The Great Grandfather and the Venerable Man
Part 1
I am writing this in Omaha, Nebraska. I came here because a member of my family is ill and in the hospital. Sitting at her bedside, I asked if there was anything left of the Omaha tribe. “There sure is,” she said. In fact, I had arrived on the first day of the annual Omaha tribal pow-wow, which is not in Omaha the city. I didn’t go – I had responsibility elsewhere – but an article grabbed my attention. The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Nation, called The Venerable Man, had been moved from safekeeping at the State History Museum to the pow-wow site, to stand that first day at the center of the dance.
A photo of the Sacred Pole can be found within the link: Canku Ota
The place of honor this ancient cottonwood trunk holds for the Omaha tribe is very similar to the place held by the Great Grandfather, an ancient tzité tree called the Laj Mam, for the Maya. There are other similarities as well. Both the Maya and the Omaha keep a fire in the center of traditional homes as a reminder of their creation stories.
Being unable to join the pow-wow, I found what information I could. I spoke to the curator who looks after the Sacred Pole at the history museum. She could not let me visit it after it was returned to the museum, near where I was staying, because it (actually ‘he’, the Venerable Man) is a member of the tribe, and could only be visited with permission of the Keeper of the Pole. The Keeper was at the pow-wow, and I had no way of contacting him, and no way of visiting the pole and leaving an offering.
The story of the Sacred Pole, the Venerable Man, also called Umonhonti, the ‘True Omaha’ dates back before the European invasion. The oral history tells of the son of a chief who was with a hunting party while his father was meeting in council to discuss the future of the tribe. Lost at night, the boy was attracted to a light and found a tree that burned brightly but was not consumed. When the sun came up, it looked like any other cottonwood, and the next night it burned again, lighting up the forest.
The boy was able to convince his father to come see the amazing site. The chief noticed four animal paths leading to the tree from each of the four cardinal points, and it seemed that animals had come to the tree, as the bark was polished as though they rubbed against it. The father interpreted the tree as a sacred object where Thunderbirds congregated at night, when their eyes were not flashing lightning in the sky and their wing-beats not causing thunder. It may seem odd to us that his response was to cut the tree down.
This was not done alone of course. Other chiefs were consulted. Their aim was not to kill the tree. The life of a tree did not come from its roots in the ground but from the spirit infused in its flesh. Lakota medicine man John (Fire) Lame Deer said 'Nothing is so small and unimportant but it has a spirit given to it.' The Mayan Nahual Iq’ gives life to animals and plants, and minerals, by infusing them with spirit. To understand their action we must think about things we would call inanimate in the west in a new way. I know people today who navigate the forests in Guatemala by listening to the trees. A Mayan man who had lost relatives in the violence of war said he felt especially sorry for trees, since they endure such sadness for many more years than mere humans. What the Omaha did, I believe, is welcome the miraculous tree into the tribe. As a member of a nomadic hunting tribe it, he, needed to be mobile. They carried the tree to their village, trimmed him, made hair for him, painted him with buffalo fat and red dye, supporting him with a stick they called a staff of authority. They made a teepee to cover him and gave it the center place in their villages. And they listened to him. He spoke to them in ceremony.
‘You now see before you a mystery. Whenever we meet with troubles we shall bring all our troubles to Him (the Pole). We shall make offerings and requests. Our prayers must be accompanied by gifts.’
Troubles they had plenty. The Venerable Man came west with them to the banks of the Missouri River. Hunting buffalo was the center of their culture, but with the newcomers killing buffalo and then regulating the tribes, the last hunt was in 1876. With pressure to assimilate into western culture, and become Christian, the Venerable Man, the True Omaha, was taken in 1888 to a museum at Harvard University in Massachusetts. They were told Venerable Man would be given a ‘great brick house’ instead of a ‘ragged tent’.
The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Nation did not see the sun for 100 years. He was returned to the tribe in 1988, and escorted back to the banks of the Missouri River in 1989. When not in ceremony, he is still in the safekeeping of a museum as the tribe plans for his eventual home.
Unable to visit the Venerable Man, I took my sacred bundle and made my way to the flooded banks of the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, and made an offering their at the water’s edge. Next time I will continue this story with my visit to the house of Laj Mam, the tree, and the spirit, that the Spanish were unable to destroy, and who remains today a helper and guide for the Maya.