Thinks to wonder, wonderful things: February 2010

The Story of No Moccasins

Among us the old ones are the best models for how we should live our lives. Every old person is a collection of stories because of all that each one has seen and lived and all that happens in the world around them in a lifetime.

Such a person was an old woman named No Moccasins. She lived in a time before the coming of the horses (prior to 1700).

No Moccasins and her husband, Three Horns, had lived long lives. They had a son and a daughter and several grandchildren. No moccasins, in fact, was grandmother to all the children in the village. She was a small woman, and by her sixty-seventh winter her hair was the color of new-fallen snow. The lines in her face seemed to show the many trails she had walked in her life. No visitor to her modest but orderly lodge ever left hungry, and rarely with out a gift in hand, something that was finely quilted. She was known far and wide for her intricate quilting patterns and designs and many women came to learn her skill.

But in spite of all of that she known mainly as the wife of Three Horns.

Three Horns was a man of excellent reputation. He had been a warrior for past the time when most men lost the strength of arm and leg as will as the will to take risk. So in his lifetime he had collected many, many war honors. The lance to which his eagle feathers were tied was twice as long as a man was tall. Every feather was an honor, of course, and no other man could boast of such a thing. When he finally turned from the warpath he took his place on the council of elders. There he offered his wisdom unselfishly and the skill with which he spoke could not be matched.

He was seventy winters old, but his appearance could take the breath away. He didn't have the big belly that many old men did. He stood straight and tall, and his hair which hung to his waist, was silvery white.

In the village everyone turned to Three Horns for advice. It seemed as though he had always been there.

So when he fell ill and took to his deathbed, the entire village was in disbelief.

Word traveled fast and soon many, people from other villages come to pay honor to the dying leader. Three Horns tiny village grew to twice its size in a matter of days. No Moccasins, her daughter, and several other women were kept busy cooking to feed all the guest. When Three Horns was told about all the people who had come, he asked the oldest people in the gathering to come to his lodge.

The four men and two women who come to No Moccasins and Three horns’ lodge saw in the man’s half of the lodge, which was to the north, the long eagle-feather staff, bows and arrows and lances, and buffalo-hide shields that were the colorful symbols of the glorious life of a warrior.

Three horns, weak from his illness, spoke in a low voice with No Moccasins, who was sitting beside him.

But he seemed to grow stronger as he went on.

No Moccasins, as she had always done, saw to the comfort of her guests and her husband and remained respectfully quiet.

"My friends and relatives," he began, "thank you for coming into our lodge. I have been honored to share this lodge with my wife for nearly fifty winters. In that time we were given a fine son and a fine daughter and many grandchildren. Our people saw difficulty as well as good. We took to the path of war now and then

and good men were hurt or died. We are feared and respected by our enemies. The number of our lodges and villages has grown in that time. We are a strong people; our ways are good. I am thankful to the Great Mystery for bringing me into this world as a Lakota! I have lived a good life and I am ready for the next.

Before I leave I have a story to tell, and I ask that after the sun comes up tomorrow you tell this same story to all the people gathered here.

That is why I have asked you to come today . Here is what I want you to know.

When I was a young man I traveled south from my mother and father’s village to hunt. I come to a village that was encamped for the summer just north of the Running Water River. There was a great feasting and a dance at that time, for there had been a fight and a great victory over enemies to the south. I was invited to join the celebration. It was a good time.

There was much food and we danced far into the night.

I awoke the nest morning beside the trail to the water and looked into the largest and most wonderful eyes I had we ever seen.

A young woman was gazing down at me. She said, "It is funny what suddenly grows beside this trail, I jumped to my feet and followed her to the water and carried the water skins back to the village for her.

That was the best chore I have ever done in my life.

"The next evening I stood in line out side the lode of this young woman with all the other young men who had comet o court her. Her name was Carries the Fire and she did put the fire in my heart. I was very surprised when she asked me to come again the next evening. You will not be surprised when I tell you I remained in her village until the autumn hunts. By then for reasons I still cannot understand but for which I am grateful, she head decided that I might be a good husband. So I went back north to tell my family so they could prepare the gifts to her family for the bride Price.

