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My name is NIKIL and I approved this message.
Every birth has meaning.
He drew himself, Four Bears, the Mandan, slaying a Cheyenne. His face painted vermillion from ear to ear, under the nose to the bottom of his chin, wearing 16 eagle feathers, each one with red hair fastened to the end; blue dots painted on their white centers. His headdress red, his hair plaited, beads strung on the end.
His arms a deep vermillion to match. His face and his chest dashed red north to south. His right leg blackened with 23 stripes, edged with the most delicately beautiful black and red fringe. His left leg lined with 24 red stripes, the sides striped with thick black lines, four, and edged with the same red and black fringe of the other. His feet striped red. Attached round the ankles a red and black cloth cut into a diamond.
Mato Tope, Four Bears, the Mandan, his axe in his right hand, is being stabbed with a broad blade knife in his left. It looks like he is grabbing through the wound.
Across from him in an open fighting stance, Four Bear's left foot to the Cheyenne's right stands the chief holding a red trade cloth satchel and a white powder horn, its tip painted black.
From the waist up he is smoked black, his skin showing through the pigment. His face the blue black of the northern plains, near the place the Blackfeet call the Backbone of the Earth. His right leg painted yellow and dotted blue black, 20 circles above the knee, 5 hollow dots just along the outline of his quadricep, 10 solid blue black dots down to his foot. His left foot painted brown and black like brindled fur. Both knees banded with a red and black striped cuff. Down the side of each leg are 18 triangles, their bases face out, their points touch flesh. These form the fringe. Four eagle feathers jut out, two from each knee, red string tied to them. His feet painted red. His head wrapped in fur; his hair adorned with feathers.
Four Bears, the Mandan, his eyes small dots surrounded by a large circle. His focus in the space that can only be reached by a personal journey.
He gave this to them, the men, Maximilian, Bodmer, riding the steamer up the great Missouri. In 1833 he left them this, his record.
Wah ©NIKIL
He posed for Maximilian and Bodmer. Now he poses for her. The men, Son Of Star, promised in case of war. She is one. Killing. Stealing Horses. Her name, it is new, her hands, each one old. Her Grandmother, she flows through them. War. There is one. Wah. Now. Populations increase and so do they. Dogs. His face more beautiful than broken.
Four Bears, the Mandan, dressed for war. She painted him once, because he asked, Sahnish he was fluent.
His hands are unadorned, with no jewels and no iron. Around his neck a very simple choker made of a single strap of sinew wrapping a small bundle of stone root. His face yellow from forehead to brow; his eyes circled, one red, the other yellow. His chin yellow too, the rest of his face streaked red.
In his hair his wounds were marked. She was certain to retain the details: four yellow sticks, one blue and one red, each with a nail head, painted yellow, driven down the center, signifying his wounds from bullets. At his ear, on the right side of his head he'd fastened a wooden knife that was painted solid red. The Cheyenne chief of his own recent drawing, he killed him and it was known by the knife, as he wore it. At the back of his head he wore a large tuft of owl feathers, died yellow, indicating his membership in the Dog Band. He also wore an eagle feather with a yellow horse hair fastened to the end and a turkey feather with a small triangle snipped neatly from its side, the edge lined with red and another turkey feather split directly down the center to show an arrow wound; he survived it.
In his hands, unadorned, was his thin shafted axe. The handle wrapped in red, the central grasping place wrapped in red, flanked by blue and white striped beadwork. A simple red hand-width of handle before the blade, shaped nearly into a perfect triangle.
His topknot tied with red cloth to form a short fountain. The remainder of his hair long down his back, the sides of which were cut short at the ears.
The parts left were his own flesh which spoke in detail of his unmitigated strength and power in battle. His coups were marked with paint. From shoulder to waist and down both arms he was streaked a reddish brown. His coups marked by horizontal stripes down his arm—17 in all. On his chest a handprint in yellow left, showing prisoners; he'd taken them.
