12 minute read
The Time of the Melting Side by Molly Murfee
IN THE TIME OF ‘MELTING SIDE’
ute lore reconnects us to the sacred wild.
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By Molly Murfee
A particular growl of thunder is different from the rest.
It is the first one.
After four months of winter, sometime in the middle of March, ‘round about the Spring Equinox, when the snow begins to take on the heaviness of rain, as Red-Winged Blackbirds return, filling the air with their trill, from somewhere over the mountains, comes this rumble, nearly forgotten until now.
The Tabeguache, or Uncompahgre, Utes wandered not only through what we know as Crested Butte and Gunnison, but also east from Leadville to Colorado Springs, south into Saguache, west into Montrose and Grand Junction, then east again through Delta and Paonia. Their name comes from the Ute word Mogwatavungwatsingwu, or “sunny slope people.” As they were a migrating hunter-gatherer society, the Gunnison Valley was one of their important and recurring seasonal homes. They called this period of change, when fat globs of flakes plummeted to a ground beginning to show signs of earth, the month in which Spring officially began, pusikwamici maatukwuci: “Melting side. Snow on one side of the road. Bear rolls over this month.”
Many years ago, the Ute lore tells us, people and animals spoke the same language. Two brothers went out hunting and paused to look around from high on a cliff. One noticed Grizzly Bear Woman, freshly emerged from her underground hibernation, standing upright facing a tree, dancing with and clawing at the tree, and singing a song. While one brother decided to return to the village, the other one stayed and watched. Grizzly Bear Woman told the man if he lived with her for one year, she would teach him the Bear Dance. And so he did. Grizzly Bear Woman taught the man the song and dance, and told him to return to his people to teach them in turn. Some even say the man turned into a Bear.
This First Thunder was the sound of Grizzly Bear Woman turning over in her sleep and nearing the day of exit from her womb-like den, when she would emerge anew into the freshly blooming world. Throughout the Myth Telling Time of Winter, the people had been sharing stories, practicing songs. They were ready. Bands came together to celebrate this coming of Spring, and the hosts busied themselves preparing food for their guests.
Those who heard the First Thunder beckoned the shamanic Bear Dance Chief who was visited by visionary dreams of supernatural instructions on establishing the dance grounds and conducting the celebration. He instructed the people on building the ceremonial space, with every bit of the preparations letting the spirits know of the sacred intent. They erected a circular corral, with a singular door facing east, bringing ritual items forward to this central point. It was time, finally, for the dance.
Just as Grizzly Bear Woman picked her hunter, this was a woman’s choice dance, and each female swished her shawl in the direction of her preferred while musicians played a notched rasp, a morache, imitating the sounds Grizzly Bear Woman made coming out of hibernation. A line of women faced a line of men, and they advanced and retreated in unison, giving the dance its name, mamaqui niqap, the “forwardbackward dance.” The dance strengthened bonds in the community, being social as well as spiritual. The starving time was finally over, and the season of fertility and fecundity begun. The New Year. The Shaman prayed for the group, blessing them with an eagle wing. According to the Bear Dance Chief’s instructions, the ritual lasted from four to ten days, making it a dance of endurance, with Bear lending her strength to the cause. Yet it was also a healing dance, and in the final hours, Medicine Men performed curing ceremonies for the sick. Upon completion, as the circle of people exited the corral, they left behind a ritual object, such as a feather or a scarf, representative of the grief and hardship they wished to shed. They never looked back. Afterward, they feasted together on buffalo tongue.
The Ute Bear Dance is one of the oldest known Native American ceremonies. It is still practiced today, with very little changed.
The dance also honors Bear. Called Kwiyagat in Ute, she is a relative, a primal ancestor, often called Grandmother or Aunt. Bear is the leader of all animal relations and the keeper of mountain game and resources. Bear safeguards such ritual items as the pipe, and her permission must be sought for its use. While certainly respected for their strength and ferocity – the fiercer the animal, the more power she lends for healing or hunting – Bears are also teachers, showing the people food, medicine and ceremony. Historically the Ute didn’t eat Bear, except for one time a year, when a single individual was sacrificed in the Spring to serve as an honored guest at the Bear Dance; her meat was taken as sacrament. She thus became a part of them, and bestowed upon them her characteristics.
But it isn’t just Bear. Traditional Utes believe all beings have spirit and are enlivened with what they call puwá, the animating and fertile supernatural force of the cosmos. The sun exhibits the most powerful reservoir of this power. Puwá is often referred to as water and is also found in the physical and spiritual fluids of life, such as rivers, sap and blood. It enlivens rock art. The rock itself. Hot springs. Healing from a plant comes not only from the medicinal qualities inherent therein, but also from a call to the plant’s spirit to assist in the process. The spirit actually does the work. From Eagle to Wolf, every animal is full of puwá, each offering a special gift. Some are otherworldly harbingers. Like Bear.
Bear is a high-level teacher of spiritual life, like Christ is to Christians, explained Clifford Duncan, a recently passed elder and culture-bearer whose ancestry was Uncompahgre Ute. The Creator speaks to us through Bear, he said, connecting humans to nature. She is a role model for how to live on this earth. In pictographs carved into stone, the representation of the Uncompahgre Utes, the band particular to the Gunnison River Valley, was the bear paw.
