American Indian life

by Unknown

Tokulki passed through the period when his principal experience of life was that there was something in it that gave him food and warmth, which was “mother,” and when there was something light in which dark objects moved, or something dark in which light objects moved. There was one particular light object that he gazed upon continually, and which resolved itself into the house door, and another, red and hot, which he saw when he awoke at night and which resolved itself into the house fire.

The home into which he gradually came to consciousness was the winter house of his family. The framework was of hickory poles, set in a circle of perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter, with their slender ends gathered together at the top and supported by a central element of four wooden columns. Interwoven with this were thin, flexible pieces of wood plastered thickly with mud mixed with dry grass, and the whole covered inside and out with mats. The floor was excavated a couple of feet below the general level of the ground, and a shallow trench dug about it a little farther back, so that water would be carried off without entering. The doorway which had so early attracted Tokulki’s attention was to the east where the first rays of the sun could steal into it, but it was seldom that it found any one but very young babies to awaken, for the duties of the day were assumed early and ended soon, except in times of merry-making or the great ceremonials. There was no vent for the escape of smoke which sometimes accumulated to an extent which would render the inside unendurable to a white man; but this was partly provided against by the judicious selection of wood,—old sticks of oak and hickory which would fall apart with little smoke, and leave a glowing bed of coals to radiate heat during much of the night. Around the walls of the house was a continuous seat made of matting, raised a foot and a half to two feet from the floor and covered with bearskins upon which most of the household slept.

The household consisted of Tokulki’s father and mother, a brother and sister, his mother’s mother, a married sister of his mother, her husband and two children, a younger brother of his mother, and an old man of the Wind clan, not closely connected with the family but making this his temporary home. More important in Tokulki’s life than most of these, was an old man, living a short distance away, but a frequent visitor in the cabin, a man whom we should call “maternal uncle” in English; yet he was “uncle” not only to Tokulki and Tokulki’s brother and sister and the children of his mother’s sister, but to a large number of other boys and girls—boys and girls whom we should not consider related in the least. Tokulki, however, as he grew older, learned to call them “elder brothers,” “younger brothers,” and “sisters,” and he learned that most of these were called “Wind people,” like himself, but that some were called “Skunk people,” and some “Fish people.”

While still on his mother’s back, Tokulki was taken down to the river every morning, and his mother dashed water over him and over herself even when the weather was bitterly cold. One of his earliest memories was of this cold douche after his warm night’s rest. All of the inhabitants of the village except a few of the sick and decrepit, took this morning bath, the men and boys plunging in, the women and children contenting themselves in cold weather with a little splashing.

And it was the “uncle” of each band who saw to it that none evaded this regulation. He was always present, encouraging the smaller boys, scolding the timorous, and sometimes correcting the unruly by means of a stout stick. As he did so he poured good advice into their ears, and Tokulki soon learned that his “uncle” was the man to whom he must appeal in time of trouble, whose approbation he must win, and whose displeasure he must be careful to shun. Often, on winter evenings the uncle would gather his “nephews” and “nieces” together and instruct them, and he would tell them in particular of the deeds of their ancestors, sometimes assisting his memory by means of little strings of beads, or by referring to notches cut in sticks.

But when the old people were talking with one another, Tokulki’s mother would by no means allow him to go near them, and sometimes, when his curiosity had gotten the better of him, she would box his ears soundly. In after life Tokulki learned that this was not because such behavior was considered disrespectful of the old people or annoying to them, but because old people have uncanny powers and may bewitch a child who hangs about them too closely. There was not much temptation to do this except in winter, for during the rest of the year the elders would be working or talking apart by themselves, or the old men would be in the square.

