The Great Medicine Dance. (Cheyenne)

The sun dance was the most important, solemn, and awe-inspiring
ritual of the prairie tribes west of the Missouri. Sun dance is its
Sioux name; the Cheyenne called it the new-life lodge, while for the
Ponca it was the mystery dance. Closely related to the sun dance was
the Okapi ceremony of the Mandans. The dance took place once a year,
at the height of summer. It lasted four days - longer, if the
elaborate preparations are taken into account.
In some tribes, such as the Sioux, the ritual involved
the "piercing" of the dancers: the passing of sharpened skewers
through the flesh of their chests and the performance of other kinds
of self -torture. This is still the custom during Sioux sun dances
today. In other tribes the ritual involved fasting and "looking at
the sun" throughout the four long days.
The most extreme form of self-torture occured during the Okapi
ceremony of the mandans, painted in great detail by Catlin in the
1830s. Dancers suffered - "they gave of their flesh so that the
people might live." They underwent piercing in obedience to a vow, or
help a sick relative recover, or to bring a beloved son back unhurt
from the warpath. The dance was a celebration of the renewal of all
life, "to make the grass grow and the buffalo and the people increase
and thrive." It was the one occasion when all the small hunting bands
of a tribe came together, a time for old friends to talk and for
young men to find wives.

****

The Tsis-tsistas people have danced the great medicine dance for a
long, long time, longer than anyone can remember or even imagine. The
dance represents the making of this universe and was concieved and
taught to the people by the Creator, Maheo, and his helper, Great
Roaring Thunder. It portays the making of the sun, moon, and stars;
of rain, wind, and snow; of Grandmother Earth and the blue sky above
her; of the mountains and rivers; of all living things, big and
small. The dance is performed especially in tinmes of starvation,
distress, and widespread death. This, our most sacred ceremony, was
brought to us by the Sutai medicine man Horns Standing Up, under the
guidance of the Creator himself.
Long ago, when the earth and the people dwelling upon it were young,
our tribe was starving. the earth itself was starving, for no rain
was falling. Plants and trees wilted. Many rivers dried up. The
animals were dying of hunger and thirst. The Cheyenne had nothing to
eat except some old, dried corn and their dogs, which used to carry
their packs in those days before we had horses. There were not many
dogs remaining, and very little corn. So the people left their old
hunting grounds, left the land which had nourished them for
generations, and started off in search of food. They went north,
where the drought was less severe, but found little game and no
buffalo at all.
One evening they came to a stream in which water still flowed. The
leaders and old chiefs sat down beside this stream and sadly watched
the thin, weary people pitching their tipis. Then it came to the
chiefs, as in a vision, what ought to be done. They ordered all the
men to go to the women, each man to the woman he felt most attracted
to, and beg her to give him something to eat. The men did as they had
been directed, and each chose the woman who was to feed him.
Among the warriors was a young medicine man. He went up to a
beautiful woman who happened to be the wife of the head chief. She
set a bowl of dog soup before him and waited for him to finish
eating. Then he said: "I have chosen you from among all the women to
help me save our people. I want you to go north with me, as the
medicine spirits have commanded. Take your dog teams and bring
supplies for a long journey - now, right away!" Though she was the
chief's wife, the woman did what the medicine man had asked. She was
ready to travel in no time, and the two left unobserved in the dark
of night.
Two days and one night they traveled without stopping, urging on the
dogs who carried the travois with the tipi poles and hides and other
things needed for survival. At last they rested. The man told the
woman to put up the lodge and to prepare two beds of soft, fragrant
sage for them to sleep on. He said: "Make the tipi face the rising
sun." He also told her that Maheo, the Creator, had sent him a vision
revealing that the two of them must go north and bring back the great
medicine lodge, Maheo's symbol of the universe, and with it a sacred
ceremony which they would teach to the Cheyenne. "In my vision," he
said, "Maheo promised that if the people accept and perform this holy
ritual, the rains will fall again and the earth rejoice, the plants
will bring forth green leaves and fruit, and the buffalo will return."
And so they traveled, the woman every evening pitching the tipi
facing east and preparing the beds of sage on opposite sides of the
tipi, the man sleeping on his bed, the woman on hers. One night she
said: "How is this? You made me run away with you, but you never
approach me as man approaches woman. Why did you make me go with you,
then?" He answered: "We must abstain from embracing until we enter
the great mountain of the north and recieve the sacred medicine
dance. After we emerge from the mountain, I shall embrace you in a
renewal- of-all-life ceremony by which people will continue to be
born, generation after generation, through the woman-power of
perpetuation."

