How The Medicine Of The Arrows Was Broken At Republican River

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Title:     How The Medicine Of The Arrows Was Broken At Republican River
Author: Mary Hunter Austin [More Titles by Austin]

TOLD BY THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS

This is the story the Dog Soldier told Oliver one evening in April, just after school let out, while the sun was still warm and bright on the young grass, and yet one somehow did not care about playing. Oliver had slipped into the Indian room by the west entrance to look at the Dog Dancers, for the teacher had just told them that our country was to join the big war which had been going on so long on the other side of the Atlantic, and the boy was feeling rather excited about it, and yet solemn.

The teacher had told them about the brave Frenchmen, who had stood up in the way of the enemy saying, "They shall not pass," and they hadn't. It made Oliver think of what he had read on the Dog Dancer's card--how in a desperate fight the officer would stick an arrow or a lance through his long scarf, where it trailed upon the ground, pinning himself to the earth until he was dead or his side had won the victory.

Oliver thought that that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do himself if he were a soldier, and when he read the card over again, he sat on a bench with his back to the light looking at the Dog Dancers, and feeling very friendly toward them. It had just occurred to him that they, too, were Americans, and he liked to think of them as brave and first-class fighters.

From where he sat he could see quite to the end of the east corridor which was all of a quarter of a mile away. Nobody moved in it but a solitary guard, looking small and flat like a toy man at that distance, and the low sun made black and yellow bars across the floor. In a moment more, while Oliver was wondering where that woodsy, smoky smell came from, they were all around him, all the Dog Warriors, of the four degrees, with their skin-covered lances curved like the beak of the Thunder Bird, and the rattles of dew-claws that clashed pleasantly together. Some of them were painted red all over, and some wore tall headdresses of eagle feathers, and every officer had his trailing scarf of buckskin worked in patterns of the Sacred Four. Around every neck was the whistle made of the wing-bone of a turkey, and every man's forehead glistened with the sweat of his dancing. The smell that Oliver had noticed was the smoke of their fire and the spring scent of the young sage. It grew knee-high, pale green along the level tops, stretching away west to the Backbone-of-the-World, whose snowy tops seemed to float upon the evening air. Off to the right there was a river dark with cottonwoods and willows.

"But where are we?" Oliver wished to know, seeing them all pause in their dancing to notice him in a friendly fashion.

"Cheyenne Country," said one of the oldest Indians. "Over there"--he pointed to a white thread that dipped and sidled along the easy roll of the hills--"is the Taos Trail. It joins the Santa Fe at the Rio Grande and goes north to the Big Muddy. It crosses all the east-flowing rivers near their source and skirts the Pawnee Country."

"And who are you--Cheyennes or Arapahoes?" Oliver could not be sure, though their faces and their costumes were familiar.

"Cheyennes _and_ Arapahoes," said the oldest Dog Dancer, easing himself down to the buffalo robe which one of the rank and file of the warriors had spread for him. "Camp-mates and allies, though we do not call ourselves Cheyennes, you know. That is a Sioux name for us,--Red Words, it means;--what you call foreign-speaking, for the Sioux cannot speak any language but their own. We call ourselves Tsis-tsis-tas, Our Folk." He reached back for his pipe which a young man brought him and loosened his tobacco pouch from his belt, smiling across at Oliver, "Have you earned your smoke, my son?"

"I'm not allowed," said Oliver, eyeing the great pipe which he was certain he had seen a few moments before in the Museum case.

"Good, good," said the old Cheyenne; "a youth should not smoke until he has gathered the bark of the oak."

Oliver looked puzzled and the Dog Warrior smiled broadly, for gathering oak bark is a poetic Indian way of speaking of a young warrior's first scalping.

"He means you must not smoke until you have done something to prove you are a man," explained one of the Arapahoes, who was painted bright red all over and wore a fringe of scalps under his ceremonial belt. Pipes came out all around the circle and some one threw a handful of sweet-grass on the fire.

"What I should like to know," said Oliver, "is why you are called Dog Dancer?"

The painted man shook his head.

"All I know is that we are picked men, ripe with battles, and the Dog is our totem. So it has been since the Fathers' Fathers." He blew two puffs from his pipe straight up, murmuring, "O God, remember us on earth," after the fashion of ceremonial smoking.

"God and us," said the Cheyenne, pointing up with his pipe-stem; and then to Oliver, "The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in the country of the Ho-He. That is Assiniboine," he explained, following it with a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as the Dog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dust with his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. "They are called Assiniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the ground with hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-He. The first time we met we fought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bows either, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woods where we first met them."

"Lake of the Woods," said Oliver; "that's farther north than the headwater of the Mississippi."

"We came from farther and from older time," said the Dog Soldier. "We thought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces. Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-He and took their guns away from them."

