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Meditation
on Yabi Odga
A Native American spokesperson once went on the record
as saying that the snake people had made war on the white man because he
had made war on them first. The snake that lives in the water
with the head of a stag is not a "bad snake," but a powerful
one. The difference here is between power and evil, power
and good. Good and evil, according to the Navajo, are mixtures of
quality; they may be used for either purpose in the name of power.
People may wield power well, or with ill in mind. Or with well and ill
purpose joined in a figure of power who clearly works for the well-being
of all.
Thus the nature of good and bad are mixed. In one hand
may reside good, in the other, bad. And yet the whole being, the man, may
be good or bad or both as the situation demand. The unification of
dualities is the word power. Power shares, does not isolate, does
not belong to only one. Made of many, it may be held or withheld by man.
One man may have more of it than another.
The snake in many tribes is a figure of duality
joined. The Creek's Horned Snake possessed power to draw a deer to the
river, transfix it with a stare, and drown it. Afterwards, it ate only
the deer's nose. Hunters of the Creek nation used horn of the Horn Snake
for hunting. The horns which looked like red sealing wax were broken
into pieces and shared by many men on the hunt. The Alabama Indians
called the horned Snake Tcinto sakto, Crawfish Snake.
The Creeks also knew the Celestial Snake which had a
head, no body, lived on dew, and could spin into the air like a
whirlwind. This snake combined the elements and powers of nature: good,
evil, sacred, fearful. In the same way, the Horned Snake unified the
hunter with the hunted: in its head, the emblem of the stag, that which
is sought by the Indian hunter. Its snakelike nature offering the
ability to hypnotize.
Men who undertake to know the power of the snake must
first recognize that it is a godlike being. The white man made--and
still makes--war on snakes. The Native American reverenced the snake and
would no more kill it without reason than kill a man without reason.
When a white man kills an animal-a snake, for instance--he believes that
the energy of the snake, its spirit, dies in death. The spirit may live
on until--as the old belief tells us--the sun goes down. After that, the
snake, with its presence of evil, is dead. Not so with the Native
American. Snake spirit does not die in death, it returns to avenge its
assailant.
The horned Snake allowed its spirit to be borrowed for
the unselfish communal purpose of the hunt. Yabi Odja had Snake-power
because he was allowed into the sacred cave of the Horned Snake priests
and he was given the ability to dive deeply and hold his breath long on
the turtle hunts. This not unlike the Hopi story of Tiyo, the Snake Boy,
who, taken into the underground kiva of the rattlesnake priests, was
given a rattler-bride, who later bore him children. The Hopis did not
mind this except their children were bitten, and so the snakes were
driven out of Hopi in disgrace.
As a result, a great drought came to the land, proving
to the Hopis that the rattlesnake people controlled the cycle of rain.
Today, this belief is enacted, as it has been for hundreds of years, in
the celebrated Hopi Snake Dance, during which the trance effect of snake
and man may be witnessed, but not necessarily explained. man and snake
become one entity; the shared power flows between the two in
uninterrupted trance-like grace. When the snakes are released, they are
returned to keep the balance they brought to men in nature, in their own
world
Source: Gerald Hauman's
Meditations with
Animals: Native American Bestiary (1986)
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updated 21 October 2007 |
