Words for the Sun Dance: Pete Catches, 1969

Abstract

In 1896 an unidentified Oglala holy man told James R. Walker that Sun is the greatest ceremony that the Oglalas do. It is a sacred ceremony in which all the people have a part (Walker, Belief and Ritual 181). It is significant that the holy man spoke in the present tense, since the (Teton Sioux) Sun had been declared illegal by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1883. Neither the declaration by the Department of the Interior in 1904 banning the ceremony (Mails, Sundancing 3), nor the repeal of the ban by the Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed by Congress in 1978 (Mails, Fools Crow 266), had much impact on the ceremony's actual practice (see Amiotte, Lakota Sun Dance 75 and Mails, Fools Crow 43). It flourished in secret performances through the decades until the unopposed but still illegal ceremony directed by Frank Fools Crow in 1952 (see Mails, Fools Crow 119). The number of participants has grown over the last 40 years, culminating in the presence of approximately 200 dancers in the mystery circle of Fools Crow at Kyle, South Dakota during the 1980s. Fools Crow is the most well known of twentieth century Sun intercessors, although the Sicangu (Brule) spiritual leader, Bill Schweigman, was perhaps just as instrumental in the open restoration of the ceremony (Mails, Sundancing 45-47). Both men are now deceased. The somewhat younger Pete Catches, who danced in Sun Dances conducted by both Fools Crow and Schweigman, has since emerged as the foremost living spiritual leader among the Oglala and perhaps among the generally. Like Fools Crow, Catches is renowned for his eloquence in Lakota. Although he is sophisticated and adept when speaking of spiritual matters in English, the Sun is so sacred that Catches restricts its verbalizing to the language of its visionary origin. His 1969 language response to an interviewer's request to explain ritual details does not attempt to be inclusive or definitive in the manner of ethnographic testimony. The Sun has an abundance of complex