08--Kettle Carriers.Marmitons, Scullery Boys, Deviants and Normativity

4-30-08 Chapter Osage Kettle Carriers: Marmitons, Scullery Boys, Deviants and Gender Choices [Friends: This is a rough draft of a piece I am current engaged in writing I offer it here for your perusal and critique Please not circulate it at this point It is a chapter in a book that I have not yet finished.] Kettle carriers, tsexek’in This is a curious word in the Osage language, a label designating certain men in every Osage community Yet it is a word that has lacked a clear sense of meaning in the historical texts and interpretive reports about Osage culture and one that has fallen out of public community usage It certainly has no currency in contemporary Osage communities today We can, of course, give a literal translation into the english language The word means “kettle carrier,” but what exactly does it mean to be a kettle carrier? This becomes a vitally important question as we turn to a discussion of the so-called war and peace ceremonies of the Osage people, the topic of our next chapter We will not be able to make sense of those ceremonies without sorting out who these important men were They play a significant and recurring role in the long and detailed ceremony that envelops the Osage activity of defensive battle and the restoration of peace and balance that follows any military engagement There are some four dozen occurrences of the term in Francis La Flesche’s War Ceremony and Peace Ceremony of the Osage Indians (WCPC), yet La Flesche leaves the word shrouded in considerable mystery.1 When the Xthé-t’sa-ge [the eight appointed battle commanders] and the people have eaten their midday meal, the Xthé-t’sa-ge again paint themselves and their horses with charcoal and go forth on another procession around the village, followed this time by all the people in their gayest attire, the Tsí-zhu [sky people] going around by the right and the Hón-ga [earth people] by the left Each division carries a drum Occasional stops are made when the singers gather around the drum and sing the wa-sha΄-be a-thin songs, called I-wa-tsi, “To which the People Dance.” These songs are also called Tsé-xe-k’in Non-hon Wa-thon, Songs of the Elder Tsé-xe-k’in or Kettle Carriers [Francis La Flesche, WCPC, p 30] The Do-dón-hon-ga [the spiritual leader for a battle detachment] and some of the Tsé-xe-k’in [kettle carriers] remain where they were left by the attacking warriors, the former to continue the duties of his office and the latter to care for the pack horses and the camp utensils [La Flesche, WCPC, p.79] La Flesche can be very cautious in terms of what he reveals and what he purposely conceals in his description of the Osage, and the tséxek’in, or kettle carriers, are an interesting case in point La Flesche gives us very little concrete information about these men even as he describes details of their functioning Indeed, La Flesche seems to resist giving his readers a clear and full description of this category of performers in spite of their repeated appearance in the ceremonies He does give us the literal translation in the first citation above, his first mention of the category, and the songs introduced at this point in the ceremony are the songs of the “elder” (nonhon) kettle carriers Yet, despite the recurring importance of the kettle carriers in the ceremonies, La Flesche’s description leaves us largely in the dark as to why these extraordinary men assumed such significance in the ceremonies or what their actual function was in Osage communities or what the term actually means within the Osage social whole His casual Francis La Flesche, War Ceremony and Peace Ceremony of the Osage Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 101 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1939) Yet strangely enough, the Osage word rates no listing in the index The english “kettle carriers” only receives a single listing in the index, referring the reader to those pages that relate the “kettle carriers’ songs” the second quote offered here Kettle Carriers: definitions of the word leave us hanging as to why they assumed such significance in the ceremonies, and in fact his quick identifying asides are actually more contradictory than they are elucidating So, after offering the literal definition as “kettle carrier,” the ensuing one-line definitions muddy the waters and become entirely obscure whether we note those offered later in WCPC or the definitions given in his Dictionary.2 I would like to venture a definition here of the category called “kettle carriers” and then proceed to clarify my reasoning for the definition through an analysis and interpretation of the surviving evidences In particular, I will argue that the kettle carriers were an important and highly respected men’s society among the Osages, and that the men who made up this society were men who would have been considered sexual deviants by most euro-western observers in La Flesche’s day in terms of the euro-western binary gender system.3 Typically called berdache in the euro-literature about American Indians, the closest analogy to the kettle carriers in the modern amer-european world would be the category