We were married the following spring. In between was the longest winter of my life. So I left my family and became a part of her village, as is a custom among us. No long after that, enemies came among us from the south on a revenge raid for the defeat they had suffered before. They killed a man and took two young women. A war party went south on their trail.

I went alone. We trailed them for a half a moon, it seemed, going far into county I had never seen. We traveled fast and caught up with them as they rejoined their village. We hid and watched. We saw where they had put the two young women. Later we saw where their night sentinels were and made a plan.

There were six of us. That night two of us would set a fire to the east of the village, and two of us would do the same to the west. While the men of the village were busy putting out the fires, two of us would sneak in and take back our young women. The plan worked, except for one thing: I was one of the two who sneaked into the village, and I was captured.

By dawn all of our war party had escaped back to the north with the two young women, and I was glad to pay the price of a good raid. As you might think, my captors were very angry. They made me a slave. All my clothing was taken from me-everything. I was led around naked; everyone laughed. I was made to work.

I pulled drag poles like a dog until my hands and knees were bleeding. They teased me; they threw dirt in my face. Women pulled up their dresses in front of me and laughed, showing me that I was no longer a man.

They gave me no food so I had to fight with the dogs for scraps. At night they bound me hand and foot and stretched me between two stout poles. There was no way to escape. I began to feel lower than a dung beetle. I lost count of the days, but I looked for ways to escape. But lack of food made me very weak, and I knew that before I was too weak I had to escaped. After a time they stopped putting a guard to sit and watch me at night. Night after night I pulled at the poles which held me, and little by little I loosened them. But someone saw what I had done and pounded the poles in deeper. I was discouraged.

I am not ashamed to tell you that one night I prayed to Great Mystery to give me a quick death. I could not escape; I was to weak.

One night it was cold and rainy, and I was naked and shivering. There was no one about; it was to cold.

Even the dogs curled up out of the rain. My heart was sad as I thought about my ‘young wife and that I would never, ever see her again. I thought about her so much that her face appeared to me. After a moment I realized it was real; she there! While I lay there in disbelief she cut my bonds with her knife, pulled me to my feet, and guided me out of the enemy’s village.

I was weak from hunger and my mind was not clear. But I know we walked through the night and by dawn we arrived at a hiding place she had prepared. The rain had fallen through the night and washed out our tracks. She could not have found a better time to come. She had hidden food and weapons. As my mind cleared I saw that she was wearing men’s clothes-mine-to disguised herself for the journey. We hid,and we ate and rested. She told me that the other men had returned home with the news that I had been killed. She grieved for a time, she said, but she found herself not believing I was really dead. One night she made preparations and left the camp. The others had told her where the enemy camp was located. She know where to look. After many days of hiding and watching she came into the camp on that rainy night.

Though our tracks were washed out by the rain, the enemy knew we had to travel north to come home,. So they sent out a war party. After a few days of resting and hiding we were eager to start home. We knew to be cautious, of course, and we looked often at our back trail. That is how we saw others heading in the same direction: six of them moving fast. I knew they had to be from the village where I had been captive and that those six men were the best of their warriors. I had escaped when they were certain I could not. They could not know that I had help. Because my escape was an insult they could not let pass, they sent out their best trackers, their fiercest warrior.

We covered our trail as best we could but it did not matter. They were running, and I could not. Carries the Fire and I decided that we should hide so that we would not leave a trail they could find. But they had to be thrown off somehow. I thought about that but I could do nothing, so I did not speak that thought to her. But she had thought the same. We made a good hiding place in an old bear’s den.

That afternoon while I slept she slipped away. She returned that evening, wet and barefoot. She had placed her moccasins near a creek to lay a false trail for our pursuers. Later she told me that when they nearly spotted her, she hid in a beaver’s lodge. She had to go into the creek and come up inside the beaver’s house. I teased her, saying that she should have a new name---No Moccasins.

