Myths and Legends of the Great Plains Part 12

Then a young man said, "My life has not been good. If any evil comes to me, it will not matter."

So the people were willing, and the young man put his hand on the plant and then on its fruit. He grasped the fruit boldly. He said to the people, "It is solid. It is ripe." Then he pulled apart the husks, and said, "It is red."

He took a few of the grains and showed them to the people. He ate some. He did not die. So the people knew Wahkoda had sent this plant to them for food.

Now in the fall, when the prairie gra.s.s turned brown, the leaves of this plant turned brown also. Then the fruit was plucked, and put away. After the winter was over, the kernels were divided. There were four to each family.

Then the people moved the lodges to the place where the plant had grown. When the hills became green, they planted the seed of the strange plant. But first they built little mounds like the one out of which it grew. So the fruit grew and ripened. It had many colors; red, and yellow, and white, and blue.

Then the next year there were many plants and many ears of corn. So they sent to other tribes. They invited them to visit them and gave them of the new food. Thus the Omahas came to have corn.

TRADITION OF THE FINDING OF HORSES

_Ponca_

Long ago, the people followed the Missouri River northward to a place where they could step over the water. Then they turned, and were going across the land. Then they met the Padouca [Comanche].

At that time the Ponca had no animals but dogs to help them carry burdens. Wherever they went they had to go on foot, but the people were strong and fleet. They could run a great distance and not be weary. One day when they were hunting buffalo, they met the Padouca.

Then they had many battles with them. The Padouca were mounted on strange animals. At first the Ponca thought it was all one animal. The Padouca had bows made from elk horn. They were not very long, nor were they very strong. They boiled the horn until it was soft; then they sc.r.a.ped it, and bound it together with sinews and glue. Their arrows were tipped with bone. They fought also with a stone battle-ax. The handle was a sapling; a grooved stone ax head, pointed at both ends, was fastened to this with rawhides. So the Padouca were terrible fighters. They protected their horses with a covering of thick rawhide cut in round pieces, and put together like fish scales. They spread glue over the outside and then sand. So when the Comanches fought, the arrows of their enemies glanced off the horses' armor. Then the Padouca made breastplates for themselves like those of the horses.

When the Ponca met these terrible warriors, they were afraid. They thought man and horse were one. They named it "Kawa" because they noticed the odor of the horse. Then they knew by this odor when the Padouca were coming. When a man smelled the horses, he would run to the camp and say, "The wind tells us the Kawa are coming." Then the Ponca would make ready to defend themselves. The Ponca had many battles with the Comanches. They did not know how to use the animals, so they killed the horses as well as the men. Neither could they find out where the Padouca lived.

One day the two tribes had a great battle. The people fought all day.

Sometimes the Ponca were driven back, sometimes the Padouca. Then at last a Ponca shot a Padouca so that he fell from his horse. Then the battle ceased. After this, one of the Padouca came toward the Ponca and said in plain Ponca,

"Who are you? What do you call yourselves?"

The Ponca replied, "We call ourselves Ponca. You speak our language, are you of our tribe?"

The other said, "No. I speak your language as a gift from a Ponca spirit. One day I lay on a Ponca grave after a battle. Then a man rose from the grave and spoke to me. So I know your language."

Then it was agreed to make peace. The tribes visited each other. The Ponca traded their bows and arrows for horses. They knew where the Padouca lived. Then the Padouca taught the Ponca how to ride, and how to put burdens on the horses.

When the Ponca had learned how to ride, and had horses, they went to war again. They attacked the Padouca in their own village. They attacked them so many times and stole so many of their horses that at last the Padouca fled. We do not know where they went. The Ponca followed the Platte River toward the rising sun; then they came back to the Missouri, and they brought their horses with them.

DAKOTA BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS

_Dakota_

The Dakotas have names for the natural divisions of time. Their years they count by winters. A man is so many winters old, or so many winters have pa.s.sed since such an event. When one goes on a journey, he says he will be back in so many sleeps. They have no division of time into weeks, and their months are literally by moons.

The Dakotas believe that when the moon is full, a great number of small mice begin to nibble on one side. They nibble until they eat up the entire moon. So when the new moon begins to grow, it is to them really a new moon; the old one has been eaten up.

The Dakota mother loves her baby as well as the white woman does hers.

When the spirit takes its flight a wild howl goes up from the tent.

The baby form is wrapped in the best buffalo calfskin, or the best red blanket, and laid away on a scaffold or on the branch of some tree.

There the mother goes with disheveled hair and oldest clothes, the best ones having been given away, and wails out her sorrow in the twilight, wailing often until far into the cold night. The nice kettle of hominy is prepared, and carried to the scaffold where the spirit hovers for several days. When the kettle has remained there long enough for the _wanagi_, the spirit, to inhale the food, the little children of the village are invited to eat up the rest.

When a hunter dies, the last act of the medicine man is to sing a song to conduct the spirit over the _wanagi tacanku_, the spirit's road, as the Milky Way is called. The friends give away their good clothes.

They wear ragged clothes, with bare feet, and ashes on their hands.

Both within and without the lodge there is a great wailing.

"_Micinski, micinski, my son, my son,_" is the lamentation in Dakota land as it was in Israel.

The dead hunter is wrapped in the most beautifully painted buffalo robe, or in the newest red and blue blanket. Young men are called and feasted, and their duty it is to carry the body away and place it on a scaffold, for the dead remain not long in the tepee. In more recent times they bury it. The custom of burial immediately after death, however, was not a Dakota custom. The spirit did not bid farewell to the body for several days after death, and so the body was laid on a high scaffold or in some tree crotch where it would have a good view of the surrounding country, and also be safe from wolves.

WHY THE TETONS BURY ON SCAFFOLDS

_Teton_

In the olden days, the people buried some men on a hill. Then they removed their camp to another place. Many winters afterwards, a man visited the hill; but there were no graves there. So he told the people.

Then many men came and dug far down into the hill. By and by a man said, "There is a road here."

There they found a road, a tunnel, large enough for men to walk, stooping. Other roads there were. They followed the first road and they came to a place where a strange animal had dragged the bodies of those who were buried in the hill.

Therefore the people refused to bury their dead in the ground. They bury them on scaffolds where the animals cannot reach them.[M]

FOOTNOTE:

[M] At the present day, the Teton gives three reasons for not burying in the ground: animals or persons might walk over the graves; the dead might lie in mud and water after rain or snow; wolves might trouble the bodies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN SCAFFOLD CEMETERY ON THE MISSOURI RIVER

(From Schoolcraft)

_Courtesy of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OMAHA VILLAGE, SHOWING EARTH LODGE AND CONICAL TEPEES

_Courtesy of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution_]