of gay men, although the social construction takes radically different forms in the two societal provenances As such, then, the kettle carriers were men who variously took on women’s work, might occasionally even adopt women’s dress, most often followed women’s habits, and lived a typical berdache sexual orientation.4 La Flesche’s hesitation to clarify his definition of the category then becomes clearer As an Indian scholar writing for a White audience in order to convince them of the sophistication of Indian social structures, La Flesche intentionally avoids explicitly treating what is quite normal in his own Indian world but might prove morally repugnant and off-putting to his White readers To give the phenomenon a more modern name, the kettle carriers were men of that in-between gender (of women and men) who now call themselves “two-spirit.” These are the men Osages, in other contexts, called mixúga, taught by the moon.6 Interestingly, LF offers no entry or definition for tsexek’in in the Dictionary He does, however, offer definitions of two compound phrases that include the word: “tse-xe-k’in-non-hon wa-thon” and “Tse-xe-k’in Pa-hon-gthe.” The former (nonhon, elder; wathon, songs) is not given any translation per se in its first appearance; rather it is merely identified with another song title: “Same as i-wa-tsi” (p 161), which is defined as “Songs to which the people dance” (p 81), even though the word for song (wathon) is missing For some reason, then, La Flesche completely ducks the question of translation, offering instead a mere reference to the ceremonial function of these particular songs On page 93 he does offer a translation, calling the tsexek’innonhon “Chief Kettle Carriers.” He does give a more literal translation for the phrase in his 1939 WCPC, as we have already noted: “Songs of the…Elder Kettle Carriers” (WCPC, 30) The phrase tsexek’in pahongthe, called the “leaders of the kettle carriers” (OWPC, 89), is given a much fuller explanation in the Dictionary: [L]eader of the Kettle Carriers Two divisions, the Tsi’-zhu and the Ho n-ga, select two warriors from each division to serve the Ceremonial Mourner during his period of fasting These four men are called Tse-xe-k’in Pa-hon-gthe They make the forked stake upon which the Do-don΄-hon-ga hangs his pouch and ceremonial pipe when he is at rest The also decide the length of time the Do-don΄-hon-ga is to take the Non΄-zhin-zhon (fasting) rite (p 161) One can only wonder what the distinction between these two categories might actually have been, between chiefs and leaders, yet there must have been a clear distinction within the society since they are used on the same page referring to two different activities (WCPC, p 93) “Society” was the signifier used by early American ethnographers to name voluntary associations (sodalities or sodal organizations)—in contrast to family or clan groupings (modal organizations) See Robert H Lowie, Social Organization (Rinehart, 1948), p 14; Plains Indian Age-Societies: Historical and Comparative Summary, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol 11:13 (New York: The Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History, 1916), pp 908-910; William C Meadows, Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Military Societies: Enduring Veterans, 1800 to the Present (University of Texas Press, 1999) While this is a useful starting point for understanding the Indian context, it fails to notice that “society” membership is never simply a matter of choice for a would-be member Rather, the society itself often makes the choice and extends an invitation To this extent, “society” in an Indian community is different from church membership in the eurowestern world Once the invitation has been extended and accepted, certain initiation rites, sometimes quite extensive and lengthy and usually expensive, must be engaged by the invitee For the society of elders (nohonzhinga) among the Osage, the time for the initiation could run as long as seven years Will Roscoe, Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (St Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 8ff and inter alia Roscoe is one of the few lucid writers on the general phenomenon among north American Indian peoples and offers a fairly balanced and nuanced interpretation Most academic treatments of the berdash or “two-spirited” person in the Indian world seem to be written by White gay and lesbian writers who finally have little more breadth or depth of understanding of Indian people than what Tafoya calls the “anthropological keepers of knowledge” about Indians Tafoya, “M Dragonfly: Two-Spirit and the Tafoya Principle of Uncertainty,” Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality, edited by Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang (University of Illinois Press, 1997), p 195 The literature on the berdache is quite extensive and can be sampled from Roscoe’s bibliography: Bibliography of Berdache and Alternative Gender Roles among North American Indians (New York: Haworth Press, 1987); also in Journal of Homosexuality 14(1987): 81-171; or from sampling the citations in the more recent collection of essays in which Tafoya (above) published In his discussion of “two-spirit” identity in the Indian world, Terry Tafoya notes the problem of explicitly naming Indian realities in a euroWhite world that has used the policing of sexuality as a convenient excuse for colonial conquest “Were I a historian, I might remind the audience that the hatred and oppression against Native American by the European invaders and colonialists might have had some influence on what so-called informants would discuss, considering that the interviewer might classify community-sanctioned behavior as a ‘sexual dysfunction, a sexual deviancy, or a crime.’” La Flesche, of course, is an Indian His lack of forthcoming in identifying the kettle carrier does not have to with any lack of understanding on his part Rather, I suspect he is protecting Indian people generally and the Osages particularly from any attack of moral outrage that might contribute to the continued colonial marginalization of Indian people Terry Tafoya, “M Dragonfly” in Jacobs, Thomas, and Lang, Two-Spirit People, p 197 Kettle Carriers: Before we can come to a deeply nuanced understanding of war and the war ceremony among the Osages, we must come to an understanding of these men who were “influenced” by the moon, who engaged in women’s work, who sometimes dressed as women, and who evidently mated sexually with other males For eurowestern people, this entails a radical shift away from the simplistic binary understanding of gender construction towards an American Indian construction of gender identity that makes room at least for “third and fourth” genders Even then the construction of these four genders allows for much more fluidity in personal identity options II Victor Tixier (1839-40) Early euro-western observers were never quite sure what to make of this category of person in Osage (or other Indian) communities, even when they are recording their ceremonial importance Somehow, Victor Tixier, the young, upper class French adventurer and writer who spent some months living among and traveling with the Osage [1839-40], along with many other european observers, missed entirely that the category of kettle carrier represented a sexuality orientation or a gender choice, or he was too embarrassed to say so Tixier, who also never recognized their important ceremonial role, merely comments that these men somehow had failed to achieve warrior status and success in life and were thus condemned to be the kitchen help, cooks, and servers in an Osage town When one of these fellows shows up with a name that would indicate that he was a “chief” of some sort, Tixier dispatches with the matter by a quick and sharp disavowal of the man’s chiefly status: a pretentious name, he reports, since the man was a mere “marmiton” (French: scullery boy), “a cook for the braves.”8 Mr [Edward] Chouteau told us that this worthy savage, who passed in Paris for an important chieftain, was only a marmiton,9 that is to say not even a warrior in his own nation but a cook for the braves Yet this old Osage bears the pretentious out-of-place name…Big Soldier.10 Eventually, we will connect Tixier’s category of marmiton with the kettle carriers in other accounts of the Osages and demonstrate the importance of Big Soldier in a very different way than other writers have At this point, perhaps it should be reiterated that Tixier’s disdain for the marmiton had nothing to with the person’s sexual proclivities, about which Tixier evidently remained forever in the dark Rather, his scorn has to with the failure of the marmiton to live up to the french romanticized ideal of American Indians as the noble savage, as an inveterate, hyper-masculine military figure This becomes clear a few pages later where he relates a tale of another marmiton for whom he records the name Bahabêh, reported to have been the son of a famous Osage military hero Tixier’s description of Bahabêh’s supposed failure gives us a clearer idea of how he understands the category of marmiton to have functioned in Osage culture: That La Flesche is himself fully aware is immediately apparent in reading his much earlier volume on the Omaha (his own people) where he records stories about the Osage mixúga related by Black Dog Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, 27th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1911), pp 131-133 La Flesche and Fletcher, The Omaha, relate the story of one Osage who was a highly regarded akída (“warrior”) and a leader among the young men, who received a vision calling him to live as a mixúga even though he was married and a father of children We are told that he took on women’s dress whenever in the village and only changed his dress when he joined a battle contingent for defense of the village 10 John Francis McDermott, ed., Tixier’s “Travels on the Osage Prairies,” translated by Albert J Salvan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), 99 [Voyage aux prairies osages, Louisiane et Missouri, 1839-40] McDermott, fn 6, notes: Throughout this translation we have retained the French term marmiton because the English equivalent scullion, or cook, does not clearly convey the meaning of the Indian term The marmiton was apparently a cook but he was