The Sun-Dance of the
Sioux
Frederick Schwatka
Century Magazine, New York, 1889-1890, Volume 39, pp. 753-759.
A FEW years ago it was the
good fortune of the writer to witness, at the Spotted Tail Indian Agency,
on Beaver Creek, Nebraska, the ceremony of the great sun-dance of the Sioux.
Perhaps eight thousand Brule Sioux were quartered at the agency at that
time, and about forty miles to the west, near the head of the White River,
there was another reservation of Sioux, numbering probably a thousand or
fifteen hundred less Ordinarily each tribe or reservation has its own celebration
of the sun-dance; but owing to the nearness of these two
agencies it was this year thought
best to join forces and celebrate the savage rites with unwonted splendor
and barbarity. Nearly half way between the reservations the two forks of
the Chadron (or Shadron) creek form a wide plain, which was chosen as the
site of the great sun-dance.
In general it is almost impossible
for a white man to gain permission to view this ceremony in all its details;
but I had in Spotted Tail, the chief, and in Standing Elk, the head warrior,
two very warm friends, and their promise that I should behold the rites
in part slowly widened and allowed me to obtain full view of the entire
proceedings.
It was in June that the celebration
was to be held, and for many days before the first ceremonies took place
the children of the prairies began to assemble, not only from the two agencies
most interested, but from many distant bands of Sioux to which rumors of
the importance of this meeting had gone. Everywhere upon the plains were
picturesque little caravans moving towards the level stretch between the
branches of the Chadron -- ponies dragging the lodge-poles of the tepees,
with roughly constructed willow baskets hanging from the poles and filled
with a confusion of pots and puppies, babies and drums, scalps and kindling-wood
and rolls of jerked buffalo meat, with old hags urging on the ponies, and
gay young warriors riding. Fully twenty thousand Sioux were present, the
half-breeds and the "squaw-men" of the two agencies said, when the opening
day arrived. Probably fifteen thousand would be more correct. It was easier
to believe the statement of the Indians that it was the grandest sun-dance
within the memory of the oldest warriors; and as I became fully convinced
of this assertion, I left no stone unturned that would keep me fast in the
good graces of my friends, Spotted Tail and Standing Elk.
When all had assembled and the
medicine-men had set the day for the beginning of the great dance dedicated
to the sun, the "sun-pole" was selected. A handsome young pine or fir,
forty or fifty feet high, with the straightest and most uniformly tapering
trunk that could be found within a reasonable distance, was chosen. The
selection is always made by some old woman, generally the oldest one in
the camp, if there is any way of determining, who leads a number of maidens
gaily dressed in the beautiful beaded buckskin gowns they wear on state
occasions; the part of the maidens is to strip the tree of its limbs as high
as is possible without felling it. Woe to the girl who claims to be a maiden,
and joins the procession the old squaw forms, against whose claims any reputable
warrior or squaw may publicly proclaim. Her punishment is swift and sure,
and her degradation more cruel than interesting.
The selection of the tree is
the only special feature of the first day's celebration. After it has been
stripped of its branches nearly to the top, the brushwood and trees for a
considerable distance about it are removed, and it is left standing for the
ceremony of the second day.
Long before sunrise the eager
participants in the next great step were preparing themselves for the ordeal;
and a quarter of an hour before the sun rose above the broken hills of white
clay a long line of naked young warriors, in gorgeous war-paint and feathers,
with rifles, bows and arrows, and war-lances in hand, faced the east and
the sun-pole, which was from five to six hundred yards away. Ordinarily
this group of warriors numbers from fifty to possibly two hundred men. An
interpreter near me estimated the line I beheld as from a thousand to twelve
hundred strong. Not far away, on a high hill overlooking the barbaric scene,
was an old warrior, a medicine-man of the tribe, I think, whose solemn duty
it was to announce by a shout that could be heard by every one of the expectant
throng the exact moment when the tip of the morning sun appeared above the
eastern hills. Perfect quiet rested upon the line of young warriors and
upon the great throng of savage spectators that blacked the green hills overlooking
the arena. Suddenly the old warrior, who had been kneeling on one knee,
with his extended palm shading his scraggy eyebrows, arose to his full height,
and in a slow, dignified manner waved his blanketed arm above his head.
The few warriors who were still unmounted now jumped hurriedly upon their
ponies; the broken, wavering line rapidly took on a more regular appearance;
and then the old man, who had gathered himself for the great effort, hurled
forth a yell that could be heard to the uttermost limits of the great throng.
The morning sun had sent its commands to its warriors on earth to charge.