"So," said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge of rank was called. "We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought with Comanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas we fought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had with Shoshones and Pawnees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the Fighting Cheyennes.

"That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For we are peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men had foretold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them. Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to do when the Ho-He fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is the fashion of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet, so we shall become great.' That is what has happened. Is it not so?"

"It is so!" said the Dog Dancers. "Hi-hi-yi," breaking out all at once in the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes. Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly they returned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at him with a kindly twinkle.

"You were going to tell me why you are called Dog Soldiers," Oliver reminded him.

"Dog is a good name among us," said the old Cheyenne, "but it is forbidden to speak of the Mysteries. Perhaps when you have been admitted to the Kit Foxes and have seen fighting--"

"We've got a war of our own, now," said Oliver hopefully.

The Indians were all greatly interested. The painted Arapahoe blew him a puff from his pipe. "Send you good enemies," he said, trailing the smoke about in whatever direction enemies might come from. "And a good fight!" said the Yellow Rope Officer; "for men grow soft where there is no fighting."

"And in all cases," said the Dog Chief, "respect the Mysteries. Otherwise, though you come safely through yourself, you may bring evil on the Tribe. ... I remember a Telling ... No," he said, following the little pause that always precedes a story; "since you are truly at war I will tell a true tale. A tale of my own youth and the failure that came on Our Folks because certain of our young men forgot that they were fighting for the Tribe and thought only of themselves and their own glory."

He stuffed his pipe again with fine tobacco and bark of red willow and began.

"Of one mystery of the Cheyennes every man may speak a little--of the Mystery of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Four arrows there are with stone heads painted in the four colors, four feathered with eagle plumes. They give power to men and victory in battle. It is a man mystery; no woman may so much as look at it. When we go out as a Tribe to war, the Arrows go with us tied to the lance of the Arrow-Keeper.

"The Medicine of the Arrows depended on the Mysteries which are made in the camp before the Arrows go out. But if any one goes out from the camp toward the enemy before the Mysteries are completed, the protection of the Arrows is destroyed. Thus it happened when the Potawatami helped the Kitkahhahki, and the Cheyennes were defeated. This was my doing, mine and Red Morning and a boy of the Suh-tai who had nobody belonging to him.

"We three were like brothers, but I was the elder and leader. I waited on War Bonnet when he went to the hunt, and learned war-craft from him. That was how it was with us as we grew up,--we attached ourselves to some warrior we admired; we brought back his arrows and rounded up his ponies for him, or washed off the Medicine paint after battle, or carried his pipe.

"War Bonnet I loved for the risks he would take. Red Morning followed Mad Wolf, who was the best of the scouts; and where we two went the Suh-tai was not missing. This was long after we had learned all the tricks of the Ho-He by fighting them, after the Iron Shirts brought the horse to us, and we had crossed the Big Muddy into this country.

"We were at war with the Pawnees that year. Not," said the Dog Chief with a grin, "that we were ever at peace with them, but the year before they had killed our man Alights-on-the-Cloud and taken our iron shirt."

"Had the Cheyennes iron shirts?" Oliver was astonished.

"Alights-on-the-Cloud had one. When he rode up and down in front of the enemy with it under his blanket, they thought it great Medicine. There were others I have heard of; they came into the country with the men who had the first horses, but this was ours. It was all fine rings of iron that came down to the knees and covered the arms and the head so that his long hair was inside.

"It was the summer before we broke the Medicine of the Arrows that the Tsis-tsis-tas had gone out against the Pawnees. Arapahoes, Sioux, Kiowas, and Apaches, they went out with us.

"Twice in the year the Pawnees hunted the buffaloes, once in the winter when the robes were good and the buffaloes fat, and once in the summer for food. All the day before we had seen a great dust rising and all night the ground shook with the buffaloes running. There was a mist on the prairie, and when it rose our scouts found themselves almost in the midst of the Pawnees who were riding about killing buffaloes.

"It was a running fight; from noon till level sun they fought, and in the middle of it, Alights-on-the-Cloud came riding on a roan horse along the enemy line, flashing a saber. As he rode the Pawnees gave back, for the iron shirt came up over his head and their arrows did him no harm. So he rode down our own line, and returning charged the Pawnees, but this time there was one man who did not give back.

"Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front said to those around him: 'Let him come on, and do you move away from me so he can come close. If he possesses great Medicine, I shall not be able to kill him; but if he does not possess it, perhaps I shall kill him.'

"So the others fell back, and when Alights-on-the-Cloud rode near enough so that Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front could hear the clinking of the iron rings, he loosed his arrow and struck Alights-on-the-Cloud in the eye.

