Hoof bundles

Editor’s Note: This is continued from last week’s Part 1...

I found myself at the center tree now, in Nolan Yellow Kidney’s Sun Dance lodge. I was there wondering why they’d asked me, the newcomer white guy, to help tie up the prayer cloths and leave the tobacco offerings at the base of the tree. With all the people watching I was nervous as I carefully wrapped the many-colored cloths around the aspen trunk. Then, while trying not to cover the photo of a woman’s face that someone had put up, a voice behind me quietly said, “It’s okay, you can cover her up now.” I turned around to find a man sitting on the ground, his smile inviting me to join him.

Friends had told me about him. “Bob Stump is a medicine person,” they said. “He can maybe show you some things about the old ways of taking plants and animals.” I was skeptical. After all, I had hunted, trapped, fished, logged and farmed all my life. “What could he show me?” I thought . . . but curiosity nudged me to sit down. As it turned out, the photo was of Bob’s wife who had just passed away. He needed a place to stay and I had an extra room in the back of my old house, so we made a deal, knowledge for rent, and he’s still there.

Later, Bob and I were up in the mountains gathering plants for his 101, an old-time healing blend. “Ya gotta communicate with them,” he said. “That’s what makes the medicine work.”

It was a hot day in August and sweat soaked my shirt. “Tell them they are beautiful,” he continued. “Then let’s give thanks to the Creator by leaving a little tobacco.” He sang as he folded the pipsissewa leaves into a beaded bag. I tried to remember the strange words but they got tangled up in the heat while my scientific mind stretched to make sense of it all.

Then I drifted back to the Sun Dance ceremony where Bob and I had met. I could smell the sweetgrass smudge. We passed the four pipes around the circle, an old man praying with one for a long time before he smoked. I could hear all the laughter and the songs. I felt the drumming . . . or was it the heartbeat of the earth. Dancers kept rhythm with eagle bone whistles, and for four days the smoky dust mingled into the spirit world.

Suddenly, a gunshot echoed from the northern ridge and I was back at the hoof bundle. The snow had stopped and I wondered how the chickadees on the branch in front of me had come unnoticed. Pouring a little coffee, I smiled, knowing my daughter Jessy had followed an elk track up to that ridge earlier in the morning. I glanced up at the hoof bundle once more. Then I left some tobacco on the ground, shouldered my pack and rifle and looked for a game trail heading north.