picking up Dr.
Abram Hoffer in Saskatoon, armed with a tape recorder, blankets, and lots of
notebooks. Two members of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix staff traveled with us. It
was a glowing early fall day, and the stubble was still live enough to give the
land a blond, crew-cut look. We arrived in North Battleford late in the
afternoon of the sixth of October, 1956. Mr. Takes Gun and his companion, Mr.
Russell, came to see us in our hotel. They had had a harassing time getting the
hard-pressed Red Pheasant Band to organize the ceremony. They are poor Indians.
Mr. Takes Gun had helped them to get permission to pitch a tepee for the meeting
in the grounds of old Fort Battleford. He was also inquiring into the legal help
the Indians were getting in Canada. The Indians' way of conducting business is
still not very like that of the white man, and there is much misunderstanding.
I was tired and a little apprehensive on at least two counts.
My colleagues and I had decided that, while they would watch and record the
ceremony, I should take part in it, and observe from the inside, as it were. I
did not wholly enjoy the idea of taking peyote, although I have used a variety
of mind-changing substances in the past few years. These have included taking
harmala, the seeds of Syrian rue, which has a disgusting taste; kava-kava, the
roots and leaves of a South Sea Island pepper plant; ololiuqui, the seeds of
Rivea corymbosa, a vine-like plant from Mexico, once the chief and sacred
narcotic of the Aztecs. I had also taken chemically pure mescaline, one active
principle of peyote, and the immensely powerful Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, both
derived from plants. In addition, we had worked with a new group of substances
derived from adrenalin, whose use in this field had been discovered in
Saskatchewan. I had, however, never taken peyote before. I found its dried,
shriveled, and furry appearance uninviting, and reports said it frequently
produced nausea and vomiting. I did not relish the idea of vomiting in public.
My second worry was a more serious one. I had much sympathy for the Indians and
wanted to assist their cause, but as an honest observer I would have to report
everything that happened. I was concerned lest the service should be
ill-conducted.
Mr. Takes Gun was clearly worried about me. He
told me repeatedly that they would have good, clean city water and that the cups
would be personal and hygienic. The peyote, he assured me, would not be
difficult to take, but would be made soft with a coffee grinder and wrapped
individually in Kleenex. He is of medium height and very solidly built, of that
almost pure mesomorphy that one finds often among the Plains Indians. His face
might have been carved from old, oiled, highly polished teakwood. He glistened
in the afternoon sun-for he was nervous. His eyes and hair were black. He had
the longest ears I have ever seen. His face was impassive. This made one notice
the eloquence of his hands all the more (one finger was missing from the left
one); his gestures were as expressive as a Latin's.
Mr. Takes
Gun left us to make the final preparations for the ceremony. We agreed to be at
North Battleford a little after sundown, and, before he left, he gave me a final
reassurance about the purity of the water. We crossed the golden valley of the
South Saskatchewan River and drove up the hillside to the old fort. They had set
the teepee on the short grass inside the stockade. It was small and pale, its
ventilator flapping in the breeze. The clear night sky with the stars appearing
and the faint swirl of northern lights seemed about to engulf us. Outside the
teepee there was a great stack of small logs.
The ceremonial
fire in the center of the teepee was ready for lighting. It was between the
horns of the low, crescent-moon altar shaped from molded earth. Only the fire
tender occupied this middle space. The rest of us, eight observers, including
two journalists, and fourteen Indian worshipers, were ranged around the
circumference of the teepee. Apart from Mr. Takes Gun, and Mr. Russell, who had
driven up from Montana, our hosts came from Saskatchewan, mostly from the Red
Pheasant Band, though a few had driven over from Alberta. The elders of this
group were Mr. Nicotine and Mr. Stone. There were several younger men and two
Indian ladies. All looked spruce and neat. They had clearly put on their best
clothes for the service. I sat on Mr. Takes Gun's left so that I could learn
about the ceremony from him. He was the leader, and Mr. Russell, on his right,
was his drummer.