Whether to learn how to heal or to identify plants, “You must talk to these animals in such a way they will become your teacher,” prompted Clifford. “They are people.” It’s not like praying, he clarified; it’s communicating.
Clifford told us even Songs have spirit, jumping around from human to human like thoughts. They arise from the land, each place singing its unique Song. If you are open, you might catch it. Songs open ceremony, begin the conversation. They pour like wind in the pines, water over rock, until bursting spontaneously from your lips.
James Ray Spahn
From iconic public buildings to small accessory dwellings, AHA has played a part in shaping the architectural fabric of our community for 29 years.
Xavier Fané You don’t own a Song, said Clifford, “The Song owns you.”
Historically, mountains were particularly sacred to the Ute, and each band migrated through the seasons around a sacred mountain. This high, snowy place was the physical and spiritual center from which they spiraled out, the literal heart of their universe. Engaged in near-continuous movement, the Tabeguache travelled throughout the Gunnison River Valley, South Park, the Upper Arkansas River Valley, the San Luis Valley and the Uncompahgre Valley, always in a sun-wise, or clock-wise, direction. Their trails were ancestral, also sacred, created by Siná-wavi, the mythological Wolf, responsible for much of the creation on earth. Many of the highways we drive today lie on top of these ancient paths. Many of the trails we walk in our National Forest once bore the feet of the Ute.
The very footsteps they placed on the earth were a migrational manifestation of their cosmology, and with each quarter turn of the circle around the sacred mountain came a ceremony, a color, an animal teacher, and a world. The Sun Dance for the Summer Solstice, indicated with yellow and led by the Mountain Lion, representative of Upper World. Pine Nut Round Dance for the Autumn Equinox, washed in white, the Eagle overhead and the world of Sky. At the Winter Solstice, Myth Telling Time began in the blackness of the season, with Snake signifying the Underworld. And then, the Bear Dance at the Spring Equinox, the rising of the color red, Weasel and the Lower World. At the Center, Wolf and the color turquoise. Ceremonial sites were chosen not only for the specific plants and animals necessary for healing there, but for their far-seeing vistas. Mythology unfolded in the walk itself, through the cycles of the land.
The Ute’s movement was not only a statement of belief, however, a celebration and an honoring; it was also an act of stewardship – to not take too much from any one place. The Tabeguache knew they had to share resources with Bear, and sometimes this meant moving on and letting the earth rest. It was a sacred mandate, a contract with the land itself, a living cultural ecology.
It was only after the Tabeguache performed the ceremonial Bear Dance that they obtained permission to move into this high, hallowed ground where we now live. Once granted, they came free of worries, blessed, transformed and healed for the New Year, the teachings of shape-shifting Bear opened with Song, guiding every step. b
Much research went into this article to assure accuracy. It includes information from the published work of many anthropologists and archaeologists who have long studied Ute mythology, history and culture. As a storyteller, however, I must pay proper respect to the native Ute storytellers who have kept these traditions alive, and from whom I learned much, and derived much, for this writing. While their words are reflected in my references, I wish to pay special homage to culture-bearer Clifford Duncan, a Northern Ute recently passed into the ancestral world, and a descendant of Uncompahgre Ute, the indigenous people of the Gunnison Valley. To research the Tabeguache and Uncompahgre Ute is to know the work of Clifford in preserving the culture and stories of his people. To Matthew Box, of the Southern Ute, the present-day Bear Dance Chief, whose generous video from the Smithsonian Institute offered many storytelling nuances not otherwise available through print. And to the work of Larry Cesspooch, Northern Ute storyteller, filmmaker, musician and spiritual leader. I offer this article with the utmost respect to the Ute, in the hopes it honors the true people of this place, and so that those of us who occupy it now might learn and grow from its message.
REFERENCES
Box, Matthew. “Southern Ute Bear Dancers.” YouTube, uploaded by Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Living Earth Festival, 19 July 19, 2017, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2zLiLGEDatM.
Cesspooch, Larry. “In the Footsteps of Shavano.” Through Native Eyes. www. throughnativeeyes.net/more-past-productions.
Goss, James A. “Traditional Cosmology, Ecology, and Language of the Ute Indians” in Ute Indian Arts and Culture: From Prehistory to the New Millennium, ed. Wroth, William. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 2000.
Jones, Sondra G. Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian People. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 2019.
Patterson, Carol B. “Concepts of Spirit in Prehistoric Art according to Clifford Duncan, Ute Spiritual Elder” in Rock Art and Sacred Landscape, ed. Gillette, Donna L.; Greer, Mavis; Hayard, Michele Helene; and Murray, William Breen; One World Archaeology. New York: Springer, 2014.
Petroglyphs of Western Colorado and the Northern Ute Indian Reservation as Interpreted by Clifford Duncan. American Philosophical Society Press, Philadelphia, 2016.
Smith, Anne M. Ethnography of the Northern Utes. Museum of New Mexico Press, 1974. “Southern Ute Tribe Bear Dance.” Southern Ute Tribe. www.southernute-nsn.gov/culture/beardance/.
“The Ute Relationships to the Lands of West Central Colorado: An Ethnographic Overview.” Prepared by the Office of Community Services, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado. www. fortlewis.edu/finding_aids/inventory/UteLands. htm#Pt2.
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