After two days we left our hiding place and struck out west and traveled in that direction for three days, then north. I began to call her No Moccasins because it was a name of honor for what she had done. That is why my wife is call No Moccasins. Thought I grew stronger each day it was not an easy journey home. We had to watch for enemy, find food, and a shelter each night. But it was her quiet courage, more than anything, that was our greatest strength. The people were surprised to see us. They believed that I had been killed and that my wife had gone off and killed herself. That is not unknown.

My wife did not want me to tell our story and would only let me say that I had escaped from my captors.

The people honored me for that, but it was not my victory.

I have asked you old ones to our lodge to witness for me. It is time to repay the great debt I owe my wife.

Through my life I was fortunate as a warrior and somehow I was able to win some honors and gain a reputation. Yet all those honors are not mine because I could not have achieved them if my wife had not risked her life. I have not heard of any man in my lifetime who has done a braver deed. She traveled alone into enemy country and sneaked into a n enemy’s village.

Few men can say they have done that. Because of her deed I took to the warpath each time with one thought in mind: to be worthy of my wife. For my life long I have tried to be worthy, but I am afraid I am not.

So I must give all these honors to the one who truly deserves them. I give them to my wife. I ask that my warrior weapons and my eagle-feather staff be moved from the man’s place in our lodge to the woman’s place, where they rightfully should be.

I will leave this world soon and I ask that another thing be done. I ask that my burial scaffold hold only my body wrapped in my burial robe. I will leave this world as the man I was before I met my wife: poor and unadorned. All that I appeared to be would not have been if not for this woman.

Three Horns sighed deeply and settled back. No Moccasins silently wiped away her tears and pulled a robe up over her husband I have know good people in my life, Three horns continued. Many were wise, honorable, generous, and brave. But none, except this old woman who sits beside me as always, had the one strength that gives true meaning to all the others--humility. She did a brave thing, and no one---not the strongest warrior among us-has yet to do the same. She cared not if anyone ever knew.; It is time that everyone know. Thus I have spoken.

The old ones who gathered with Three Horns gave their word to tell the story of No Moccasins’ courage and humility. Through the days and nights that followed, young and old alike crowded around the campfire to listen to those old ones. Before long No Moccasins’ name rose with the smoke from many campfires.

Days later Three Horns died in the arms of his beloved No Moccasins. Though her loss was great she comfort others. As he wished, Three Horns' burial scaffold was unadorned. Those who mourned for him also honored his widow. No Moccasins cut her hair short in mourning, but nothing else outwardly changed. She lived her life the same as always--a small, quiet old woman amidst the bustle of a busy village. She gave her husband’s eagle-feather staff, his shield, and his weapons to the Kit Fox Warrior Society.

They, in turn, decided to hang those symbols of honor in the great council lodge in the very center of the village. There they would remain as a reminder of one man’s courage and an old woman’s humility.

The honor and reverence that Three Horns was given in his life now belonged to No Moccasins. Not a day went by that a gift of food was not left outside her lodge door,and every day she shared those gifts with the very young and the very old. For the rest of her days No Moccasin wanted for nothing. In the winter the firewood piled outside her door was nearly as high as the lodge. This, too, she shared. She welcomed all who came to visit, and many who did were warriors from near and far. They came to bring gifts and to share a meal,and to sit in the presence of courage to learn humility.

No moccasins died in her seventieth winter. On her burial scaffold were hung her husband’s shield, his weapons, and the eagle-feather staff. On the ground below were piled hundreds of moccasins so she would not have to journey to the other side in bare feet.

Today I decided that I am going to learn to assert myself and my boundaries! This past week contained more than one event of someones behaviors causing a negative physiological response in my body. I decided that I am going to grow up and face these feelings with some compassionate self-discipline. I told somebody "hey, I know you didn't mean any harm but (when you did blank) it caused me to get angry/upset...blah blah blah."

*I am utterly non-confrontational, so doing this freaked me out, but I did it, and the situation was immediately remedied. Being assertive is scary, but it contains a great deal of self-respect and shows that you value yourself!

“The Negro will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.