"Our men charged the Pawnees, trying to get the body back, but in the end they succeeded in cutting the iron shirt into little pieces, and carrying it away. This was a shame to us, for Alights-on-the-Cloud was well liked, and for a year there was very little talked of but how he might be avenged.

"Early the next spring a pipe was carried. Little Robe carried it along the Old North Trail to Crows and the Burnt Thigh Sioux and the Northern Cheyennes. South also it went to Apaches and Arapahoes. And when the grape was in leaf we came together at Republican River and swore that we would drive out the Pawnees.

"As it turned out both Mad Wolf and War Bonnet were among the first scouts chosen to go and locate the enemy, and though we had no business there, we three, and two other young men of the Kiowas, slipped out of the camp and followed. They should have turned us back as soon as we were discovered, but Mad Wolf was good-natured, and they were pleased to see us so keen for war.

"There was a young moon, and the buffalo bulls were running and fighting in the brush. I remember one old bull with long streamers of grapevines dragging from his horns who charged and scattered us. We killed a young cow for meat, and along the next morning we saw wolves running away from a freshly killed carcass. So we knew the Pawnees were out.

"Yellow Bear, an Arapahoe Dog Soldier, who was one of the scouts, began to ride about in circles and sing his war-song, saying that we ought not to go back without taking some scalps, or counting coup, and we youngsters agreed with him. We were disappointed when the others decided to go back at once and report. I remember how Mad Wolf, who was the scout leader, sent the others all in to notify the camp, and how, as they rode, from time to time they howled like wolves, then stopped and turned their heads from side to side.

"There was a great ceremonial march when we came in, the Dog Soldiers, the Crooked Lances, the Fox Soldiers, and all the societies. First there were two men--the most brave in the society leading, and then all the others in single file and two to close. The women, too--all the bright blankets and the tall war bonnets--the war-cries and the songs and the drums going like a man's heart in battle.

"Three days," said the Dog Chief, "the preparation lasted. Wolf Face and Tall Bull were sent off to keep in touch with the enemy, and the women and children dropped behind while the men unwrapped their Medicine bundles and began the Mysteries of the _Issiwun_, the Buffalo Hat, and _Mahuts_, the Arrows. It was a long ceremony, and we three, Red Morning, the Suh-tai boy, and I, were on fire with the love of fighting. You may believe that we made the other boys treat us handsomely because we had been with the scouts, but after a while even that grew tame and we wandered off toward the river. Who cared what three half-grown boys did, while the elders were busy with their Mysteries.

"By and by, though we knew very well that no one should move toward the enemy while the Arrows were uncovered, it came into our heads what a fine thing it would be if we could go out after Wolf Face and Tall Bull, and perhaps count coup on the Pawnees before our men came up with them. I do not think we thought of any harm, and perhaps we thought the Medicine of the Arrows was only for the members of the societies. But we saw afterward that it was for the Tribe, and for our wrong the Tribe suffered.

"For a while we followed the trail of Tall Bull, toward the camp of Pawnees. But we took to playing that the buffaloes were Pawnees and wore out our horses charging them. Then we lost the trail, and when at last we found a village the enemy had moved on following the hunt, leaving only bones and ashes. I do not know what we should have done," said the Dog Chief, "if we had come up with them: three boys armed with hunting-knives and bows, and a lance which War Bonnet had thrown away because it was too light for him. Red Morning had a club he had made, with a flint set into the side. He kept throwing it up and catching it as he rode, making a song about it.

"After leaving the deserted camp of the Pawnees, we rode about looking for a trail, thinking we might come upon some small party. We had left our own camp before finding out what Wolf Face and Tall Bull had come back to tell them, that the enemy, instead of being the whole Nation of Pawnees as we supposed, was really only the tribe of the Kitkahhahki, helped out by a band of the Potawatami. The day before our men attacked the Kitkahhahki, the Potawatami had separated from them and started up one of the creeks, while the Pawnees kept on up the river. We boys stumbled on the trail of the Potawatami and followed it.

"Now these Potawatami," said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time, and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turn back. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of the creek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They had bunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up the kill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would be almost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine and wriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and were running them, before the Potawatami discovered it. One of them called his own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In a moment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and began to whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rode even with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them had a gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave a leap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was a trick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and off before you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's back he stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms and Suh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant.

"This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and I had stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horse and I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. I faced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment I thought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed between his arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand.

"Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behind me, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with his knife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managed to get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us, trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one of the silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all the Suh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it was the scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man.

"The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up, and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where my lance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down, but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from the Potawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger. By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting. Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze that laid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away.

"We saw other men riding into the open, but they had all been chasing buffaloes, and our ponies were fresh. It was not long before we left the shooting behind. Once we thought we heard it break out again in a different direction, but we were full of our own affairs, and anxious to get back to the camp and brag about them. As we crossed the creek Suh-tai made a line and said the words that made it Medicine. We felt perfectly safe.