At last they came to a vast, dark forest from whose center rose a
cloud-wreathed mountain reaching far into the sky. Beyond the
mountain they saw a lake of unending waters. They came to a large
rock at the foot of the mountain, rolled the rock aside, and
discovered an entrance. They went inside the mountain and, closing
the opening behind them, found themselves in the mountain's great
medicine lodge, which was wonderful to behold.
Today the medicine tipi which the Cheyenne put up for their sun
dances at Bear Butte is an imitation of that sacred mountain lodge.
The young man and the woman heard voices coming out of the
mountaintop - the voices of Maheo the Creator and his helper Great
Roaring Thunder. Instructing them in the holy ways to perform the
special sacred ceremony, Maheo spoke for four days. When they had
learned all there was to know about the dance, the Creator, said:

Now you will leave and teach the people what I have taught you.
And if they perform the ceremonies in the right way, they will be
favored for generations to come. The sun, the moon, the stars will
move again in harmony. Roaring Thunder will bring soothing rain and
winds. Corn and chokecherries will ripen again. Wild turnips and
healing herbs will grow once more. All the animals will emerge from
behind this mountain, herds of buffalo and antelope among them, and
follow you back to your village and your people. Take this sacred
hat, *Issiwun*, and wear it whenever you perform the sun dance.
With Issiwun you will control the animals – the buffalo, the
antelope, the elk, the deer - who give themselves to the people for
food. The Tsis-tsistas shall never be hungry again, but live in
plenty. Put on this sacred buffalo hat as you leave, and Grandmother
Earth will smile upon you forever.

And so the young medicine man of the Sutai and the good-looking
woman left the mountain through the secret passage. As they rolled
the rock aside and emerged, buffalo without numbers streamed out of
the mountain behind them, and the earth brought green shoots. Herbs
and plants sprouted under a gentle rain, and the earth was like new,
glistening in freshness. Thus the man and the woman walked sacredly,
clad in buffalo robes painted red, and the medicine man wore his
horned cap. Their dogs walked before them, dragging their travois
poles, while behind them followed a thundering herd of buffalo, and
after these came all manner of animals, male and female, big and
small. At the day's end the man and the woman put up their tipi and
lay down on their beds of sage to rest, and all the animals settled
down to rest also.
And at some time during this journey back to their village, the man
and the woman did lovingly what was necessary to ensure renewal and
continuation of life through woman-power. Each morning during their
travels, the man sang the sacred songs which the voice of Maheo had
taught him. At last one evening they arrived near the stream where
the people were still camped, awaiting their return. The medicine man
and the woman did not go into the village at once, but spent the
night outside.
In the morning the medicine man put on *Issiwun* and entered the
camp, accompanied by the woman. He told the people of all that had
passed, told them that he had brought them the knowledge of the great
medicine lodge and the great sacred dance, the songs and ceremonies
that went with it, and above all, *Issiwun*, the sacred buffalo hat
which had the power to control the wandering of the animals. He told
the people that if they performed the sacred sun dance, they would
have plenty of buffalo to eat and would never suffer hunger again.
The people put up the medicine lodge according to the young man's
instructions, painted their bodies in a sacred manner, and sang the
right songs. The children made clay figures of buffalo, antelopes,
and elk amd brought them into the lodge as a symbol of life's
renewal.
Since then, whenever the little figures are placed inside the
Medicine lodge during the dance, some of those animals will come near
to gaze upon the sacred tipi, and some of their animal power will
linger on. In the same way, our old friends, the Sioux people, fasten
the figures of a man and a bison, both cut from buffalo hide to their
sacred sun dance pole. Then an eagle will come in and circle above
the dancers to bless them. Thus the Tsis-tsistas people performed the
great medicine ceremony for the first time, and all was well again.
And the people named the young medicine man Horns Standing Up,
because the sacred hat has two horns at each side.

- Told by Josie Limpy and Mrs. Medicine Bull, with the help of an
interpreter, at Birney, Montana, in 1972.


Some say that Horns Standing Up did not touch the beautiful woman
until well after the sun dance was finished. And from this belief
comes the cuustom that men refrain from having relations with women
from the time of making the vow to dance until after the ceremony is
over.
Josie Limpy was an old, chain-smoking lady belonging to the Sutai
division of the Cheyenne tribe. She was, at the time, keeper of
*Issiwun*, the sacred buffalo hat, at the Northern Cheyenne
Reservation. This story was actually related inside the tipi in which
*Issiwun* was kept.