In a teepee, one sits with one's back
slightly bent and one's head forward. However one places the legs, they get
stiff, the long hamstring muscles in particular. Cramping pains can be a
nuisance. Mr. Russell played the fire taps on his drum, and the fire tender lit
the prepared wood. Sparks rose up and fluttered in the darkness above us before
vanishing. The teepee was filled with the pleasant, acrid smell of sage, thyme,
and burning logs. Mr. Takes Gun put a single leaf and then a large peyote button
on the moon altar. The rest of us remained seated, and he was silent. He
consulted his watch from time to time. At eight-thirty he began to read a
written address he had with him. He asked for "Religious freedom for the Indian
form of Christianity." He quoted the Declaration of Independence with its
inalienable rights, which include religious freedom and the pursuit of
happiness. The long Indian faces, dark in the fire glow, expressed melancholy,
dolor, tragedy. "We want to be let alone to worship our God as we wish." He then
addressed the observers directly: "I trust you will tell the truth and nothing
but the truth so help us God." It is no easy matter even to observe accurately
enough to be sure what the truth might be, and having done this, how should one
convey the truth so that it will mean something to someone else? I wondered how
I would be able to communicate the solemnity of that frail teepee. It was like
being inside a lighted Japanese lantern, suspended in eternity.
The smoke started the ceremony proper. The Indians are masters of
symbolism; a few eagle feathers, a pinch of sweet herbs, a little water drum, a
gourd rattle, a fire, and little more, are all the aids they need for worship.
For them, everything that is, is holy. They have no written prayers, but as
among the Quakers, everyone prays according to his conscience. So a cigarette
made from cornhusks symbolizes for them the purification and dedication of the
human spirit to a greater spirit. The tobacco was handed around in a soft
leather pouch. It was runny, with many small grains. I am not a smoker. I
fashioned my cigarette clumsily and the tobacco leaked out, and the result was
rather emaciated. A glowing brand was passed around for lighting the cigarettes.
Shortly after mine was lit, I choked. The fire felt very hot on my face, almost
scorching, while behind I was chilly. It did not seem a good start for the
evening.
While Mr. Russell beat the drum, Mr. Takes Gun
chanted and shook the rattle. Sometimes he used English and sometimes his own
tongue. The wind noises were lost in the chanting and the drumming. His voice
rose effortlessly from a firm baritone to a high, clear falsetto.
Dear Heavenly Father,
We are representing our folks under this teepee.
Dear Heavenly Father, Dear Heavenly Father
Bless these men that are observers here.
Dear Heavenly Father,
These poor people surrendered all their lands
To the Government of Canada-their conditions
Are pitiful.
Dear Heavenly Father-bless my people back home.
Then he continued in his own tongue, which seemed made for rhetoric, for
declamation, and his voice rose in searching falsetto. The Indians maintained a
low background of song in their three different languages. The faces of his
fellow worshipers were angry, resigned, supplicating, shifting with the changes
of rhythm and the flickering fire. The chorus ceased from time to time and the
leader continued alone, his voice cascading and dying away, the song of a bird
fluttering against a great storm. The fire glowed. An Indian wept. We placed our
cigarettes around the base of the moon altar.
At about 9 P.M.
the peyote was brought in. It was carried in a little white cloth sack, which
was handed from person to person. Mine came separately; it had been macerated in
a coffee grinder and each button wrapped in a white tissue, so courteous are the
Indians. They themselves crunched the hard, dry, furry cactus tops determinedly,
as one cracks nuts with one's teeth. I nibbled cautiously at my soft, damp
residue. It has a sharp taste, which lingers in the mouth. It is bitter and sour
on the stomach. It repeats on one. It is not as bad as ololiuqui, and is
pleasant compared with the sour, oily, rancid seed of the Syrian rue. Mr. Takes
Gun belched a little after swallowing his. Peyote takers, making a virtue of
necessity, sometimes allege there is something especially valuable about the
nausea it induces in some people. As in other religions, rationalizations are
always ready to help out anything unpalatable. I was glad when I swallowed the
last bit of peyote. My apprehensions about vomiting were unnecessary.
The drumming and singing continued. The water drum is made of blackened
iron covered with hide. Seven knobs on the side represent the dipper stars.
