Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30
their identity to anyone, they sent him home for
tobacco. He returned with it and satisfied them.
Afterwards, he became noted as a great warrior
and doctor and lived to an old age.
The Mythological Figure
Farthest removed from the recent past is the
mythological period, an age which precedes the
historical past. It is a time when the gods, supernatural
beings, and animals were the principal
actors in dramas that explain the origin and order
of the present world, a time before the primary
actors were humans who were concerned with
secular affairs.
One example of the two myths presented at the
outset of this paper (p. 47) is the story that
explains the origin of summer in the Northern
Plains. In that story most of the actors are animals,
as indeed they always are in the same myth
where it occurs elsewhere. In the Arikara version,
however. Scalped Man is a character integrated
into the animal cast and treated as a figure
belonging to that period.
The other example is a Pawnee myth (Dorsey,
1904a: 74-78) that is placed early in human history
and explains why death continues to prevail
upon earth. A cosmological story, it portrays
scalped men as intermediaries between the celestial
gods and people on earth; and, in fact, the
leader of the scalped men is said to be a god
himself
In the story a man lost both his wife and son,
and in his bereavement he wandered through the
country in quest of death. While he was in a
timbered area, he encountered a group of scalped
men whom he followed into their cave. He told
the scalped men of his losses and that he would
like to remain with them rather than live with
humans anymore. The leader responded that they
could not allow him to stay. They themselves
should have gone to the Spirit Land, he told the
man, but Tirawahat had released their spirits so
that they could return to their people the warrior
bundle that hung in the cave. Now they wanted
to teach this man the ceremony of the bundle.
and then he could take it and its ritual back
among the people. The man, however, refused,
saying that he preferred to die so that he might
see his son. Moved by the man's wishes, the
leader, who was now himself a god, said that he
would take the man's request to the gods in the
west. When he returned, he told the man that
Tirawahat had consented to allow the dead to
return to earth to see the living. The man was to
go back to his people and bring them to a camp
nearby. There the dead would come, too, and
dead and living would be reunited for four days.
The man could, he was told, touch his son, but
he could not speak to him. At the meeting the
bundle and its ceremony would also be given
back to the people, and those dead spirits who
wished to remain on earth might do so.
When the meeting occurred the man not only
embraced his son but spoke to him as well, in
spite of the admonition. As soon as he spoke, all
of the spirits disappeared, and the man was left
broken-hearted. The people, who received the
bundle, returned home; but the man continued
to wander, never to be with people again, for he
had been responsible for death remaining on
earth.
The Comic Character
In contrast to the sets of tales just presented,
all of which are serious by nature and reputedly
true, there are humorous stories—fictional in
character and told purely for amusement—in
which Scalped Man also appears.
In one group of these stories. Scalped Man
himself is the protagonist. Here he is portrayed
simply as a fleeting, or filmy, character who is a
trickster. The Pawnee story of Scalped Man and
the Two Couples (Parks, 1977:79-81) illustrates
this type. In it two couples, who have been out
hunting, decide to return home. They are coming
back, and just before crossing the Platte River
they hear someone calling out, "Huu, huu!" One
of the men then instructs the two women to lie
on their backs, with arms and legs spread out, on
the east side of the trail, while the two men are to
55