Trails Through Western Woods

by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

Perhaps, first among the rites in sacred significance and solemn dignity was the smoking of the calumet. This was supposed to be not only an expression of peace among men and nations, but a propitiatory offering to the Manitous, or guardian spirits, and to the Master of Life.

According to Colonel Mallory in the Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, the Sioux believed that this supreme emblem of good will was brought to them by a white buffalo cow, in the old days when the different bands of the nation were torn with internal strife. During this period of hostility a beautiful white buffalo cow appeared, bearing a pipe and four grains of corn, each of a different colour. From the milk which dripped from her body, sprang the living corn, so from the beginning the grain and the buffalo meat were decreed to be the food of the Indians. She gave to the rival factions, the pipe which was the sacred calumet, instructing them that it was the symbol of peace among men and he who smoked it with his fellows, by that act sealed the bond of brotherhood. After staying for awhile among the grateful people, and teaching them to call her "Grandmother," which is a term of affectionate reverence among the Indians, she led them to plentiful herds of her own kind and vanished into the spiritland whence she came.

The odour of the buffalo was believed to be agreeable to the Great Spirit so that the tobacco or kinnikinick of the calumet was flavoured with animal's excrement in order that the aroma wafted upward might be most pleasing. This custom of flavouring the pipe with the scent of the buffalo was carefully observed by the Pawnee Loups of the olden time, a tribe which claimed descent from the ancient Mexicans, in the awful ceremonies preceding a human sacrifice to Venus, the "Great Star." Upon this austere occasion four great buffalo skulls were placed within the lodge where the celebration was held and they were offered the sacred nawishkaro or calumet. The bodies of their chiefs or those who died gloriously in war were robed in buffalo skins, furnished with food and weapons, and placed sitting upright, in a little lodge near a route of travel or a camp in order that the passers by might see that they had met their death with honour. The Pawnees also used bison skulls as signals, and we find in James' Travels this interesting account:

"At a little distance in front of the entrance of this breastwork, was a semi-circular row of sixteen bison skulls, with their noses pointing down the river. Near the center of the circle which this row would describe if continued, was another skull marked with a number of red lines.

"Our interpreter informed us that this arrangement of skulls and other marks here discovered, were designed to communicate the following information, namely, that the camp had been occupied by a war party of the Pawnee Loup Indians, who had lately come from an excursion against the Cumancias, Tetans or some of the Western tribes. The number of red lines traced on the painted skull indicated the number of the party to have been thirty-six; the position in which the skulls were placed, that they were on their return to their own country. Two small rods stuck in the ground, with a few hairs tied in two parcels to the end of each signified that four scalps had been taken."

There are many other similar instances recorded by different adventurers who braved the early West, yet this was but one of numerous uses of buffalo skulls and heads. Among the Aricaras upon each lodge was a trophy of the war path or the chase composed of strangely painted buffalo heads topped with all kinds of weapons.

There was a curious belief among the Minitarees that the bones of the buffalo killed in the chase became rehabilitated with flesh and lived again, to be hunted the following year. In support of this superstition they had a legend that once upon a time on a great hunt a boy of the tribe was lost. His people gave him up for dead but the succeeding season a huge bison was slain and when the body was opened the boy stepped out alive and well. He related to his dumbfounded companions, how the year before, he had become separated from them as he pursued a splendid bull. He felled his game with an arrow, but so far had he gone that it was too late to overtake and rejoin the tribe before nightfall. Therefore, he cut into the bison's body, removed a portion of the intestines and feeling the keen frost of evening upon his unsheltered body, sought warmth within the carcass. But, lo! when the boy awakened the buffalo was whole again and he was a prisoner within his whilom prey!

The Gros Ventres, in the day of Lewis and Clark, thought that if the head of the slain buffalo were treated well, the living herd would come in plentiful numbers to yield an abundance of meat.

Of the many bands into which the Omawhaw nation was divided there were two, the Ta-pa-eta-je and the Ta-sin-da, bison tail, which had the buffalo for their medicine. The first of these were sworn to abstain from touching buffalo heads, and the second were forbidden the flesh of the calves until the young animals were more than one year old. If these vows were broken by a member of the band and the sacred pledge so violated, a judgment such as blindness, white hair or disease was believed to be sent upon the offender. Even should one innocently transgress the law, a visitation of sickness was accounted his condign portion and not only he but his family were included in the wrath and punishment of the outraged Manitous.

The Crow Indians, Up-sa-ro-ka, or Absaroka, used the buffalo as a part of their great medicine. An early traveller, Dougherty, describes an extraordinary "arrangement of the magi." In his own words, "the upper portion of a cottonwood tree was emplanted with its base in the earth, and around it was a sweat house, the upper part of the top of the tree arising through the roof. A gray bison skin, extended with oziers on the inside so as to exhibit a natural appearance, was suspended above the house, and on the branches were attached several pairs of children's moccasins and leggings, and from one limb of the tree, a very large fan made of war-eagles' feathers was dependent."