The man with painted eyes, one red and one yellow. Dream a little dream of me. They do. The painted eyes, they tell it. One last call, they said it was in vain. In vain I am trying to tell you.
In Vain I have told you. ©NIKIL
In battle at the hand of another man. More often than not we knew him. He knew us. Deaths, every one has meaning, bind us together. Dog soldier or not. Earth, we are fastened to it.
Gathering of men. Sometimes we sit. Together, sometimes we are sitting. Confirmation—we want it. Young men will say, "Hey, look, I shot him. Here at the base of the arm. Here where it fastens at the three points in the back. Here, are you looking?"
We sit together. No matter how strong the hatred. There is power in the sitting. While we do, we look, at times for confirmation. Codes. We have them.
"He says he shot you, here. Let me see it." We have rules; we have breaks and we have societies. We keep them.
He stretches his arm out from his chest. The scar a knot of twisted flesh extending through the triceps.
At times we meet along with our hate, it's something we do. Face to face, in a truce. When we are keeping one and in a war when we are warring.
We died good deaths. Man to man. People to People. We died old. We were eaten—sometimes by bears. Wolves. They ran from his face, Four Bears, the Mandan. He went out in the breaking of winter, he and The Two Ravens, the esteemed Hidatsa, a chief of the Dogs. After the winter that was brutal, after the night of the falling stars. They knew there would be war and great mortality. The winter, they passed it together. The men and the traveling two. They had meager provisions. At the sight of the first prairie dog and the first white headed eagle he went out with The Two Ravens. Together, these two, they killed five buffalo and returned with them to the fort and in a great show of who, together, they were as men, they dispensed the meat along with several blankets.
It was a retched time for Maximilian. He received the gifts and he was given a painted hide. Buffalo. He took them with him, along with a caged bear that managed to survive entrapment, confinement and the same desperate winter. On the plains, he took them and they lay in the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart, a permanent part of their collection.
Four Bears, the Mandan, he slept by the fire. In the morning he rose, leaving his robe there on the floor. Expecting it to be lifted. Maximilian thought him presumptuous at best. These Indians like to be picked up after. Their system—he had no understanding. This morning he drew, Mato Tope, himself, for Maximilian who was intensely interested, for his collections. Bodmer loaned him his paints, some leaves, in exchange for the image. The Cheyenne, when he killed him.
That very day Maximilian commissioned a bear claw necklace for himself, in exchange for a string of blue glass beads and an otter skin. Mato Tope would use them for his regalia. Personal adornment, he took great care. When we did these things. Meaning who you were and how you became that. People. A personal sense of style—of course—but an earning, a history of movements made, embodied. Objects worn for their power.
Check your label.
paatúh.©NIKIL
Fashion—turn to the left. Fashion—turn to the right. Value merely an indication of cost. She rides the bus thinking of hides. They come to her fully painted. Four Bears, the Mandan, he gave to Maximilian hours of philosophical explication. His people, the Mandan, he told of their origins and understanding. His painted hide, buffalo, he gave that too. Objects retain their power. The N Judah Owl, she rides it out to the Ocean to Itkxnaánu', his portrait, she drew with ink. It hangs where she sleeps.
On the hide, Four Bears, the Mandan, is most often drawn in red and black. In the center he is riding a yellow horse, his front legs painted solid black, his rump drawn across with a diamond, the tip of which touches a second diamond painted just underneath the body. His horse has a war bonnet as does Mato Tope.
Six scenes are shown on the hide, each depicting a moment.
He, the President, he wanted us all with one head, to start thinking. Why we came. This I told you before. Wah. In 1837. Listen. Today, our faces hold on. Skin. Bones. AIDS. Diabetes. Four Bears Casino. Four Bears, the Mandan. Second chief, káNIt. Friend to the whites. Last. Words. Words. I told you. Before. Listen.
Rise up
all together
and not leave one
of them alive.©NIKIL for Mato Tope
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