Nico Wind
The Native American Church
with Nico Wind
[audio:https://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/s2_progs/203_tr.mp3]Arlie Neskahi:
[sings] With our songs we call to the universe.
Music is healing. Mourning the loss of his son, Earl Bullhead discovered a song in the Frances Densmore Collection recorded nearly a century ago. It encouraged him as a maker of song for his people. On today’s Tribal Rhythms, Nico Wind presents the music of this powerful tribe, both past and present.
Music: from
Rhodes CD Track 18
Nico Wind:
One of the largest tribes of native people in North America is the Sioux tribe, sometimes called the great Sioux nation. The Sioux nation is actually made up of three separate divisions of Siouan language speakers. In the eastern part of South Dakota, the Santee Sioux speak the Dakota dialect, the Yankton Sioux, or Ihanktunwan, speak the Nakota dialect, and the western or Teton Sioux speak Lakota.
For the Teton Sioux, as in other tribal nations, music is not just entertainment. It is woven into daily life. There are songs for romance, songs for healing, songs for ceremony and prayer, and songs for dying.
Earl Bullhead, a Teton Sioux, is known throughout Indian country as a talented musician and singer. He speaks of how the untimely death of his son led him back home and into the music of his traditional culture.
Earl Bullhead:
So I came back to McLaughlin and went to see my Aunt Evelyn. I always go to her ’cause she pretty much raised us. And she said, “You know,” she said, “there’s a trailer house over here and…” She said, “You can stay there.”
So I went into that trailer house and, I was there for ten months and, Lala Joe, or Joe Flying By, Hopta Iye, which he called himself. Clifford One Feather, and Jimila Martinez were my visitors. They would bring me sandwiches. They understood the traditional way, you know, staying out of the public eye as much as possible. I couldn’t control my… When I first caught word of that I had to be tranquilized. I got hysteric.
Wind:
Out of that terrible time of loss, Earl Bullhead became immersed in language and music. He became a singer, composer and later a teacher of Teton music.
Earl Bullhead. Teton Sioux Singer. Photo courtesy of Milt Lee.
Bullhead:
And so, coming from that perspective, I started saying, “I need to do something.”
And so I started writing songs, typing songs on a typewriter. I picked it up and started concentrating on different things and. There were a lot of things, songs that I wrote, and written, or translated while I was mourning my son.
Music:
Densmore CD Track 11
Bullhead:
So in that process I uh, found a song in a Densmore Collection. And it’s called the “Individual Honor Song”. Well, when I first heard that, it was like instantaneous. (snaps fingers) I liked the tune. I heard the words. I sang it. I did not understand the history of it.
Wind:
Bullhead had discovered a recording from the Frances Densmore Collection made for the Bureau of American Ethnology nearly a century before. While scratchy and difficult to hear, the recording was a doorway to the past.
Music:
Densmore Track 31
In 1904, Frances Densmore began traveling the open lands of Indian country with a hand-cranked phonograph that recorded on wax cylinders. Having studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Harvard University, she grew interested in Native music when she heard Apache warrior, Geronimo humming a song.
Music:
Densmore Track 36
With what was then “state of the art” field recording equipment, she paid singers a quarter a song and had them sing down the throat of the specially built galvanized horn connected to her phonograph. Sometimes, in extreme heat, the cylinders would threaten to melt like candle wax.
Music:
Densmore Track 44
The technology was so unfamiliar to one singer that on hearing the playback of his song, he asked, “How could it learn the song so fast? That’s a hard song.”
In the 1930’s, the Densmore Collection was stored in cool museum chambers. It lay like a bear hibernating in its cave, waiting for spring, when the original owners, people like Earl Bullhead, would take the old music and bring it forth into the world again.
Earl Bullhead Memorial Song “Walking the Red Road”
Native music continues to evolve and to reflect the lives of the people. Songs continue to be written even as old songs are restored. One example is the song Earl and his son wrote in honor of his wife’s mother – his children’s grandmother – for her funeral.
Earl Bullhead. Photo courtesy of Milt Lee.
Bullhead:
And in the process, my missus came back, and she said, “I want you to compose a song for grandma from us,” she said, “from our family.” So my boy and I that evening, sat down and we started talking about a lot of history that we were told. And different plants, and how she used to always have Ceyaka, or Peppermint tea. So, we had memories of time we shared with her. So we thought about those things. And so we started writing the words and using a laptop and putting the words in. And we started trying to convey, you know, what she used to do for many people, I imagine. And so in the process, then through the night, then we were happy with what we were trying to say. So the next day, we sang for her at her, when all the services were over. Just before they laid her to, to rest, we sang this song.
(sings song): Takoja micicana otakuye ob cekiyapo hey…yai Oyake ki d’ina otaye Dina otayedo hey…yai Kink’suyanpi unci maka kihan tehayunkinktedo hey…yo Mitakuye kihan cekiyapoyo Cekiyapo hey…yai Kink’suyanpi otakuye kihan teh’iciyapo hey…yo
And so the words in the song talk about “takoja”, her grandchildren and my children, my relatives, to pray for each other, because there’s a lot of history. And always remember that it’s only earth that’s going to endure. And to think of your relatives and to pray for them.
Takoja micicana otakuye ob cekiyapo hey…yai Oyake ki d’ina otaye D’ina otayedo hey…yai Kink’suyanpi unci maka kihan tehayunkinktedo hey…yo Mitakuye kihan cekiyapoyo Cekiyapo hey..yai Kink’suyanpi otakuye kihan teh’iciyapo hey…yo
Wind:
For Wisdom of the Elders, I’m Nico Wind.
Neskahi:
Dr. Frances Densmore was relentless in tracking and recording the music of many tribes over a sixty year period beginning in 1911. The Smithsonian-Densmore Collection includes over two thousand wax cylinders. Efforts of people like Densmore have made it possible for Earl Bullhead and others to revive songs that may have been lost and use them to heal and honor his people.
Tribal Rhythms is written by Milt and Jamie Lee, produced by Clark Salisbury and Larry Johnson, and hosted by Nico Wind. Many thanks to Earl Bullhead and to Smithsonian Folkways Records for the use of songs from the Frances Densmore Collection.