Okipa
The Okipa, sometimes rendered as Okeepa or O-kee-pa, was the most important religious ceremony among the Mandan people in what is now North Dakota. The ceremony was a partial retelling and reenactment of Mandan mythology, and was done to provide good fortune and ensure the tribe had plentiful buffalo to hunt. It took place mainly in a ceremonial clearing at the center of a Mandan village and a large earth lodge, known as the Medicine Lodge or Okipa Lodge, dedicated exclusively for the purpose. It was led by a prominent member of the tribe, known as the Okipa Maker, who had earned the right to host, and two men who represented important figures in Mandan mythology. During the Okipa, young men in the tribe submitted to extreme ritual torture, including scarification and dismemberment, as a rite of passage and to induce supernatural visions. The men starved themselves for as long as all four days before being cut through their bodies, suspended from the lodge ceiling through these cuts, and weighed down with buffalo skulls tied to rope suspended through other cuts on the body. They were then made to run around the central clearing until the buffalo skulls were ripped out of their flesh.
The mythological origins of the Okipa centered around a creator figure called Lone Man and his conflict with a supernatural member of the tribe called Speckled Eagle. Its roles were doled out through special permissions earned or sold to certain members of the tribe. The ceremony took place at least once a year and usually during the summertime, though it regularly occurred two or three times a year and was known to be performed during the winter. Throughout the process dancers dressed as male buffalo were painted by the townspeople and performed ritual dances outside the Medicine Lodge as young men inside fasted and submitted to the torture. During the third day, a trickster figure who ritually harassed the women of the tribe with a large symbolic penis was at the center of several of the performances. He was driven away by the tribe's women and the theft of his symbolic penis elevated one of the women to leadership status. At the end, a process known as Walking with the Buffalo took place, wherein the young married women of the tribe performed ritual sex with the Bull Dancers of the tribe, which imbued the young women – and by extension their husbands – with a supernatural energy known as xópini.
The Okipa was first attested in the writings of the American painter George Catlin, who earned the goodwill of the tribe and was allowed to view the ceremony, though he was not the first non-Indian to observe the event. While some of his account has been criticized as inaccurate or sensationalist, much of it has been corroborated by later independent accounts. While the ceremony kept some continuity, the events in the Okipa changed and altered through time, especially after a devastating bout of smallpox in 1837. The ceremony is thought to have influenced the Sun Dance performed by many Plains Indian tribes, most notably the Cheyenne's. Although the ritual torture receded as a focal point of the ceremony over time, it was formally outlawed in 1890.
Background
People
The Mandan people are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains in modern-day North Dakota. The tribe moved north along the Missouri River, eventually establishing seven to nine fortified towns near what is now Mandan, North Dakota – comprising about 15,000 people – between 1450 and 1550. First contact with white traders is attested by the French-Canadian trader Sieur de La Vérendrye in the fall of 1738, who visited nine robust villages which the Mandan considered to be their oldest; he reported that the tribe was powerful and prosperous, fearing none of its neighbors and dominating trade in the region. It is estimated that there were also about 15,000 Mandan during Sieur de La Vérendrye's visit.The Mandan reached their zenith around 1772. About ten years later, the two or three villages on the east bank of the river were devastated by a bout of smallpox, forcing them northward and causing them to consolidate into one village. The five villages on the west were similarly devastated, collapsing from about six or seven villages to just two. The Mandan briefly recovered, allying themselves with the Hidatsa and Arikara against the Sioux before another outbreak of smallpox in 1837 reduced their numbers to no more than three hundred, though some estimates put the number as low as thirty individuals. Today, the allies comprise the Three Affiliated Tribes, located in and around the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
Mythos
The Okipa was, in part, a reenactment of the Mandan's religious historiography. Traditional Mandan stories state that the ceremony was first performed at the mouth of the White River in modern-day South Dakota; this claim has been backed up by archeological evidence. The myths regarding the people's origins were somewhat varied, but the Mandan traditionally relate that they emerged from underground. The Mandan religion centered around a creator figure, known as Lone Man .One story, recorded by the American anthropologist, describes the merging of two moieties, the Buffalo People and the Corn People. The Corn People were said to have surfaced from underground, guided by a chief named Good Furred Robe. The Buffalo People, on the other hand, were created on the soil near Heart River by Lone Man after he created land. The Corn People migrated northward and unified with the Buffalo People around Heart River. Another story relates that the people emerged from the underworld by climbing a grapevine which eventually snapped, leaving some people beneath the earth's surface. Those who made it above ground marched northward to Heart River, settling at Devils Lake.