The shout from the hill was
reechoed by the thousand men in the valley; it was caught up by the spectators
on the hills as the long line of warriors hurled themselves forward towards
the sun-pole, the objective point of every armed and naked savage in the
yelling line. As they converged towards it the slower ponies dropped out,
and the weaker ones were crushed to the rear. Nearer and nearer they came,
the long line becoming massed until it was but a surging crowd of plunging
horses and yelling, gesticulating riders. When the leading warriors had
reached a point within a hundred yards of the sun-pole, a sharp report of
rifles sounded along the line, and a
moment later the rushing mass was a sheet of flame, and the rattle of rifle-shots
was like the rapid beat of a drum resounding among the hills. Every shot,
every arrow, and every lance was directed at the pole, and bark and chips
were flying from its sides like shavings from the rotary bit of a planer.
When every bullet had been discharged, and every arrow and lance had been
hurled, the riders crowded around the pole and shouted as only excited savages
can shout.
Had it fallen in this onslaught,
another pole would have been chosen and another morning devoted to this
performance. Though this seldom happens, it was thought that the numerous
assailants of this pole might bring it to the ground. They did not, however,
although it looked like a ragged scarecrow, with chips and bark hanging from
its mutilated sides.
That such a vast, tumultuous
throng could escape accident in all that wild charging, firing of shots, hurling
of lances and arrows, and great excitement would be bordering on a miracle,
and no miracle happened. One of the great warriors was trampled upon in
the charge and died late that evening, and another Indian was shot. The
bruises, sprains, and cuts that might have been spoken of in lesser affairs
were here unnoticed, and nothing was heard of them.
Later in the day the sun-pole
was cut down and taken to the center of the great plain between the two
forks of the Chadron, about a mile away. Here a slight excavation was made,
and into it the butt of the sun-pole was put, and the tree, the bushy top
having now disappeared, was held upright by a number of ropes made of buffalo
thongs diverging from its top. At their outer ends, probably from seventy
to eighty feet away from the sun-pole, they were fastened to the tops of
stakes seven or eight feet in length. These, with a large number of stakes
of similar size driven in close together, formed a circular cordon around
the sun-pole, and over these stakes were stretched elk-skins and buffalo-robes,
canvas and blankets, and a wattling of willows and brush. Sometimes canvas,
blankets, and light elk-skins are thrown over the supporting ropes to ward
off in a slight way the fierce rays of the noonday sun. To one approaching
by the road that led over the winding hills which hem in the broad plain
between the two forks of the Chadron the affair looked not unlike a circus
tent, the top of which has been ruthlessly torn away by a cyclone.
All day, from the closing of
the ceremony of shooting at the sun-pole, the attention of the Indians was
occupied in constructing this inclosure, where, within a day or two after
its completion, they performed those barbarous rites and ceremonies of cruelty
and self-torture that have placed the sun-dance of the Sioux on a level with
the barbarisms of any of the far more famed devotees of Juggernaut.
Early on the morning of the
third or fourth day the true worship of the sun, if it can be strictly so
called, was begun. So far all that that luminary had done was to signal
the charge of the young warriors on the sun-pole. It now entered into the
calculation of every minute, almost of every second, of the barbarous proceedings.
Those who were to torture themselves, probably forty or fifty in a sun-dance
of this size, were, as near as I could judge, young warriors from twenty
to twenty-five years of age, all of them the very finest specimens of savage
manhood in the great tribe.
I was told that these fine fellows
fast for a number of days before they go through the self-torture, one informant
saying that before the ordeal takes place it is required of them to abstain
from food for seven days and from water for two. While their condition
did not indicate such abstemiousness as this, I think it true that some
fasting precedes the more barbarous ceremonies.
The third day was mostly consumed
in dancing and in exercises that did not vary greatly from the dances and
exercises usually seen at any time in large Indian villages. On this day,
however, the sun-dance began. Within the arena were from six to twelve
young warriors, still in war-costume of paint and feathers, standing in
a row, and always facing the sun, however brightly it shone in their eyes;
with fists clenched across the breast, like a foot racer in a contest of
speed, they jumped up and down in measured leaps to the monotonous beating
of the tom-toms and the accompanying yi-yi-yi-yis of the assembled throng.
The dancers occasionally vary the proceedings with savage music or with
whistles made of bone. Now and then a similar row of young maidens would
appear in another part of the arena, and their soprano voices would break
in pleasantly on the harsher voices of the men. The dancing continued for
intervals of from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour, broken by rests of
about equal length, and lasted from sunrise to sunset.
Many trifling ceremonies took
place while the important ones were proceeding. Horses and ponies were
brought into the arena, and the medicine-men, with incantations, dipped
their hands into colored earth and besmeared the sides of the animals with
it. As these animals were evidently the best war-ponies, the ceremony was
doubtless a blessing or a consecration to war.
