Edward Goodbird

Medicine Post and Sacred Bundle.

Many medicine men added to their mystery power by owning sacred bundles, neatly bound bundles of skin or cloth, containing sacred objects or relics that had been handed down from old times. Every bundle had its history, telling how the bundle began and what gods they were that helped those who prayed before it. There were about sixty of these sacred bundles in the tribe, when I was a boy.

The owner of a sacred bundle was called its keeper; he usually kept it hung on his medicine post, in the back part of his lodge. A sacred bundle was looked upon as a kind of shrine, and in some lodges strangers were forbidden to walk between it and the fire.

When a keeper became old, he sold his sacred bundle to some younger man, that its rites might not die with him. The young man paid a hundred tanned buffalo skins and a gun or pony, and made a feast for the keeper; at this feast, the young man received the bundle with the rites and songs that went with it. This was called, “making a ceremony.”

White men think it strange that we Indians honored these sacred bundles; but I have heard that in Europe men once honored relics, the skull, or a bone, or a bit of hair of some saint, or a nail from Jesus’ cross; that they did not pray to the relic, but thought that the spirit of the saint was near; or that he was more willing to hear their prayers when they knelt before the relic.

In much the same way, we Indians honored our sacred bundles. They contained sacred objects, or relics, that had belonged each to some god—his scalp, or skull, the pipe he smoked, or his robe. We did not pray to the object, but to the god or spirit to whom it had belonged, and we thought these sacred objects had wonderful power, just as white men once thought they could be cured of sickness by touching the bone of some saint.

A medicine man’s influence was greater if he owned a sacred bundle. Men then came to him not only because the spirits answered him when he fasted, but because, as its keeper, he had power from the gods of the sacred bundle.

The most famous of these sacred bundles belonged to my grandfather, Small Ankle. It was called the bundle of the Big Birds’ ceremony. It was kept on a kind of stand in the back part of our lodge, and it contained two skulls and a carved wooden pipe. These objects were thought to be very holy.

When my tribe came up the Missouri to Like-a-fish-hook Bend, where they built their last village, they first camped there in tepees. A question arose as to how they should plan their village, and the more important medicine men of the tribe came and sat in a circle, to consider what to do. This was seven years after the small-pox year.

At that time, the skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony were owned by an old man named Missouri River. The other medicine men, knowing that these skulls were most important sacred objects in the tribe, said to Missouri River, “Your gods are most powerful. Tell us how we should lay out our village!”

Missouri River brought the two skulls from his tent, and holding one in either hand, he walked around in a wide circle, returning again to the place where he had started. “We will leave this circle open, in the center of our village,” he said. “So shall we plan it!”

He laid the skulls on the grass and said to Big Cloud, Small Ankle’s son-in-law, “Your gods are powerful. Choose where you will build your earth lodge!”

Big Cloud arose. “I will build it here,” he said, “where lie the two skulls. The door shall face the west, for my gods are eagles that send thunder, and eagles and thunders come from the west. And so I think we shall have rain, and our children and our fields shall thrive, and we shall live here many years.” Big Cloud had once seen a vision of thunder eagles, awake and with his eyes open.

The medicine men said to Has-a-game-stick, “You choose a place for your lodge!”

Has-a-game-stick stood and said, “My god is the Sunset Woman. I want my lodge to face the sunset, that the Sunset Woman may remember me, and I will pray to her that the village may have plenty and enemies may never take it, and I think the Sunset Woman will hear me!”

The medicine men said to Bad Horn, “You stand up!”

Bad Horn stood and said, “My gods are bears, and bears always make the mouths of their dens open toward the north. I want my lodge door to open toward the north, that my bear gods may remember me. And I will pray to them that this village may stand many years!”

The medicine men then said to Missouri River, “Choose a place for your lodge!”

Missouri River took the two skulls, one in either hand, and singing a mystery song, walked around the circle with his right hand toward the center, as moves the sun. Three times he walked around, the fourth time he stopped at a place and prayed, “My gods, you are my protectors, protect also this village. Send also rains that our grain may grow, and our children may eat and be strong and healthy. So shall we prosper, because my sacred bundle is in the village.“

He turned to the company upon the grass. “Go, the rest of you,” he said, “and choose where you will build your lodges; and keep the circle open, as I have marked!”

Before Missouri River died, he sold his sacred bundle to my grandfather, Small Ankle; and Small Ankle sold it to his son, Wolf Chief. After Wolf Chief became a Christian, he sold the bundle to a man in New York, that it might be put into a museum.

We had other beliefs, besides these of the gods.

We thought that all little babies had lived before, most of them as birds, or beasts, or even plants. My father, Son-of-a-Star, claimed he could even remember what bird he had been.

We believed that many babies came from the babes’ lodges. There were several of these. One was near our villages on the Knife River. It was a hill of yellow sand, with a rounded top like the roof of an earth lodge. In one side was a little cave, and the ground about the cave’s mouth was worn smooth, as if children played there. Sometimes in the morning, little footprints were found in the sand.

To this hill a childless wife would come to pray for a son or daughter. She would lay a pair of very beautiful child’s moccasins at the mouth of the cave and pray: “I am poor. I am lonesome. Come to me, one of you! I love you. I long for you!” We understood that children who came from this babes’ lodge had light skin and yellowish hair, like yellow sand.

A very old man once said to me: “I remember my former life. I lived in a babes’ lodge. It was like a small earth lodge inside. There was a pit before the door, crossed by a log. Many of the babes, trying to cross the pit, fell in. But I walked the whole length of the log; hence I have lived to be an old man.” I have heard this story from other old men.

Very small children, who died before they teethed or were old enough to laugh, were not buried upon scaffolds with our other dead, but were wrapped in skins and placed in trees. We thought if such a baby died, that its spirit went back to live its former life again, as a bird, or plant, or as a babe in one of the babes’ lodges.

Older children and men and women, when they died, went to the ghosts’ village. This was a big town of earth lodges, where the dead lived very much as they had lived on earth. Older Indians of my tribe still believe in the ghosts’ village.

There were men in my tribe who had died, as we believed, and gone to the ghosts’ village, and come back to life again. From these men we learned what the ghosts’ village was like.

My mother’s grandfather came back thus, from the ghosts’ village; his name was It-si-di-shi-di-it-a-ka, or Old Yellow Elk.

Old Yellow Elk had an otter skin for his medicine, or sacred object. He died in the small-pox year; and his family laid his body out on a hill with the otter skin under his head for a pillow. Logs were piled about the body, to keep off wolves. Men were dying so fast that there was no time to make burial scaffolds.

That night a voice was heard calling from the hill, “A-ha-he! A-ha-he! Come for me, I want to get up!”

The villagers ran to the grave and took away the logs, and Old Yellow Elk arose and came home.

“The ghosts’ village is a fine town,“ he told his family. “I saw many people there, they gave me a spotted pony. My god, the otter, brought me back. He led me up the bed of the Missouri, under the water. I brought my pony with me and tied him to a log on my grave!”

His family went out to the grave the next morning and looked for the pony’s tracks, but found none!

All these things I firmly believed, when I was a boy.