also a herald or town-crier Compare later passages in this volume For a brief comment on this subject, see Grant Foreman, “Our Indian Ambassadors to Europe,” Missouri Historical Society Collections, V (February, 1928): [109-128; ] see 127 and n 59.; 115 Again, McDermott notes (fn 7): Foreman, op cit., 115, gives Marcharthitahtoongah as this man’s Indian name , and states that in 1827 he was forty-five years old If this is correct, Big Soldier was fifty-eight when Tixier met him His age is disputed, for when J M Stanley painted his picture at the Council held at Tahlequah in June, 1843, he stated that Big Soldier was then about seventy years old and wore the medal presented to him by Lafayette He died in the summer of 1844 Big Soldier, or Ne-ha-wa-she-tunga, according to Richard Peters (Treaties between the United States and the Indian Tribes, 270), was one of the warriors of the Great Osage to sign the Treaty of August 10, 1825 And he was also a signatory to the treaties of 1815 and 1822 See note 17 below Kettle Carriers: Twenty times he tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, but an adverse fate has never given him the occasion to show his valor, although neither will nor patience was lacking, for, waiting in ambush during a severely cold winter, his feet froze and he lost the phalanxes of his toes Poor Bahabêh remained a marmiton.11 The persistence of White romantic fantasy, and the imputation of european notions of savagery that leads to the description of plains Indian peoples as “warrior cultures,” implies here that somehow Bahabêh failed to achieve manhood because of lack of success in war We are left to wonder, in this case, what lack of success might have meant given his “twenty” occasions of participation in a military contingent, except to suppose that he failed to take another human being’s life, a common part of the White fetish about Indians, as we have seen But this cannot be true, given what we know about he general dearth of killing in Osage and all Indian warfare It should also not go without qualification, at least in passing, that “ambush” is not a traditional form of plains Indian combat and must be discounted in Tixier’s narrative as reflecting his own idealization of Indian people as a non-native speaker indulging his first brief taste of the exotic Other What actually happened to Bahabêh and his feet must remain something of a mystery What we have then in Tixier’s narrative of Bahabêh—as a failed-warrior-reduced-tomarmiton—is a piece of what became the persistent colonizer-romanticized myth of the plains culture as a hyper-masculine warrior culture, a culture in which a male could not achieve manhood without living up to the warrior ideal Indeed, colonial (White) interpretations of plains Indian societies persistently and explicitly repeat what Tixier leaves as an unspoken allusion here, that plains Indian cultures would not allow a young man to marry until he had taken the life of an enemy This is a colonizer myth that has textured the colonial conquest and has served the colonizer well, magnifying the presumed blood-thirst of Indians far beyond the factuality of historical battle casualty numbers It has functioned both to legitimize the conquest in the mind of the colonizer and to conceal the actual blood-thirst of the indisputably savage european warmaking habits What Tixier fails to note, however, in the complexity of the Osage culture is that all participants in a military contingent (both combatants and non-combatants) are entitled to count a formal “battle honor” (odon or defensive combat honor) merely by virtue of their presence with the combatants This is to say that each non-combatant marmiton who accompanied a military contingent—as a cook or kettle carrier—could rightfully count a “combat honor” for every contingent he had assisted Bahabêh would have been well-decorated with such honors—being able evidently to count at least twenty of them by Tixier’s measure, a courageous man indeed 12 So we are left with the lingering question as to what historical reality Tixier’s signifying label of marmiton might actually relate The french word is regularly translated as scullion in the french-english dictionaries,13 although McDermott is clear that this translation alone will fail to capture the breadth of the actuality even for his own limited understanding of the reality 14 In 11 Tixier’s Travels, p 119-120 Elmo Ingenthron, in his Indians of the Ozark Plateau (Point Lookout, MO: The School of the Ozarks Press, 1970), p 78, gives the by now stereotypical report that Indian berdaches came by their state via a failure of courage or a failure in the arts of war In keeping with their tradition of tribal strength the Osages forbade the marriage of their young men who had shown weakness or cowardliness in their first warring engagement These were compelled to live out the remainder of their lives as “squawmen,” dressed like squaws and doing the work of squaws, never getting a chance to redeem themselves “Squawmen” were forbidden to marry lest they beget cowardly sons who might endanger the survival of the tribe Ingenthron, of course, has quite missed the actuality of the Indian world generally