At a festival being held at the Indian village near the town of
Pawhuska, old Saucy-calf called the writer’s attention to a little boy
who was playing hide-and-seek with other youngsters and said: “Look at
the way his hair is cut (fig. 6); that is the Hoⁿ´-ga A-hiu-ṭoⁿ hair
cut. That style is called ḳoⁿ´-ha-u-thi-stse. Xu-tha´-pa, Eagle-head,
better known as Ben Wheeler, a young man who sat near us, looked up
and said: “That’s my little boy; I cut my children’s hair like that.”
Saucy-calf then explained that the act of the parents in cutting the
hair of the child in that prescribed fashion was an implied petition
to Wa-ḳoⁿ´-da to permit the little one to live to see old age without
obstruction of any kind.
HAIR CUT OF THE ṬSI´-ZHU WA-SHTA-GE GENS
[Illustration:
FIG. 7.—Symbolic hair cut of the Ṭsi´-zhu Wa-shta-ge gens]
The people of the Ṭsi´-zhu Wa-shta-ge (Peacemaker) gens, who
occupied the most important and honored place in the great tribal
division representing the sky and all that it contains, adopted the
ḳoⁿ´-ha-u-thi-stse style of hair cut for their little ones, which
varied slightly from the styles used by the Hoⁿ´-ga. In the Ṭsi´-zhu
Wa-shta-ge symbolic hair cut the line of hair left uncut along the edge
is divided into little locks to typify the petals of the cone-flower,
which is the sacred flower of the gens (fig. 7).
Shoⁿ´-ge-moⁿ-iⁿ, in speaking of the symbolic hair cut of the children
of his gens, the Ṭsi´-zhu Wa-shta-ge, told the following mythical story
of its origin:
In the beginning the Ṭsi´-zhu people came down, in the form of eagles,
from the upper to the lower world. As they came in sight of the earth
they beheld a large red oak tree. They soared down to it and alighted
upon its topmost branches. The shock of their weight sent to the
ground a shower of acorns which scattered around the foot of the tree,
whereupon they said: We shall make of this tree our life symbol; our
little ones shall multiply in numbers like the seeds of the oak that
fall to the earth in countless numbers. The eagles that crowded upon
the top branches of the oak became a people whose thoughts dwelt upon
war, but two of the eagles found no resting place on the outspreading
branches of the great oak and were obliged to drop to the earth. One
alighted on a larger elder tree and his people became known as Ba´-po,
people of the elder tree. The other eagle alighted upon the ground in
the midst of a patch of little yellow flowers which his people made to
be their life symbol and their emblem of peace. The people cut the hair
of their children in such fashion as to make their heads resemble the
little yellow flower, the emblem of peace. (Fig. 7.) This yellow flower
is called Ba-shta´, Hair-cut. It is the _Ratibida columnaris_.
A paraphrase of the wi´-gi-e of the Xu-tha´-zhu-dse, Red Eagle, gens in
which the “little yellow flower,” the emblem of peace, is mentioned, is
here given.
PARAPHRASE OF THE WI´-GI-E OF THE RED EAGLE GENS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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