Moon When Chokecherries Grow Ripe for the Sioux. Moon of Fat Horses for the Cheyenne. June to the white man.
And one more time for the people to offer themselves up to the Great Mystery in thanksgiving.
Along the bubbling snow-melt waters of Rosebud Creek, the Sioux raised their circular arbor of some two hundred feet in circumference, its poles standing better than twenty feet high in supporting the roof beams in their crotches. In prayerful celebration the combined tribes dropped the monstrous center pole in the ground so that it stood more than fifty feet high, reaching in prayer for the sun. Around the pole’s base lay a pile of painted buffalo skulls, their eye sockets open and staring, giving praise to the sun—as would those dancers who came in sacrifice to this place of honor.
Long, long ago … far back into any old man’s memory, the Medicine Lodge of the Sioux was believed to have originated from the ancient Cheyenne people, when the Shahiyena first pushed out of the forests and onto the plains. A ceremony held only when all the bands came together for the celebration of life granted them through the Great Mystery.
A warrior noted for his superior courage in battle and his great generosity to those less fortunate than he would be given the single honor of selecting one of the four trees to stand in each of the four cardinal corners of the Medicine Lodge. After each of the four warriors had chosen his tree, he would strike it with his coup stick four times to signify the killing of an enemy for the mighty Wakan Tanka. Then other warriors chopped the trees down, trimming their branches, assisted all the time by a group of young virgin women.
After the four trees had been dragged back to the Rosebud camp, each was painted with its significant color: green for the east, where the sun arose each new day bringing life; yellow for the south, whence comes the land of summer each year; red for the west, where the sun hurries to bed each night; and blue for the northlands of the Winter Man and his brutal cold.
Beneath this huge arbor the tribes would give thanks, offer their flesh, sacrifice their blood as the sun was reborn again and again and again during the long summer days of dancing. Around and around that monstrous center pole with its ring of death-eyed buffalo skulls, each painted red with blue stripes or yellow circles, the young men would dance, praying for a vision and giving their thanks for another year of abundant life. A life lived in the old way on the lands of the ones gone before.
For each young man offering himself to the sun, the ordeal began by stripping to his breechclout and painting himself with his most powerful symbols. Only then could he present himself to the medicine men for the season’s sacred ceremony.
As he lay in the Sun Dance arbor, the young warrior would have his chest gashed open above each nipple. After the medicine man dug his fingers beneath the pectoral muscles and the blood flowed freely, the shaman would shove a short stick of peeled willow through the wound and beneath that muscle. These small sticks would then be attached to the long rawhide tethers already lashed to the top of that tall pole erected in the center of the Sun Lodge.
Gradually the ropes would be drawn up and tightened until the dancer was forced to stand on his toes, eventually drawing the bleeding, torn muscles of his chest out five inches or more. Between his grim lips would then be placed an eagle wing-bone whistle he would blow upon to draw the attention of the spirits to his prayers.
One after another in that hushed and prayerful sanctuary of the sun, the dancers rose to their feet and began to pull at the rawhide tethers binding them to the center pole they slowly circled, driven by the rhythm of the incessant drums. One after another the warriors joined in that grim, bittersweet dance around that pole, accompanied by the throbbing chant of the spectators and the high, eerie shriek of those bone whistles. With the power of the eagle at his lips, each young warrior raised his private call to the heavens above.
Here they would dance for hour upon hour, staring into the sun as it made its slow, fiery track across the sky. Praise be to the life-giver to all things.
On the afternoon of that second day of dancing and offering, Sitting Bull surprised everyone gathered at the arbor by presenting himself for this mystic ritual of denial and sacrifice. Never before had he taken part in the Sun Dance. While Crazy Horse himself had never participated either, the decision to dance beneath the sun was considered a highly personal matter by the Sioux, and no man was ever criticized for not joining in the sacrifice of his flesh.
But today The Bull stripped naked and stretched himself upon the ground with his back to the center pole as the drums and the singing and high-pitched whistles droned on hypnotically.
His adopted brother tore at Bull’s flesh, in every move as exact as were the great visionary’s instructions. He was to use only a bone awl and a stone knife. No metal implement of the white man must touch his body. And with those tools of old, The Bull directed his brother to take fifty bits of flesh from each arm, beginning at the wrist and climbing to the curve of the shoulder; those hundred bits of flesh were to be placed solemnly round the base of the center pole on the painted buffalo skulls circled in offering to the sun and the greatest of all mysteries … life for the red man himself.
While most of the young dancers eventually struggled against their rawhide tethers so they might end their agonizing torture and self-mutilation—and escape the pain—The Bull instead danced on and on.
For the rest of that day and into the night. Then a second sun rose and fell, stealing its light from the face of the great Sioux mystic. After another night and spectacular sunrise, The Bull danced on with a strength that no man would know unless he himself had been touched by the greatest of all mysteries.
Blood trickling down his arms and off his barrel chest, Sitting Bull continued to send his prayers heavenward.
Yes, he danced for guidance in leading his people in the old ways. Yes, he danced to plead for wisdom in stopping the white man’s further encroachment on the old lands.
So it was on that morning of the third day that at last he fainted from hunger and thirst and utter fatigue. Sitting Bull crumpled to the hard-packed earth at his feet, ripping the willow sticks from his torn flesh.
As he lay there beneath the arbor of the sun, The Bull finally received his sacred vision.
And with this mysterious event came the voice of the sun itself ringing in Bull’s ears, telling him:
“These I give you … because they have no ears to hear they are wrong.”
Hours later when Sitting Bull had revived, returning from the land of spirits to tell others of that dream’s great portent, the story was pictured on the smooth sand of a sweat lodge. Crude pictographs showing soldiers careening head down into the Hunkpapa camp. Now the Sioux came to know Sitting Bull had long been right. There was to be one last great fight against the white man. Through the power of the Great Mystery, it was told they would defeat the soldiers who marched against them.
So great was the renewed celebration for this coming fight that inside another sweat lodge three round stones were painted red and set in a row to signify a great victory in war.
Likewise a large cairn of rocks gathered up from the banks of the Rosebud was constructed with the skull of a buffalo bull on one side and the skull of a buffalo cow on the other. The bull was painted red, the color of war, and there was an arrow left pointing at the cow to show all who passed this place that Sioux warriors would fall upon the soldiers like mighty bulls while the white men would run like frightened cows.
And the final offering was placed just outside the Sun Dance arbor itself: four upright and painted stakes upon which this summer’s medicine men stretched a buffalo calfskin that had been tied with strips of bright trade cloth and hung with large beads … all to show that the Sioux understood the Great Powers were granting them a momentous victory over the white man. Even more so this primitive offering boasted that if the white man did not come to hunt the Sioux, the great Lakota nations would themselves hunt down the soldiers and destroy them.
The awesome power of one man’s prophetic vision surged through the veins of all, pumping them full with the fire of fight and courage. Sitting Bull had electrified his people and made them one against that white tide seeking to sweep over their ancient lands.
Their time had come.
There would be no other.
After learning the Crows had discovered the hostiles’ trail leading over the divide, Custer ordered an officers’
