Fools Crow - Sun Dance Ceremony

Sun Dance Ceremony

North American Indian ceremonialism is a cultural phenomenon under which we understand a set mode of shamanistic procedures characteristic of those practically universal observances connected with such events as birth, puberty, individual acquisition of supernatural power, and death, and which is concerned on the psychology of routine. This term generally is associated with a more or less definite content of stereotyped form. Anthropologist Robert H. Lowie in his article titled “Ceremonialism in North America” explains, that:

These performances are not individual, but collective undertakings; and, even where they hardly fall under the category of "religious observances" or "solemn rites," they are uniformly more than mere attempts at social amusement. As Indian dances are often performed for a serious purpose, or at least form elements of complexes of a serious character, the terms "dance" and "ceremony" are sometimes used interchangeably (601).

We see the seriousness of the Blackfeet Sun Dance in Fools Crow. The Medicine Woman, who is the one who really runs the ceremony, is chosen because she has made a vow and has to honor it. Heavy Shield Woman says she will do this if her husband, Yellow Kidney, is returned to her. He comes back, but is not nearly the same as he was before going to raid the Crow camps. Even so, Heavy Shield Woman is still the Medicine Woman the following summer for the Sun Dance Ceremony, and she takes her position very seriously.

Lowie indicates that in the American Plains area the ceremonial activity gained a very high degree of development, though this was shared in very unequal measure by the several tribes. They perform a number of important ceremonies, but besides them “there was a series of tribal seasonal festivals, ostensibly in the nature of thanksgiving celebrations, held annually at such periods as the first flowing of the maple-sap, the planting and the ripening of the corn, etc. These ceremonies … correspond in a way to the spectacular composite performances, in which religious practices are combined with entertainments of various forms” (603).

Throughout Fools Crow we see multiple ceremonies being performed. There is a ceremony to help Fools Crow rid himself of his “bad medicine”; there is a ceremony to help cure people of small pox; there are multiple medicine-man ceremonies. But one of the most important ceremonies and which is well demonstrated in the novel is the Sun Dance ceremony. This great tribal performance is a composite phenomenon in which strictly religious features are blended with games and clownish procedure such as a backward speech. Welch knows the Sun Dance intimately and reflects this knowledge in Fools Crow in such a way, as to make it align with research that others have done on that ceremony. The participants of the Sun Dance ceremony dance, sing, and pray to Sun to give them abundance in summer and health in winter, to give them peace and live in a peace. Lowie adds that “All important bundle ceremonies of the Blackfeet require a sweat-lodge performance; in nearly all rituals the songs are sung by sevens; for almost every bundle some vegetable is burned on a special altar; and every ritual consists essentially of a narrative of its origin, one or more songs, the opening of the bundle, and dancing, praying, and singing over its contents”(618). Another characteristic detail of the Sun Dance is an element of self-torture, such as piercing of the breasts with a bear’s claw, insertion of skewers under the skin, and suspension from a pole. White Man’s Dog (later to be called Fools Crow) performs all of these during his ceremony of initiation as a medicine man. He dances around the pole pulling the lines attached to his breasts until the skewers break. His courage and endurance are highly appreciated among his people, as he proves to be a brave and a strong man.

In his novel, Welch mentions that in other lodges Sacred Pipe and Beaver Medicine men perform their ceremonies for those who needed their help. We can find explanation of these ceremonies in Lowie’s article, where the author argues that other ceremonial performances of wide distribution center in the rites are connected with sacred bundles of restricted ownership and the widely known medicine-pipe ceremonials, the sacred-bundle rites of the Blackfeet, may serve as examples. So in Welch’s Fools Crow, when Heavy Shield Woman is going to perform her duties at the Sun Dance, a Medicine Woman Bundle is carried in by the ceremonial master. She is robbed in the sacred elkskin dress, the medicine bonnet of weasel skin, feather plumes, and she grasps a sacred digging stick. It is believed that all those regalia belonged to Feather Woman. The tale of Feather Woman is the myth behind this ceremony. She married Morning Star who was a son of Sun Chief and Night Red Light, and was living happily with them in their sky home until she dug sacred turnip. The turnip made a hole in the sky and through it Feather Woman saw her mother and father and got homesick. She was thrown back to Earth with her son Star Boy, who had scared face. But her come back on Earth made her unhappy, because she missed her husband, and she died of the broken heart. Her son went to the home of Sun Chief not knowing they were his family, saved life of his father Morning Star, and Sun Chief as a gift removed the scar from his face, and later made Star Boy a Mistaken Morning Star. Welch tells this story throughout his novel. He does a stunning portray of all the preparation and reasons behind the Sun Dance and the reasons that are so socially important for Heavy Shield Woman to be a medicine woman. Lowie in his article emphasizes that “not only is the same ritual explained by different myths in different tribes, but, in the attempt to account for the origin of the ritual, there is a tendency to use popular tales that come to hand” (609).

All in all, the Sun Dance ceremony is very important to the Blackfeet. It is seen not only in Welch’s novel, but also in other novels written by indigenous authors. Fools Crow is a novel that shows the intimate side of the ceremony. Welch had to be cautious in writing about the ceremony because he risked being ostracized by his people; it is a sacred ceremony and one that is not to be recorded – it is to be passed down through the generations. Welch takes a risk in this book, but his risk allows readers to have a better understanding of the sacred rites of the Blackfeet people from a historical perspective. It is important to note that up until just recently, this book was banned in the state of Montana, more so in the public school system. There is hope that soon a historical marker will be placed near the site where the Massacre on the Marias took place.