Ha′tăni′i′na′danĕ′na,
Ha′tăni′i′na′danĕ′na.
Translation
There is a solitary bull,
There is a solitary bull—
I am going to use him to “make medicine,”
I am going to use him to “make medicine.”
From the buffalo they had food, fuel, dress, shelter, and domestic furniture, shields for defense, points for their arrows, and strings for their bows. As the old Spanish chronicles of Coronado put it: “To be short, they make so many things of them as they have need of, or as many as suffice them in the use of this life.”
Among Indians the professions of medicine and religion are inseparable. The doctor is always a priest, and the priest is always a doctor. Hence, to the whites in the Indian country the Indian priest-doctor has come to be known as the “medicine-man,” and anything sacred, mysterious, or of wonderful power or efficacy in Indian life or belief is designated as “medicine,” this term being the nearest equivalent of the aboriginal expression in the various languages. To “make medicine” is to perform some sacred ceremony, from the curing of a sick child to the consecration of the sun-dance lodge. Among the prairie tribes the great annual tribal ceremony was commonly known as the “medicine dance,” and the special guardian deity of every warrior was spoken of as his “medicine.”
The buffalo was to the nomad hunters of the plains what corn was to the more sedentary tribes of the east and south—the living, visible symbol of their support and existence; the greatest gift of a higher being to his children. Something of the buffalo entered into every important ceremony. In the medicine dance—or sun dance, as it is frequently called—the head and skin of a buffalo hung from the center pole of the lodge, and in the fearful torture that accompanied this dance among some tribes, the dancers dragged around the circle buffalo skulls tied to ropes which were fastened to skewers driven through holes cut in their bodies and limbs. A buffalo skull is placed in front of the sacred sweat-lodge, and on the battlefield of Wounded Knee I have seen buffalo skulls and plates of dried meat placed at the head of the graves. The buffalo was the sign of the Creator on earth as the sun was his glorious manifestation in the heavens. The hair of the buffalo was an important element in the preparation of “medicine,” whether for war, hunting, love, or medicine proper, and for such purpose the Indian generally selected a tuft taken from the breast close under the shoulder of the animal. When the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache delegates visited Washington in the spring of 1894, they made an earnest and successful request for some buffalo hair from the animals in the Zoological Park, together with some branches from the cedars in the grounds of the Agricultural Department, to take home with them for use in their sacred ceremonies.