Blackfoot medicine-pipe ceremony / Walter McClintock.

  • Walter McClintock
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Blackfoot medicine-pipe ceremony / Walter McClintock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    When the Medicine-Pipe men drummed and chanted rhyth- mically for the Antelope dance, Red Fox arose and while he danced made motions with his hands to imitate an antelope walking. He took the Pipe and moved his head like an ante- lope alert for danger. For the Swan song, Bear Child (Kydiopoka) danced alone to represent the chief swan, the leader of the flock. He kept making the Swan sign by holding both arms extended and fingers spread out in imitation of a flying swan. While the seven drummers chanted and beat time rhyth- mically for the Crane song, there were several dancers who gave the Crane call in unison and made motions to imitate the actions of flying cranes. All remained seated during the Rest- ing songs which were sung for ducks and geese and various other water-birds. Wolf Plume and his wife were painted while the Medicine- Pipe men drummed and chanted the four Horse songs, special care being used to sing these accurately, lest misfortune befall their horses. After an interval for rest, during which a red- stone pipe was passed for everyone to smoke, seven Owl songs were sung. As a bird of night the owl had a prominent place in the ritual of the Pipe, and was honored and propitiated by its favored food being used in the ceremony—known by the Blackfoot as the Siksakasim (root), found along the streams in the mountains and also called “Indian horehound.” They sang seven songs for the band worn around the head of the Pipe-owner during the ceremony; it was made from the skin of a sacred white buffalo. Then seven songs were sung for a water bird known as the ““Good Rusher”, with the wonderful power of rushing over the water and believed to drown people by dragging them under. Also a Muskrat song which was used by the Pipe-owner when he removed his face- paint: “All the water-birds and little water-animals are my friends.” The Bee songs were used by the Pipe-owner when he was angered, because anyone who provokes a bee will be stung; it also made him safe from any magic spell or charm, and caused the power for evil to react upon an enemy who might strive to injure him. A woman’s pipe which had a flat stem and no decoration belonged tothe bundle. It was taken out by Strikes First, the wife of Wolf Plume, and smoked only by the women. The Medicine Pipe itself, however (Nindmiskan) had a stem, thirty
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