OUR WILD INDIANS
by COLONEL RICHARD IRVING DODGE
CHAPTER X
INDIANS METHODS OF SELF-TORTURE
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Summary
The
Warrior’s Ordeal - Panting for the Knife - How Suffering is Courted - Stalwart
Endurance of Pain - The Greatest of Indian Virtues - Remarkable Religious Fervor -
Indian Pride in Self-Torture - Preparations for the Trying Ordeal - Fasting,
Silence, and Meditation - The Candidates Brought before the Medicine Chief - Deciding on
the Kind and Amount of Torture - The Merciless Thrust of the Knife - Inserting
Horsehair Ropes - The Wounded Devotee - Muscles Torn from the Breast - Incredible
Suffering - The Victim’s Tragic Efforts to Break Loose - Suspended in Mid-air -
Indescribable Agonies - Lips that Never Murmur - Dressing the Wounds - The
Consequences of Flinching under the Knife - The “Sun Dance” of the Sioux -
Expiation of Crime - Exasperating Forms of Torture.
After the dance has
ended, and many times when it is yet in progress, the tortures take place. A few years
ago, every aspirant for the position and honor of warrior in the Plains tribes, was
obliged to go through an ordeal as brutal and bloody as can well be imagined. That too has
gone in the rapid progress of change. The boy of sixteen to twenty years, panting for his
promotion to the position of warrior, is no longer obliged to bare his breast to the
knife, to be tied up by broad bands of his own flesh, and to fight out alone his battle of
pain and suffering. In not one single Plains tribe is the ordeal at present a condition of
manhood, or entrance to the brotherhood of warriors.
But though no longer
necessary, it by no means follows that the torture is discontinued. The history of mankind
shows that the “spirit that makes martyrs” is in inverse proportion to the
civilization of a people. Religious faith (or what we call superstition when applied to
any religion but the one we happen to believe in) is strongest in the uneducated. The
faith of the savage is perfect, for it is unbiased and untrammelled by any doubt that
reason might interpose.
The very loftiest virtue
of the American Indian, is endurance. When religious superstition and the highest social
virtue of a people combine in a given direction, or towards any one action, it may be
regarded as sure that that act will be performed.
The Indian believes, with
many Christians, that self-torture is an act most acceptable to God, and the extent of
pleasure that he can give his God is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he
can bear without flinching. There are, therefore, always some warriors who are actuated to
the self torture of the “Hôch-é-a-yum,” by motives as pure and sentiments as
holy as ever led a Christian martyr to the stake. Others are actuated by pride or
ambition; they wish to signalize to the whole tribe their possession in an eminent degree
of the chief of manly virtues, or to lay a foundation for future preferment by an act at
once holy and popular.
At every medicine dance
there are more or less volunteers for the torture. Occasionally there is a man of middle
age, but they are generally from the younger men of the tribe, youth being the season when
passion of every kind has most energy. These men do not, as a rule, join the dance, but
spend a few days immediately preceding the ordeal in fasting and silent meditation.
When the medicine chief
and old men decide that the time has come for this part of the ceremony, the volunteers
are sent for one by one. Each comes into the lodge in breech-clout alone. His person and
condition are examined by the managers, who coolly discuss in his presence the particular
kind and amount of torture he can bear without fatal consequences. After some religious
ceremonies, the medicine chief passes a broad-bladed knife through the pectoral muscles so
as to make two vertical incisions about two inches from each other, and from three to four
inches long, in each breast. The portion of the flesh between the incisions is then lifted
from the bone, and the ends of horsehair ropes of some three-fourths of an inch in
diameter passed through the opening, and tied to wooden toggles. The free ends of the
ropes are then fastened to the top of one of the supports of the lodge, so as to give the
sufferer some ten feet play. Here he remains without food or water, until his own vigorous
efforts, or the softening of the tissues, enable him to tear out the incised muscles and
escape from his bondage. ropes are attached movable objects, preferably the skulls of
buffaloes. Sometimes the devotee is dragged up by the ropes until six or eight feet from
the ground, and left suspended until his weight and struggles tear out the flesh.
Each devotee makes the
most strenuous efforts to free himself. He understands that it is best to tear loose as
soon as possible, not only physically as a quicker ending of his torture, but also from a
religious point of view. It is “good medicine” to tear loose at once, “bad
medicine” to be several days about it.
As soon as freed, he is
examined by the medicine chief and old men. If all is right, he is congratulated, other
religious ceremonies gone through with; his wounds are washed and dressed with herbs,
rudely, but with such skill that in a few weeks they are entirely healed.
Singular as it may
appear, an instance of fatal result, even in the hottest weather, has never come to my
knowledge. Should the devotee flinch under the knife or cry out, or show other evidence of
weakness during his subsequent sufferings, he is released at once, and sent off a
disgraced man. Formerly he was contemned as a woman, and made to do women’s work. He
could neither marry nor hold property. These consequences are no longer entailed, his only
punishment now being the contempt of the warriors of the tribe.
In former times no white
man, except those allied to the tribe by marriage with squaws, was permitted to be present
at this ceremony. Now, all is open. Every one is welcome, and a white man of rank or
distinction is received among the managers and given the best place to see everything.
Native
Spirit and The Sun Dance Way (DVD)
The ceremonies here
described are common, under different names, to most of the Plains tribes. Among the Sioux
it is called “the Sun Dance,” and celebrated with exceptional pomp and
circumstance.
But it is not alone at
the Hôch-é-a-yum that these terrible self-tortures are inflicted. Sometimes a warrior
who has committed some deed which he thinks requires expiation, will give notice that on
such a day, at such a place, he will go through the torture. A stout but pliant pole is
planted in the ground. Thy incisions are made, the ropes inserted, and the toggles
secured. The top of the pole is then bent and the rope fastened to it. This is probably
the most exasperating form of the torture. In the Hôch-é-a-yum, the rope being fastened
to rigid uprights, the victim can exert all his force to tear loose. In this case, the
pole, yielding to his every effort, still retains its ghastly hold, and it sometimes
happens that the victim is several days freeing himself.
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