"It was our first fight, and each of us had counted coup. Suh-tai was not sure but he had killed his man. Not for worlds would he have wiped the blood from his knife until he had shown it to the camp. Two of us had wounds, for my man had struck at me as he passed, though I had been too excited to notice it at the time ... '_Eyah!_' said the Dog Chief,--'a man's first scar ...!' We were very happy, and Red Morning taught us his song as we rode home beside the Republican River.

"As we neared our own camp we were checked in our rejoicing; we heard the wails of the women, and then we saw the warriors sitting around with their heads in their blankets--as many as were left of them. My father was gone, he was one of the first who was killed by the Potawatami."

The Dog Chief was silent a long time, puffing gently on his pipe, and the Officer of the Yellow Rope began to sing to himself a strange, stirring song.

Looking at him attentively Oliver saw an old faint scar running across his face from nose to ear.

"Is your name Red Morning?" Oliver wished to know.

The man nodded, but he did not smile; they were all of them smoking silently with their eyes upon the ground. Oliver understood that there was more and turned back to the Dog Chief.

"Weren't they pleased with what you had done?" he asked.

"They were pleased when they had time to notice us," he said, "but they didn't know--they didn't know that we had broken the Medicine of the Arrows. It didn't occur to us to say anything about the time we had left the camp, and nobody asked us. A young warrior, Big Head he was called, had also gone out toward the enemy before the Mystery was over. They laid it all to him.

"And at that time we didn't know ourselves, not till long afterward. You see, we thought we had got away from the Potawatami because our ponies were fresh and theirs had been running buffaloes. Rut the truth was they had followed us until they heard the noise of the shooting where Our Folks attacked the Kitkahhahki. It was the first they knew of the attack and they went to the help of their friends. Until they came Our Folks had all the advantage. But the Potawatami shoot to kill. They carry sticks on which to rest the guns, and their horses are trained to stand still. Our men charged them as they came, but the Potawatami came forward by tens to shoot, and loaded while other tens took their places ... and the Medicine of the Arrows had been broken. The men of the Potawatami took the hearts of our slain to make strong Medicine for their bullets and when the Cheyennes saw what they were doing they ran away.

"But if we three had not broken the Medicine, the Potawatami would never have been in that battle.

"Thus it is," said the Dog Soldier, putting his pipe in his belt and gathering his robes about him, "that wars are lost and won, not only in battle, but in the minds and the hearts of the people, and by the keeping of those things that are sacred to the people, rather than by seeking those things that are pleasing to one's self. Do you understand this, my son?"

"I think so," said Oliver, remembering what he had heard at school. He felt the hand of the Dog Chief on his shoulder, but when he looked up it was only the Museum attendant come to tell him it was closing time.

THE END

NOTE:

THE DOG SOLDIER'S STORY

The Cheyenne Country, at the time of this story, was south of the Pawnees, along the Taos Trail. All Plains Indians move about a great deal, so that you will not always hear of them in the same neighborhood.

You can read how the Cheyennes were saved from the Hoh by a dog, in a book by George Bird Grinnell, called the _Fighting Cheyennes_. There is also an account in that book of how their Medicine Bundle was taken from them by the Pawnees, and how, partly by force and partly by trickery, three of the arrows were recovered.

The Medicine Bundle of the tribe is as sacred to them as our flag is to us. It stands for something that cannot be expressed in any other way. They feel sure of victory when it goes out with them, and think that if anything is done by a member of the tribe that is contrary to the Medicine of the Tribe, the whole tribe will suffer for it. This very likely is the case with all national emblems; at any rate, it would probably be safer while our tribe is at war not to do anything contrary to what our flag stands for. All that is left of the Cheyenne Bundle is now with the remnant of the tribe in Oklahoma. The fourth arrow is still attached to the Morning Star Bundle of the Pawnees, where it may be seen each year in the spring when the Medicine of the Bundle is renewed.

This is the song the Suh-tai boy--the Suh-tai are a sub-tribe of the Cheyenne--made for his war club:--

"Hickory bough that the wind makes strong,--
I made it--
Bones of the earth, the granite stone,--
I made it--
Hide of the bull to bind them both,--
I made it--
Death to the foe who destroys our land,--
We make it!"

The line that the Suh-tai boy drew between himself and the pursuing Potawatomi was probably a line of sacred meal, or tobacco dust, drawn across the trail while saying, "Give me protection from my enemies; let none of them pass this line. Shield my heart from them. Let not my life be threatened." Unless the enemy possesses a stronger Medicine, this makes one safe.

[The end]
Mary Hunter Austin's short story: How The Medicine Of The Arrows Was Broken At Republican River

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