Sinopah, the Indian Boy

by James Willard Schultz

White Wolf made a gesture of assent. "Well," he said, "it is time that we take Sinopah in hand for his training. As a beginning, let us have him join the Su-is-ksis-iks at their next meeting."

Here, now, I have something to explain that is very interesting, and that is that nearly all Indian tribes of the country had a number of societies, some of them so secret that only a very few of the most prominent men ever learned their mysteries. The tribe that had, and still has, the most fraternities, or secret societies, is the Hopi, or so-called Moqui tribe of northern Arizona. There are several hundred secret orders in this tribe, the greatest of them being the Snake and the Flute societies. It is the Snake order that gives every two years the great snake dance, in which, after many secret rites and prayers in their kiva, or sacred house, the members perform a public dance, during which they carry live and deadly rattlesnakes dangling from their mouths.

All these societies in all the tribes are for a purpose. The Hopi, or "People of Peace," as they call themselves, live in a desert country, and depend upon their little plantings of corn, beans, and squash for their food. They are not, and never were, hunters and warriors. Now, the most important thing in all the world for the Hopi is rain; rain to make their gardens yield a plenty of food. So it is that the object of all their secret societies is to bring the rain. All the secret rites in the kivas, all the dances, have that end in view.

See, now, how different were the Blackfeet. They were hunters, and wanderers over a great country extending south from the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone River, a distance of seven hundred miles, and from the Rocky Mountains eastward for several hundred miles. That was their country, their hunting-ground, and on it swarmed thousands and thousands of buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and many other kinds of game. Along the borders of this great stretch of country were many tribes always trying to enter it and kill the game, and to save themselves the Blackfeet were obliged to make war on them and keep them out of the country. So it was that the fraternities or societies of the Blackfeet were societies of warriors and for the making of warriors. The least of these was the society of the Su-is-ksis-iks, or Mosquitoes, which White Wolf mentioned.

The Mosquito Society was composed entirely of young boys, but at the head of it were two or three old men who were their teachers, as they may be called. It was the duty of these old men to give talks to the boys on the right way to live, to instruct them in the ways of war, to pray for their long life and success, to teach them certain dances, and above all to make them honor and obey the teachings of the gods, especially the Sun.

Evening came. Tired and hungry, Sinopah entered the lodge and sat by his father's side. His mother set before him a long, heavy rib of boiled buffalo meat, a dish of service berries, a bowl of soup, and he ate a big meal. Pausing once between mouthfuls, he said: "We played tag and none caught me. We went into the river and I was the leader in the race when we swam to the far shore and back."

White Wolf and Red Crane looked at each other and smiled, and the old grandfather said to himself: "Ai! Ai! The time has come."

The meal was soon over, and then White Wolf said to the boy: "My son, your days of tag-playing are about over. Your grandfather and I have made up our minds that you are big enough now to become a Su-is-ksis-ik. He will take you to the next meeting of the society."