When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“The sun was shining bright and level across the world, getting ready to go under, when we came to the hill standing high and alone, with shadows gathered around it like a blanket and die last of day upon its head. I felt an aching in my breast, for it was like the time we took my father to the scaffold on the hill.

“When we came to the top I could see that the friends had prepared the place for me. It was flat, and they had dug a hole there as deep as to my waist, and round about it sacred sage was scattered. Then, with the hole for center, they had made a circle, maybe fifteen steps across, and at each quarter a stick was set, each with the proper color on it—blue, white, red, yellow. There were strips of painted rawhide for the black road and the red; and where these crossed at the holiest place in the center the two friends put me down. Then when they had placed the offerings at the proper quarters, they left a skin-bag full of water, and went away down the hill leading the horse. They did not say anything to me, and they did not look back. It was the way they would have done if I were dead up there and lying on a scaffold.

“With my robe about my shoulders, I stood in the hole up to my hips, holding the pipe in front of me. I watched the round red sun slip under. A thin new moon appeared low down and like a ghost. It looked lost and lonely yonder going to the spirit world. Some wolves mourned. I remembered I had heard the criers calling to the people that the village would move next day. The stars got brighter. The night was big and empty when the wolves were still. The thin new moon touched the edge of the world and sank. All at once I wanted to get out of the hole and run and run back to my people before they went away. Then I remembered my pipe. I must hold fast to it. On it must I depend. So I held it as tight as I could, and right away I could feel the power running all through me again, up my back and into my hair. I remembered the wakon said he would be with me, and that my father would help me on the hill. I could almost hear him saying, ‘Never be afraid of anything.’

“Then all at once everything was different, and I felt like praying. So I threw back my robe and started naked for the quarter of the sunset where the bow and cup were hanging; and as I went, the world was a great shining bubble and in the midst of it the pipe and I were floating. At the blue quarter I raised both hands with the pipe in my right and cried out to the power that makes live and destroys, the power of the rain and the lightning. Four times I cried, ‘hey-a-hey.’ Between the cries I waited and listened, but it was so far out yonder that no voice came back. And when I cried, ‘Lean close and hear and help me,’ there was nothing.

“I walked backward to the center and waited there awhile with my face to the white quarter, where the goose’s wing and the white herb hung. Then I went there, and, as before, I raised my hands and the pipe, crying out four times and asking the power of cleansing and healing to hear and help me. But the world was a big, empty bubble, and no voice came back. At the red quarter of the morning star and the sunrise, where the light is born and the days of men begin, I cried out four times and asked for help; but there was nothing. At the yellow quarter, where the sacred hoop and tree were set, I called upon the growing power for help. The voice I sent forth went far, so far it could never return, and there was stillness. When I stood in the hole at the most sacred place in the center and raised my face and my hands and the pipe, and prayed the prayer Blue Spotted Horse had taught me, there was nothing. And there was nothing when I leaned with my face and my hands and the pipe on Maka’s breast and asked the mother of all to help me.

“I prayed around the hoop again and again, but still there was nothing. So I stood in the hole for a while and thought hard about what I was doing. It was not easy to find a vision, and I must try and try until I found it—like getting the first deer or the first bison calf, only harder, maybe. Pretty soon I was not thinking about the vision at all. I was in the brush by the waterhole and the deer was coming down with the fawn to drink. The cow was chasing Whirlwind and me up the hillside. I was coming into the camp with the haunch of the fawn on my shoulder. My grandmother was jumping up and down crying: ‘Oh, see the vision our grandson has brought us!’ Only it was not my grandmother, but the wakon looking that queer way at me. ‘If the heart is not good something very bad will happen.’

“My head jerked, and at first I did not know where I was. Then I remembered my pipe and held it tight and began my praying all over again. I did that all night long, advancing to each of the quarters in turn and back to the center. I did not rest long there, because I had to stay awake as long as I was able. I got so tired and sleepy that sometimes I would forget what I was saying; then I would remember the old wakon’s eyes with the new moons upside down in them and the queer look, and then I would hold my pipe as tight as I could, and go ahead. Sometimes the coyotes would mock me when I waited and listened between cries, but that is all there was.

“The night was like always, until all at once there was the morning star out yonder and a pale streak of day beneath it. It was looking at me the way it did when I ’woke beside my father’s scaffold. I remembered how I tried to hold him fast in the dream, but he melted away and the buffalo-runner too.

“When I got back to the center that time I was crying a little, and when I put my hands and my pipe and my face on Maka’s breast and asked for help, I cried harder, because I was sad for my father, and the grass on my face was soft like my own mother’s breast when I was little.

“When I looked again the sun was shining. Something was happening away off yonder. There was a big whirling cloud of dust, and things were flying around in it. Then I saw that the cloud was full of coup-sticks with scalps on them, and they were flying about in the cloud and the cloud was the whirling dust of many hoofs in a battle.