Behind the singing there is always drumming and rattling. The drum beat in the
brain and wearied me; every drummer seemed much the same. The fire tender moved
the ashes into the space between the horns of the moon, so that it gradually
filled up with fine wood ashes. I had respect for the ceremony. It was reverent
and well conducted. But I was still not of the group, even though I was among
them. I scribbled away at my note pad and often watched my observing colleagues,
who were at the other side of the teepee.
At about
nine-fifteen I wrote, "The young man with the superb face, puzzled by his
fate-he has a kingly face," and again, "if feeling gets to God, this must." By
nine forty-five there was a ghost of brilliant color in my eye grounds when I
closed my lids. I felt remote and slightly depressed. The roof flap fluttered
like a lost soul. The teepee is a microcosm, a tiny mirror of the universe. The
fire glowed red and smokeless; the fire tender handed around a smoldering brand
for those who wanted to smoke. Mr. Takes Gun recited prayers in his language-as
he smoked, his hands moved with extraordinary delicacy. It was an unorgiastic
orgy. The Indians sing without opening their mouths much, and often they hardly
move their lips. They sing with their sound box and chest, while we use our
lips, tongue, and sound box. I was never quite sure where the singing was coming
from, and it was sometimes almost impossible to decide who was singing and who
was not.
By about ten I had become more aware of what was
happening, and recognized that peyote was starting to affect me. My sight was
sharper and my hearing more acute. Looking around the teepee, it struck me that
we white men, outnumbered in this tiny world, were an even smaller fraction of
the larger one. I found it hard to write and did so reluctantly because, as I
noted, "... it broke the chain of feeling." I got nothing down on my pad for the
next hour and a half. Visual changes continued and increased during this time.
They never became very marked, but at times the Indians seemed hostile. Their
faces became distorted with anger. I realized that this was probably the effect
of peyote and so did not become panicky. I felt that I was an intruder whom the
Indians did not trust-they had no special reason to. I did not seem close to
them. Peyote works slowly and subtly. It is well suited for a gathering of this
sort, where people of differing temperaments, who do not necessarily share a
common language, worship together and explore reality without the cushion of
words and supported mainly by ritual.
A photographer took some
flash pictures at about ten or fifteen minutes before midnight, and then I
started writing again. The Indians chanted, drummed, and used the gourd rattle.
Only their faces were impassive. The ceremonial swept me along with it.
At midnight, water was brought in. This was the pure city
water Mr. Takes Gun had promised me earlier. It was in a new, white enamel pail
with a swan transfer on the outside. It was passed around, and we drank from
individual paper cups. It could have been depressingly hygienic, but the
intention was a generous one to put me at ease. He then said, "Pray to God and
ask him to bless the water." He explained that the Indians held their services
at night, while the white man sleeps, because God would have time to spare for
his Indian friends. He urged his fellow Indians to bring up their children to be
intelligent and progressive, adding, "We are representing our lives here." Then
he left us and, walking around the outside of the teepee, blew piercing blasts
on an eagle's-bone whistle at the four compass points. The sound shrilled
through aeons of space and corridors of time. It echoed to eternity. When he
came back to us, he prayed, "... that the Universe may prevail."
Shortly after this my fellow observers left for what must have been
twenty minutes or so, but it could have been as many centuries. I stayed behind
with the Indians, and I became part of the worshipers. I entered their world,
where for generation upon generation they had hunted the buffalo. They had lived
with and on the buffalo. They were of one piece. They were the buffalo. Their
lives were part of those shaggy lumbering herd beasts whose myriads roamed the
great plains. On these wide prairies, where trees and hills are almost equally
scarce, sound often conveyed as much as sight. So the Indians call up their past
with song, with drum, and with rattle. For them, minute alterations of rhythm
and pace evoke ever-changing images. Because we cannot hear as they do, the
drumming and rattling seem endlessly repetitive to us. The drumming was the
steady running of a man with his dog padding beside him. It was the pawing and
thudding of buffalo hooves crescendoing in thunder. It was the gentle crumpling
of dung falling or the soft plop of a calf dropping on turf, soundless, yet
heard by the hunter. The gourd evoked the endlessly sifting wind, catching at
scrub and grass as it passed. It was the hissing of an arrow as it leaves the
bow or snakes by one's head in battle. It was the sizzling of buffalo meat
grilling on the campfire and the creak of a hide teepee as the blizzard twists
and whirls around it. The drumming was life and death, scarlet blood spurting
from a stricken buffalo or from a fallen warrior. Yet it was also the first
fluttering of a child inside its mother. As he sang, a young man wept, and Frank
Takes Gun said, "Shed tears on mother earth that the Universal God may take pity
on him."