and Osages in particular Typically, he cites no evidence to support his claim These claims always tend to function on the basis of White American “common-knowledge” passed—orally and in written form—from generation to generation 12 La Flesch describes that part of the ceremony following a battle where the men claim the battle honors due to each At the conclusion of the event, he reports, “Then follow the men who had not won any of the above o-do n′ [honors], but could claim the honor of having taken part in the expedition and in the battle This o-don′ is called Wa′-thu-xpe, a term that seems to have lost its meaning The Ṭse′-xe-k'in [kettle carriers] who were not present at the battle but who were ordered to remain behind to take care of the camp and pack horses are allowed to claim this o-don′.” WCPC, p 86 13 See, for example, Larousse’s French-English, English-French Dictionary (Washington Square Press, 1955), p 157; or Freedict.com: http://www.freedict.com/onldict/onldict.php 14 On page 99, at footnote 6, McDermott includes this note: “Throughout this translation we have retained the French term marmiton because the English equivalent scullion, or cook, does not clearly convey the meaning of the Indian term The marmiton was apparently a cook but he was also a herald or town-crier.” Compare later passages in this volume For a brief comment on this subject, see Foreman, “Our Indian Ambassadors,” 127 and n 59.” Kettle Carriers: english cultural parlance a scullion is a servant employed to menial tasks in a kitchen, a kitchen helper,15 and indeed marmiton can also be glossed in english as “kitchen boy.” 16 Perhaps more intriguingly for our purposes, the word marmiton is directly related to the french word marmite, meaning kettle or pot From this hint alone it becomes nearly impossible to understand Big Soldier as any less than a member of the society called by the Osages “kettle keepers” or “kettle carriers”—ṭséxek'in Indeed, Big Soldier was undoubtedly a ṭséxek'in nonhon (elder kettle carrier); and most likely the ṭséxek'in waṭonga (chief kettle carrier) for his village or clan.17 In any case, the kettle carriers have such a prominent role in the Osage combat ceremony that we must explore their function more fully III A Big Soldier As we turn to Big Soldier it needs to be clearly noted that there are few limitations placed on the kettle carrier in terms of larger social roles the person might fill in those societies In terms of what Tixier calls his “pretentious” name, we can safely argue to the contrary that there seems to have been no restriction on attaining chiefly status among Osages that hinged on sexual orientation Indeed, aki’da tonga, Big Soldier, is listed as one of the Osage signers of three of the first major treaties with the United States;18 he accompanied an important Osage delegation to Washington, as we have seen [in an earlier chapter]; and he was one of the delegates on an illfated Osage tour of France in 1827-29.19 Thus, far from being punished by his community for his sexual orientation, Big Soldier was included as one of their key representatives and spokespeople We will return to discuss Big Soldier and the import of his name shortly [Explain akida as office: gahiga akida.] What we know historically is that Big Soldier (aki’da tonga) was an Osage ancestor of some renown We have recounted [in the previous chapter] a famous moment in colonial history in which he expressed a certain resistance to eurowestern culture and power that still rings true for many Indian people today Deloria, we recall, argues that an 1822 speech of Big Soldier’s recorded in U.S government documents was: “The best thing an Indian ever said.” 20 And indeed his speech is one of clear and unequivocal Indian resistance over against the imposition of euro-western culture on Indian people from a man who had already been a guest of the U.S government in Washington, D.C., and had seen the technological wonders of that world Big Soldier certainly had an important Osage name; He was an important conversation partner with some colonial officials Still, we need to note that at least some european observers remained unconvinced In this chapter I want to demonstrate that Big Soldier’s detractors were dealing with a certain euro-centric homophobia, even if they failed to explicitly notice a definite lack of heterosexual orientation on Big Soldier’s part Thus, we get a very different glimpse of Big Soldier in Tixier’s travelogue reporting an encounter some sixteen years later (ca 1838) when Big Soldier was already an elder in the Osage community (around sixty to sixty-five years old) and by then a veteran of the Osage 15 16 Yourdictionary.com: http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/s/s0176700.html; or http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary? book=Dictionary&va=scullion&x=11&y=17 Word Reference.com: http://www.wordreference.com/fr/en/translation.asp?fren=marmiton&v=b 17 Each of these is given particular responsibilities in the Osage “War” (or combat) Ceremony See La Flesche, War Ceremony and Peace Ceremony of the Osage Indians, pp 30, 31, 33, 51, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 86, 89, 93, 