On the fourth day of the Chadron
sun-dance the self-torture began, and I was told that those who were to
submit themselves to the great
ordeal were the same young
warriors who had been dancing the day before. Those who began the dance on
the fourth day took the final ordeal on the fifth, and so for four or five
days the dancers of one day became the sufferers of the tortures of the next.
The row of dancers took their
places promptly at sunrise, but it was not before nine or ten that the tortures
began.
Then each one of the young men
presented himself to a medicine-man, who took between his thumb and forefinger
a fold of the loose skin of the breast, about half way between the nipple
and the collar-bone, lifted it as high as possible, and then ran a very
narrow-bladed but sharp knife through the skin underneath the hand. In
the aperture thus made, and before the knife was withdrawn, a stronger skewer
of bone, about the size of a carpenter's pencil was inserted. Then the
knife-blade was taken out, and over the projection of this skewer, backwards
and forwards, alternately right and left, was thrown a figure-of-eight noose
with a strong thong of dressed skin. This was tied to a long skin rope fastened,
at its other extremity, to the top of the sun-pole in the center of the arena.
Both breasts are similarly punctured, the thongs from each converging and
joining the rope which hangs from the pole. The whole object of the devotee
is to break loose from these fetters. To liberate himself he must tear the
skewers through the skin, a horrible task that even with the most resolute
may require many hours of torture. His first attempts are very easy, and
seem intended to get him used to the horrible pain he must yet endure before
he breaks loose from the thongs. As he increases his efforts his shouts
increase, huge drops of perspiration pour down his greasy, painted skin,
and every muscle stands out on his body in tortuous ridges, his swaying frame,
as he throws his whole weight wildly against the fearful fetters,
being convulsed with shudders. All the while the beating of the tom-toms
and the wild, weird chanting of the singers near him continue. The wonderful
strength and extensibility of the human skin is most forcibly and fearfully
displayed in the strong struggles of the quivering victims. I have seen
these bloody pieces of bone stretched to such a length from the devotee that
his outstretched arms in front of him would barely allow his fingers to touch
them.
I know it is not pleasant to
dwell long upon this cruel spectacle. Generally in two or three hours the
victim is free, but there are many cases where double and even triple that
time is required. Oftentimes there are half a dozen swinging wildly from
the pole, running towards it and then moving backwards with the swiftness
of a war-horse and the fierceness of a lion in their attempts to tear the
accursed skewers from their wounded flesh. Occasionally some over-ambitious
youth will erect four stakes within the arena, and fastening skewers to both
breasts and to both shoulders will throw himself backwards and forwards against
the four ropes that hold the skewers to the stakes.
Faintings are not uncommon even
among these sturdy savages; but no forfeit, opprobrium, censure, or loss
of respect in any way seems to follow. The victim is cut loose and placed
on the floor of some lodge near by and left in charge of his nurses. The
only attempt I saw to break loose from double skewers in front and behind
terminated in this manner. Whether the men ever afterwards enter the cruel
contest after having thus failed I do not know. It may be possible that
some exceedingly ambitious warrior may enter the lists year after year to
show his prowess, but I understand that it is supposed to be done but once
in a lifetime. It is not obligatory, and by far
the greater number grow up sensibly
abstaining from such savage luxuries. When the day is almost over, and
the solar deity is nearly down in the west, the self-tortured warriors file
from the inclosed arena, one by one, and just outside the doors, deeply
covered with handsomely painted buffalo-robes, they kneel, and with arms
crossed over their bloody breasts and with bowed heads face the setting sun
and rise only when it has disappeared.
Many other horrible variations
have been reported to me; such as tying a saddle or a buffalo's skull to
the end of the long rope fastened to the skewer and running over the prairie
and through the timber, the saddle or skull bounding after the victim until
he liberates himself; or, when fainting, to draw the tortured man clear of
the ground by the ropes until his weight overcame the strength of the distended
skin. My informants told me that no two of the ceremonies were alike, the
self-torture in some form being the one common link in all. The consecration
of the sun-pole, much of the dancing and singing, the double efforts of
ambitious youths, and other ceremonies might be left out entirely or others
substituted. I describe it only as I saw it. I will add that this sun-dance
was called the greatest the Sioux had ever held; the greatest self-sacrifice
of the greatest native nation within our boundaries. Within a year they
had checked, at the Rosebud Hills in Montana, the largest army we had ever
launched against the American Indians in a single fight; had retired successfully
to the Little Big Horn, a few miles away, and there, a week later, had wiped
Custer's fine command from the face of the earth; had held Reno for two
days upon a hill; had never lost a battle worthy of the name in the war
which led to their subjugation; and had proved the utter worthlessness of
victory to a savage race contending against civilization.
Frederick Schwatka.