Bismarck Tribune

By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG

Seeds and plant parts, wrapped in cloth or leather, and an ancient pipe, comprise the Mandan corn priest's medicine bundle. In that bundle is the accumulated wisdom of many lifetimes - knowing plants that healed, plants that fed, the what and how and why of the ancient cycle of gardening the earth.

The corn priests provided new seeds for growing. This was considered holy or sacred, said Calvin Grinnell, resource specialist at Three Tribes Museum in New Town.

The bundles and their gardens were very significant to the people, he said.

"It fed the people if the buffalo moved away."

For 31 generations of corn priests and further back than that, the bundles were handed down in the traditional way.

Down the centuries, the bundle passed from one corn priest to the next, usually when someone was visited by a vision or a dream to come forward to take responsibility for the bundle. Sometimes it went from father to son, or was purchased by an interested party, Grinnell said.

The clan structure played a crucial role in the communal faith of the tribe, each clan having responsibilities for different areas of life, said Mark Halvorson, curator of collections research at the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

"Planting seeds or the birth of a baby - in the small (things in life) is the living epitome of the divine," he said.

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But for the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara people, European diseases and engineering broke into the ancient order of life, in the form of smallpox and dams.

In 1837, smallpox devastated the upper Missouri people. Seventy percent of the population died.

That great shrinkage of the clans led to tribes joining together, Halvorson said.

Perhaps it also claimed the dreamers that would have come forward to claim the medicine bundle.

The last corn priest of the Mandan, Moves Slowly, survived the smallpox epidemic and moved to Like A Fishhook village. There, he died about 1900, before someone dreamed a dream to take the bundle and its duties.

So the bundle came to his daughter, Scatter Corn, who did her best to continue the traditional practice, Grinnell said. She and her husband, Holding Eagle, a Hidatsa, consolidated the large trunks that held their medicine bundles.

"Not anyone alive knows what goes with what," Grinnell said.

In 1940, when Scatter Corn died, still no one had come forward to say they'd been visited by a dream. So the bundle, in its trunks, remained in the attic of a house on the Fort Berthold reservation.

Then in the 1950s, the houses and gardens of the Three Affliated Tribes went underwater with the damming of the Missouri River. The medicine bundle, along with a whole society, was displaced by that flood.

But not lost.

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There are various faiths among tribal people now. Some may be Congregational, some Catholic, some Mormon, but they also may be involved with clan business, Halvorson said.

The Rev. James Holding Eagle, son of Scatter Corn and Holding Eagle, became a Christian, a Congregational pastor. In 1953, when Garrison Dam neared completion, houses were being moved from the Fort Berthold bottomlands ahead of the day of flooding, including the one with the corn priest's medicine bundle in the attic. Though he was now a Christian, James Holding Eagle saved the medicine bundle, giving it to Alan Woolworth, who was working with the North Dakota Historical Society, ahead of the water, excavating Grandmother's Lodge at the time, Grinnell said.

And so the bundle came to the State Historical Society of North Dakota, where it has remained.

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For the last 100 years, the State Historical Society of North Dakota has been working with the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara Nation, with the Chippewa and the Lakota, to preserve the heritage of all peoples of North Dakota, Halvorson said.

At this point in time, the State Historical Society is the caretaker for a number of ceremonial bundles, Halvorson said, including that of the corn priests.

"Some day the clans may decide to take them back. In the meantime, we care for them as best we can," he said.

That seems simple enough. But Halvorson knows the pain that has been caused by well-meaning people who handled bundles in ways that deeply hurt tribal members.

"The big concern is that (the bundles)are treated with respect," Halvorson said. What preservationists want to avoid is the ghastly reaction to a book of photographs taken of the contents of Blackfeet bundles, beautifully created photos that nevertheless, in the eyes of their tribes, shocked like autopsy shots, he said.

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Preservationists on Fort Berthold and at the State Historical Society look beyond bundles as sacred artifacts of the past; they believe they carry a promise for the future.

Plants indigenous to North Dakota in the area of the Missouri River were used both for healing and religious properties, Halvorson said. For example, a variety of nicotiana, Indian tobacco, was sacred and cultivated.

The ritual use included others such as sage, cedar, sweetgrass - among the Chippewa, some kinds of bark.

Elders are concerned about the loss of plants, Halvorson said. Some plants may only grow in a certain small area, and like a little kid in a garden, we unknowingly may pull up the plants instead of the weeds, he said.

The prickly pear cactus is one example. Some people consider it a weed, he said. But the tribes knew that mucilage from it could bind wounds and fix the pigments in paint.

"There is wisdom in oral tradition, counsel on diet, on relationships," Halvorson said.

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Halvorson can pull open a drawer in the storage rooms of the historical society and look at corn varieties from 1937, with beautiful names:Mandan black, Mandan clay red, Nueta, Water Chief's mix, and beans called Indian Brown and Hidatsa Shield. In another, plastic models of delicate squash and small watermelons are covered in wax.

Seed company pioneer Oscar Will used Mandan seed to develop many of the varieties he sold, Halvorson said.

Will capitalized on the genetic bounty of the traditional tribal seeds developed over the centuries, cultivated for climatic hardiness, Grinnell said.

The hope behind saving these artifacts: To preserve genetic diversity. These seeds are not just relics of the past but have significance for us today, he said. Who knows which variety will be the saving of a breed or a species or a people?

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The years continued to take their toll on the bundle. Five years ago, Grinnell was contacted by Halvorson - the bundle needed to be cleaned.

Though they couldn't identify some of the particular plants, Grinnell, with the help of Bruce Nagel, a descendant of Holding Eagle, renewed the cloth holding the herbs.

"We held a ceremony, prayed and announced our intentions," Grinnell said.

With something sacred, Grinnell says, "if you are sincere and mean no harm and do the best you can, there's no harm in that."

"It's monumental, very important," he said. "I was glad and very gratified to be involved in rejuvenation, to preserve it for a few more years."

"I believe spirit never dies," he said. "There are things out there that take care of our people."

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The ultimate future of the medicine bundle?

At this point, the Three Tribes museum does not have special facilities for preservation, but at some point, there may be an effort to retrieve it. "That's up to the people," Grinnell said.

"These are our beliefs," he said. "Grandmother Who Never Dies, our counterpart to Mother Earth, in the shape of a woman who renewed herself every year by washing herself in the water, is sacred and beneficial to our people.

"Medicine ceremonies are to bring rain, to bring buffalo, to cure illness, to protect against enemies.

"Each sacred story represents a promise by a spirit being to our people, a sacred pact. If we take care of them, they take care of us.

"It's what we want to preserve. It keeps us together as a people.

"If we take care of the bundles, the spirits stay with us."

(Reach KarenHerzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com.)