When my friends returned, I felt that the Indians and
I were one and that, for a little time, or more accurately, a different sort of
time, I was of their world rather than that of my colleagues, their conquerors.
It was not simply that I realized they had a point of view I could respect, but
that I felt in my bones as they felt in theirs. Looking back, I do not believe
that this was an illusion, for I continued to be much more aware of their way of
looking at things. But how could one prove such an opinion-without fine
instruments for measuring a man's system of values.
The women
did not drum, sing or use the gourd rattle, but they smoked, took peyote, and
played a large part in the morning ceremony. They also prepared the feast for
the next day. Women only very rarely enjoy their highest status among nomadic
people.
The Indians must have begun to filter down from
Siberia about ten thousand years ago, and as they reached the great central
plains they spread out in the wake of the buffalo. For some mysterious reason,
horses, which had once lived in America, died out long before man arrived. So
the newcomers hunted on foot. Unlike our forebears, who were harassed and pushed
west by waves of horsemen from Central Asia, many tiny Indian societies grew up
far apart from each other, isolated by vast distances. There were occasionally
brief, savage, and ceremonious wars on the prairies, in which little groups of
men raided the enemies. In these, courage counted more than killing. Apart from
this, their whole lives, their very existence, was at the heels of those heavy
monsters. Pursuing them, they had endured drought and cold, furious rainstorms
and blinding blizzards. For a very short time, a few generations only, they had
horses, which, escaping from the Spaniards, bred splendidly on the grasslands.
Few people accept an innovation so quickly and successfully as the Indians took
to the horse. They were centaurs. The drumming told of that age of glory when,
to the beat of horses' hooves, they swept across the prairies like wildfire and
hunted with a splendor never surpassed. Then the white settlers invaded the
prairies, and the unequal struggle between hunting peoples who lived in space
without time, and the season-bound rapacity of the cultivators of the soil,
began. The hunting grounds were eroded. Finally the buffalo were slaughtered
wantonly by the million. With that holocaust, their traditions, their way of
life, their world, their universe collapsed, and the veil of their souls was
rent. Braves became bums, for there was nothing manly left to do. Their women
mourned for them.
I was drenched in that world of sound, of
singing, drumming, and the subtly changing rhythms of drum, rattle, and voice.
We are a more visual people than the Indians, and this is perhaps why they seem
impassive to us. We watch, in particular, for changes in facial expression and
do not notice the auditory signals with which the Indians communicate their
feelings. Those long silences during which they let the unspoken flow between
people simply make us tense, embarrassed, uneasy, and ready to burst into
nervous chattering.
The blue-shirted young man who had been
weeping said, "Frank, can I have some more medicine?" and the little sack was
passed along to him. He crunched two more buttons and began to sing and use the
gourd rattle while his companion drummed. His song rose above the drumming, was
drowned by it, and rose again and again, faltering but struggling still. It was
an agony. The drumbeats were strides of fate. Life must go on, pain or no pain.
There could be no concessions. The young man wept and sang for himself, for his
people, for every human being who has ever quailed before the harshness of life.
After singing, he was easier, and the rhythm of his drumming reflected this.
There was in it a little of that cosmic beat of Tchaikowsky's great Second
Movement of the Fifth Symphony, when, for a brief while, he heard and
transcribed what must surely be the pulsing of the galaxies. I watched the young
man, and I think I experienced some of the queasiness that peyote induced in
him. Like most young men, he longed for a life that meant something-a life of
action, danger, pain, defeat, torture, and death at the hands of his enemies if
necessary. A life like that of his ancestors who lived on the prairies for
centuries before. Anything rather than the humiliating meaninglessness of the
present. But the drumming told him, "You cannot go back. You can go forward. It
will be rough, but it can be done." It is sad to be a warrior from generations
of warriors with nothing warlike to do-an Achilles without Troy, staying at home
among his mother's spinning women.