Settling of the Waters
Part of the Okipa celebrated the Settling of the Waters, a part of the tribe's flood myth. The story begins with an evil chief called Maniga who controlled a gluttonous tribe across a lake. Each time Mandan tribesmen traveled to his area of control, Maniga forced them to gorge themselves so viciously on "food, water, tobacco, and women" that several tribesmen died. Lone Man stopped Maniga by tricking him into crossing the lake himself and Maniga then vowed retribution by promising to become a devastating flood. The tribe split up to avoid destruction; one clan traveled to the mountains to the west while the other, perhaps under the leadership of Good Furred Robe, traveled to Eagle Nose Butte, hoping its height would protect them from the flood. When the flood came, Lone Man saved the entire tribe by building a wall around the village bound with rings of willow branches; the waters rose to the very height of the wall, but stopped. A recreation of the barrel-like structure of the wall was then placed in the center of the town's central clearing by Lone Man; a cedar post was placed in its center, representing Lone Man himself.Dog Den Butte conflict
Much of the Okipa, however, focuses on Lone Man's conflict with Speckled Eagle, a magical figure born among the Mandan. Tradition holds that Speckled Eagle lived inside Dog Den Butte, a butte in which many spiritual figures lived. He was cloaked in a beautiful white buffalo robe and Mandan regularly brought him gifts. When Lone Man made himself incarnate among the people, he became jealous of Speckled Eagle's robe, invoking the spirits of the sky in helping him. The spirits of Thunder, Rain, and Sun failed to obtain the robe, but Whirlwind blew it from Speckled Eagle's possession and a group of Mandans took the robe back to Lone Man.In anger and jealousy, Speckled Eagle imprisoned the animals of the earth inside Dog Den Butte. The Mandan then began to starve and Lone Man saw some animals heading toward the butte. Transforming himself into a rabbit to investigate, he saw the animals trapped inside and performing an odd dance. Upon his return to the Mandan, he related what he saw and instructed them to perform a ceremony while dancing like the animals did. The Mandan did not have drums loud enough to attract Speckled Eagle's attention from inside Dog Den Butte, so Lone Man asked the four turtles which held up the world on their backs if they would serve as drums. They turned him down, but instructed him to make drums in their image with the strongest buffalo hide. One of the drums escaped into the Missouri River near Heart River.
The drums worked, and Speckled Eagle was drawn to a dance occurring in the Mandan village. A young man had been selected from among the tribe to play the role of Speckled Eagle in the Okipa and trick him into believing the man was his son by placing fireflies inside his eyes. When Speckled Eagle confronted the young man about his impersonation, his eyes opened and the fireflies flew out; Speckled Eagle saw this and interpreted it as how his own eyes flashed with lightning. Speckled Eagle then released the animals and agreed to work with Lone Man to perform the rite. The Okipa is in part a retelling of this episode of the Mandan mythos and, although Speckled Eagle did not hold a significant part of the overall mythology of the Mandan, he was held in equal importance during the Okipa.
Purpose
The Okipa was the most important celebration of the Mandan people. There were several reasons for the rite: to reenact the history of the tribe, to ensure its well-being, and to hail self-sacrifice as a virtue. The ceremony was said to provide good fortune to the tribe and ensure that buffalo would be plentiful for hunting.The ceremony had to be held at least once a year, but it was regularly held in every village two or three times, typically in the summer though winter ceremonies were sometimes held. Two villages could never hold an Okipa at the same time; there were only one set of turtle drums, which were absolutely critical to conducting the ceremony. If only one Okipa was held in the summer, it would occur after a major hunt, but if two were held, one would occur before the hunt as well.