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Mystical Circles of Power: The Plains Indian Shields
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18932 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
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2 / 1991 |
4,222 Words |
| Author
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Ronald McCoy
Ronald McCoy is a professor of history at Emporia State
Univeristy in Emporia, Kansas. He has wrtten for The World &
I about such topics as Navajo sand painting, Hopi culture,
Plains Indian warrior art, and most recently on the sacred
clowns of the Puebloan Southwest. |
From the time of remote antiquity until the late nineteenth century, North America's Plains Indian warriors--the men of such tribes as the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Crow--carried shields into combat, confident that they were protected by mystical circles of power.
Made from thick buffalo hide, shields warded off potentially lethal blows from clubs, lances, and arrows. They also promised protection of a less prosaic sort, which accounts for their use long after the introduction of European arms rendered them useless for practical purposes. Throughout the vast region that sprawled between the Rocky Mountains and Mississippi and Missouri rivers, from Canada to Mexico, shields served as divinely sanctioned mantles of invincibility rendered operable by the magical formulas embodied in the designs painted on their surfaces. Thus, indeed, a shield constituted a mystical circle of power designed to render both physical and supernatural assistance. It was what the Indian calls Medicine, a sign of the blessings that came from prayers directed to the force driving the universe. With a shield's Medicine, a warrior went into battle fully armed; without it, he was essentially unarmed, lacking the blessings of supernatural protection necessary for victory. This was to be expected in a culture in which the quest for Medicine was an established part of life.
Searching for meaning to life, or for some way of bettering odds in combat, a warrior might undertake a vision quest, journeying to an isolated spot and cutting himself off from the distractions of the daily round. Fasting and praying he sought a vision. Some successful petitioners beheld a spirit helper, an animal, celestial body, or representation of natural forces. Sometimes another warrior appeared, moving without danger through the ranks of his enemies because of his Medicine, the supernatural power conjured into being by a talisman he wore in his hair, around his neck, or as a motif painted upon his body, horse, or shield. This Medicine--the Sioux called it wotawe, a word connoting the idea of armor--could be nearly anything: a root, pebble, feather, stuffed animal, or design.
Fundamentally, then each shield represented a reflection of direct revelation from the mysterious forces of the universe--called by some the Great Mystery--with the right to make someone sanctioned either as a result of personal revelatory experience or by explicit permission from the vision's recipient. For example, a Cheyenne holy man named White Bull, active throughout the Plans Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s, dreamed of a rainbow. "Hanging from the arch were seven shields," he remembered,
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