Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) by Leonard C. Dog Read Free Book Online Page B

caused great fear among the Indians, who thought “that the sun had died” and that the end of the world had come. They were just ready to give up. In Nevada, more than a thousand miles southwest of Rosebud, a Paiute holy man and dreamer named Wovoka had a vision. He told his people that when the sun died he had gone up to heaven and there met God and all the people who had been dead for a long time. And God told him to go back to life and tell the folks on his reservation to be good and love one another and not fight or steal or lie. And he brought with him from heaven a new dance and a new song, which would bring the buffalo back and make everything all right again.
    This new dance and new religion was the ghost dance, and Wovoka became its messiah. His message spread like wildfire from tribe to tribe. A man came in the dark of night and told Crow Dog, “A new world is coming. It will roll on top of this one, which the white man has spoiled, like a carpet. Oyate ukiya, Oyate ukiya, a nation is coming!” The man also brought with him a new dance and new songs. The man’s name was Kicking Bear and with him was a friend called Short Bull. They had been with Crazy Horse at the Custer fight.
    My father told me, “Kicking Bear and Short Bull had gone far away to a kind of Indian Jesus by the name of Wovoka. He had let them look into his hat, and in it they had seen the whole world, many buffalo, and tipis with meat racks, and their dead relatives whom the wasichu had killed. He also made them die and took them to his new land and had them talking to all these dead people, these ghosts. Then he had them come back to life again and gave them his new dance, and vermilion face paint, and eaglefeathers. ‘Go and teach your people,’ that Paiute man had told them.
    “Crow Dog had already heard people talking about this holy man who could make the ghosts of dead people and buffalo return to this earth. So Crow Dog, Low Dog, Two Strikes, and some others had sent Kicking Bear and Short Bull to find out whether it was true. How they could make it all the way to this Indian Jesus, traveling through hundreds of miles of land settled by whites, crossing roads, barbed wire fences, and railroad tracks, and never be caught by soldiers or police, that cannot be explained. It was Indian messiah medicine. Well, they did it, and they came back in one piece and brought the message.”
    The message was one of hope. The white world could be buried or, as some said, rolled up. And underneath, or on top of it, would reappear the beautiful world of the grandfathers. This message was rain for thirsting souls. One of Crow Dog’s relations was Howard Red Bear, who, about 1969, died at the age of one hundred and two. He had been a ghost dancer. I remember what he told me about the ghost dance as it was in the old days.
    “A man called Woman’s Dress had been performing the dance and when the sun reached the center of the universe he ran into the middle of the dance circle, where the director was standing, and knelt down. Then he laid his body flat on the ground, facedown. He was lying there for a long time, like sleeping, and then, with the people still dancing, he woke up. The dance leader burned some sweet grass and smoked Woman’s Dress up. When Woman’s Dress stood up he was asked what he had seen and heard. Woman’s Dress said, ‘I went to another world. It was beautiful and filled with good things. From there I brought back some wasna.’ Then the ghost dance leader told all the sick dancers to come to the center of the hoop.
    “Woman’s Dress was standing in the same place before he fell into the spiritual world of his vision. He stood there like a tree that has taken root. He stood there holding hands with the peopleon either side of him. Then the circle of dancers opened up to allow the sick to come in and eat of this vision meat. There were many sick people to eat the medicine, and what was left was placed in a special wooden bowl