The fire tender kept the
hearth meticulously, and the moon altar, which had started as a thin crescent,
filled up steadily. When a singer had sung his song, the Indians sat in silence
and absorbed it. They applauded with a low guttural noise that might be a hum.
They were polite, sensitive, and seemed very courteous and alert toward each
other and to their guests. By now it was almost three in the morning, and most
of the observers were asleep; one snored loudly and had to be prodded by his
neighbor. The visual imagery I usually experience with psychedelic substances
was much reduced in this setting, and the auditory imagery very much increased.
I responded to every nuance of their drumming. They use a tiny range of sound
with which to express themselves, and this is saturated with emotion.
The sparks spangled the upper darkness of the teepee every time the fire
was stoked. The teepee was the universe. It had not increased in size nor
changed its shape, but the sound had expanded it beyond thought. The young man
still cannot bear his fate. All the warrior in him is assailed by it and revolts
against it. But he must listen to the voice of the music, which is greater than
man. He sings again, this time in high falsetto. There is a note of triumph in
it, and perhaps peyote has dissolved the aching in his heart-for a little while.
The teepee smelled of wood and wood smoke, burning herbs,
sweat. I noticed the tanginess of the smoke, like in a kippering room. It clung
to my hair and clothes for days afterward. The Indians are creatures of sound
and smell, with auditory symbolism predominating. We are creatures of sight and
sound, with visual imagery predominating. Every drum tap has a meaning for them.
Through the small hours they sang of fleet horses and tireless
riders, of unwearying runners and faithful dogs padding beside them. The stories
are woven into the drum rhythms. They fanned themselves with a few eagle's
feathers, evoking arrow, war bonnet, and battle club-endless parleys, powwows,
and ceremonial meetings. They had few songs of war, and they returned always to
the death of the buffalo, their banishment from the prairies, and so their
unmanning and loss of their warrior status. The buffalo hoofbeats are in them as
the sound of the sea is in me from generations of seafarers. The Indians may be
poor and defeated, but they are not contemptible. They reveal themselves to each
other with peyote in humility, but also in pride. For although they revere the
Universal Spirit, they do not cringe. They are not ashamed of being men, for so
they were created. They do not ascribe their misfortunes to sin, and are thus
saved from much futile self-blame.
Mr. Russell's drumming was
splendid. Frank sang of the long winter nights and their hopes of endless
buffalo herds. He sang, too, of that brief time when they tamed horses, molding
long-maned and long-tailed wildings to their will. This reminded me that the
Trojan hero Hector, tamer of horses, was exercising with his chariots on the
windy plain of Ilium when their ancestors were hunting the buffalo on foot, over
these same prairies. The service was very simple and drew the participants into
it. Once I lost my fear and unsureness, the Indians accepted me with dignity, as
an equal. I was impressed by their economy of gesture, the faultless taste of
their religious art; like a very dry sherry, it is not for every palate. The
prairies have molded them over the centuries-they are a people of the open
spaces; their God is an open one of the wide earth and the limitless sky-not a
shadowy, hidden god of the forests and thickets. Their Universal Spirit is
mysterious in its immensity and omnipresence. Man's problem is not to find God,
for it is impossible not to be aware of Him, but to relate oneself to Him in the
best possible way.
By four-thirty I was becoming more aware of
my hosts as individuals. We had experienced something together that cannot be
contained in language. Poetry or music would come closer, but I am not a poet or
a composer. The wind fretted around the teepee. The singing was like voices
calling in the dark, calling for dawn to come, for winter to go, for the buffalo
to return, for a child to be born.
Mr. Russell had the black
drum passed to him. He sucked a little water from it, tautened the hide, and
smoothed it with a caress. Frank Takes Gun explained the next part of the
ceremony. "You have only seen three last night-the leader, the drummer, and the
fireman. Now you will see the fourth. Thank God we have lived to see another
day. We represent our lives: we don't imitate anything. The foundations of human
life rest with our mothers who delivered us into this world." The Mother stepped
into the teepee through the door flap, announced by the shrilling of the
eagle's-bone whistle. She sat down by the white enamel waterpot. The teepee was
dim, the fire was low, but some wisps of smoke rising from it seemed to surround
her. She had a red blanket around her shoulders, a blue dress, smooth black
hair, and her face seemed very broad. She was greeted by a song of welcome with
voices, drum, and rattle. With the singing, she became superb mother earth,
mother prairie, grass, cow buffalo, mare, and doe, the epitome of motherhood.