This “square” loomed larger in Tokulki’s life the older he grew. It was only a short distance from his home. He was not allowed to play there, but he could walk all around the edge, marked by a ridge of earth which had been piled up by successive scrapings of its surface in preparation for the ceremonials. Near its western end were four long, narrow buildings plastered with mud and outlining a hollow square with entrances at the corners. They were open in front, and each was divided into three equal sections by transverse walls, which did not, however, reach to the roof. The middle section of the western cabin was slightly different, in that the back part was separated by another wall parallel to the walls of the building, and, closely shut up in the room thus formed, Tokulki knew that the ceremonial pots, rattles, drums, the dried medicines, and all of the most sacred possessions of the tribes were kept. In front the town chief or miko and his principal councilors had their seats. On the northwestern edge of the grounds loomed the tshokofa, the indoors council house, constructed precisely like a winter house except that it was very much larger. To the eastward extended a wide, open space kept bare of grass by intermittent hoeing and the pressure of many feet. In the middle of it rose a ball post, and at the farther corners stood two shorter posts where captives taken in war were burned. Almost every morning Tokulki could watch the leading men of his town assemble in this square, and between the buildings catch glimpses of the medicine-bearers carrying asi (an infusion of ilex vomitoria) in conch shells to regale the councilors. All that they had in their stomachs they forthwith ejected, that they and their minds might both be clear for the matters about to be discussed.

Frequently Tokulki accompanied his mother when she went in quest of firewood, or he would sit on the edge of the garden patch while his mother, his grandmother, and the other women of the household were at work, and sometimes he was given the temporarily congenial task of driving off crows. This garden was planted principally with pumpkins and beans, but most of the corn was in the great town garden farther off from the village, and thither all of the people marched in the spring, headed by their miko, with hoes made of hickory limbs over their shoulders, to prepare the ground for planting. Each household had its own patch separated from the rest by a narrow strip of grass, but the work was in common: first so-and-so’s strip, next some-one-else’s until all was completed. After that it was largely the duty of the women and children to keep weeds down and drive away birds, and there were little watch-houses on the edges of the fields for the accommodation of the guardians. The days when all worked were as much holidays as days of labor. The participants began early but worked only until shortly after noon. Then they partook of their principal meal in common, and after that there was usually a ball game followed by a dance around a big fire in the square, the light of which was reinforced by cane torches.

The ball game was usually played about a single post, though not the one in the square-ground, and it was indulged in by both men and women, who played against each other, the women throwing the ball with their hands, the men with their ball sticks. Single tallies were made by striking the pole above a certain mark, but five points were counted if the carved bird which surmounted it was touched. Sometimes, however, the men played their own game, a game similar to lacrosse except that two small ball sticks took the place of the one large one. Each side strove to bring the ball home to its own goal, marked by two straight poles set up a couple of feet apart, and twenty points constituted a game, ten sticks being stuck into the ground by the scorer of each side and then drawn out again. In dividing up, the Wind, Bear, Bird, Beaver, and some other clans, called collectively “Whites,” played against the Raccoon, Fox, Potato, Alligator, Deer, and certain others who were known as “People-of-a-different-speech.” But these games were only practice games, or make believe games. The regular games were always between certain towns, and they were very serious matters conducted with the deliberation and ritualism of a war expedition. Each game was preceded by careful negotiations: the players fasted and were scratched with gar teeth, they enlisted the aid of the supernatural by employing a medicine man, they marched to the appointed place as if to meet an enemy, wagered quantities of property on the result, and conducted it so energetically that serious injuries were sometimes inflicted.

In winter Tokulki’s mother and the other women busied themselves making baskets and mats, twisting bison hair into garters for the leggings, and weaving cloaks—worn only by women—out of the inner bark of the mulberry. In the summer they made pottery and dressed skins, and the preparation of food kept them busy, of course, at all seasons. They must prepare their own flour by pounding the corn in a wooden mortar, at which they sometimes worked two and two. Sometimes they would relax their labors long enough to play a sort of dice game in which sections of cane took the place of our bits of bone. The men spent most of their winters seemingly to less advantage, much of it in smoking and recounting to one another tales of their hunting or war excursions, humorous sketches frequently revolving about the Rabbit, and sometimes myths of a more serious and sacred character. However, they devoted many hours in the aggregate to the repair of their hunting and fishing outfits, and to the manufacture of axes, arrow points, and other articles of utility, material for which had been laid aside during the preceding fall.