The drum beating was not restful or sleep inducing. It was the fecund pulsing of
sex, passion, generation, and death, sung without guilt and without
self-consciousness. The mother was weary, patient, tender, but enduring. She
stood behind all the men-drummer, fire tender, leader. In front of her were the
waters of life and death.
Frank addressed her in the highest
falsetto, a tearing, almost noiseless scream, the cry of the tiniest baby or of
an old man breathing his last. It was unbearable. The mother could have been any
age-maid, mother, or crone, from sixteen to a hundred sixteen.
"You have been good to us while we were here. You worked hard and made this
possible. God knows we worship Him. God knows we respect the mothers of our
children."
Mr. Dave Stone, the oldest man present, spoke to
the mother in his high, light voice. His voice was very clear and would carry
over great distances. The wind had risen, and the day was being born with a
storm. The old man called upon the mother and sprinkled dried Sage on the fire,
sweetening the air in her honor. She took a cigarette and lit it from the fire
tender's brand. The smoke she exhales is the life she gives. Above her head, the
dawn lightened the teepee flap. The fire was low. She drew on a cigarette. Its
glowing tip was as evanescent as a man's life, almost aflame one moment, out the
next. She prayed and smoked.
This is the mother who bears the
baby, who nurses and cossets the infant, who rears the child and watches him
grow into a young warrior, drummer, fire tender, or leader, who is possessed by
him and who laments him when he dies. She is indomitable. Warriors die, but the
mother, slave or matriarch, she is always there. Her voice was low and clear.
She dominated the teepee-the mother who bears and the mother who buries her
children. Her prayers were followed by rumbles of agreement. She reaffirmed the
will to endure, to live on. The worshipers were deeply moved. Frank whispered to
me, "That is how much they respect their mothers." But it was more than respect.
It was awe. She conveyed the sorrow of a woman's lot in a destitute people. The
dawn caught the pointed top of the teepee, but below where we were sitting, the
fire was so low that I could hardly see to write.
Mr. Russell
whispered to me, "Praying with the smoke-something good-something lasting
forever." The Plains Indians were a Dionysian, an apocalyptic people, frugal but
generous; no middle way existed for them-conquerors or conquered, no in-between,
no compromise. The smoke breath was caught up with the warm air over the fire
and twisted up into dawnlight. It struck me that with another turn of the wheel
of history we Caucasians who, by means of gunpowder and printing, have gained so
much authority in the world, might find ourselves subject to peoples who possess
skills we do not have. No one who had been with the Indians as I had been could
feel superior to them. The blue-shirted warrior is almost reconciled to living
an unheroic, undionysiac life. It is against his whole being. But the drumming,
the singing, and peyote have worked their magic. The buffalo are no more; the
dawn is coming; there is a life to face now.
The observed were
awake and alert, the observers mostly sleeping. At six, dawn came to us as the
teepee flap was opened. We had wrestled with the angel. We had grappled with the
Heavenly Father.
Water was poured into the hygienic cups
again, and a little more was put into the drum. I was asked to say a few words,
the stranger whom they had made welcome and allowed to enter into their mystery.
I thanked them for their kindness to me and told them that I would do my best to
tell people about their worship clearly and honestly. I also said that it would
be no easy matter to convey to those who had not shared our experience and who
do not have the Indian sense of oneness with life.
A child had
come into the world again. Dawn lit the stockade, and the wind was chilly. Life
had begun again and must be faced. The voice of the singers rose clear and
high-a child's cry of delight at buffalo hooves thundering far away. The fire
flared a little as if trying to hold back the morning, but it failed. The center
of the tent floor was covered by a great, grayish-white half-moon of charred
wood ashes. The mother left us. The barrier of everyday life began to return.