126, 129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 142,149, 151, 206-217, 219, 221, 222, 233, 235, 238, 239, 242, 245, 248, 250 18 For the 1815 and 1822 Osage Treaties, see Charles J Kappler, compiler and editor, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, volume II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), pp 199f., and 201f For the 1825 treaty, see note 8, above 19 20 John Joseph Matthews, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), p 539-547 See Derrick Jensen’s 2000 interview with Vine Deloria, Jr., http://www.derrickjensen.org/deloria.html That’s the best thing any Indian ever said I teach at the University of Colorado, and so many of my students are convinced that they are free, yet they act just like everyone else They all the same things They all think alike They’re almost like a herd, or clones They’re enslaved to a certain way of life The thing is, once you’ve traded away spiritual insight for material comfort, it is extremely difficult ever to get it back I see these kids hiking in the mountains, trying to commune with nature, but you can’t commune with nature just by taking a walk You have to actually live in it And these young people have no way of critiquing the society that is enslaving them, because they get outside of it only for the occasional weekend They may see beautiful vistas and develop an aesthetic appreciation of this other world, but they’re not going to get to a metaphysical understanding of who they really are.” Big Soldier’s speech is recorded in: Jedidiah Morse, “A Report to the Secretary of War on Indian Affairs” (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1822), p 207 Kettle Carriers: delegation that had traveled to Tixier’s home country about a decade before Tixier was, to say the least, unimpressed and even had the audacity to challenge the authenticity of his name In the context of Tixier’s travelogue about his upper-class-european exotic adventure, cavorting with the “noble savage,” it is very clear that when he calls Big Soldier a marmiton, he intends it as a putting down and a dismissal of the importance of Big Soldier The charge occurs in the context of Tixier’s very first encounter with Osages, his meeting of Big Soldier at the moment of Tixier’s arrival in St Louis Upon learning a little bit about Big Soldier from French expatriates, Tixier announces that in spite of the man’s grand name, he was certainly not even a warrior among his own people even though, Tixier declares, he passed himself off for an important chieftain while touring in France No, says Tixier, Big Soldier was “a marmiton.” As one continues reading it becomes increasingly clear that Tixier himself lacked a full understanding of what the category he called marmiton (or alternatively in his writing lapânie) actually meant Moreover, Tixier’s translator and editor more than a century later equally failed to understand the full implication of who Big Soldier was in his own community 21 IV Other Osage Cultural Observations More importantly, when one reads the war and peace ceremony description of Francis La Flesche or the earlier discussion of Osage war ceremonies by J Owen Dorsey, 22 it becomes apparent that the category of person that Tixier calls “marmiton” and La Flesche and Dorsey identify as “kettle carrier” or “kettle bearer” repeatedly played a very significant ceremonial role The rest of this chapter will describe Osage social mores and cultural structures to offer a new interpretation of the Osage mixúga (“taught by the moon”) or men-women who constituted the society of kettle carriers Generally, they have been labeled by euro-observers with the curious and largely inexplicable term berdache, about whom quite a bit has been written, usually in pretentiously mundane language.23 Far from being social outcasts, these figures played a central participatory role among Osages (as similar figures did in other Indian communities) and were always assured of a defined place in the social whole With the very first mention of this category of men in his recounting of the Osage War Ceremony—quoted above at the beginning of this chapter—La Flesche translates the term literally as “kettle carrier.” Yet on the very next page [p 31], he inexplicably modifies his translation of tséxek’in to “private warriors,” a strange anomaly of a designation that he does not interpret for his reader any further; nor is the term ever repeated One is left to wonder what a private warrior might be, especially since it becomes fairly clear in reading the “Osage War Ceremony” that these men are non-combatants or largely non-combatants And in the same volume, in recounting the “Osage Peace Ceremony,” La Flesche calls these men “servants” [p 206] and “subordinates” [p 221].24 And early in the combat ceremony, the kettle carriers are called on to perform serving tasks of being a formal messenger [p 52] or carrying a ceremonial pot out of the village to empty it (p 51] La Flesche next introduces the kettle carriers as key participants functioning within a ceremony performed by the battle spiritual leader (dodonhonga) Here again they perform a ceremonial/serving function, namely by picking grass and collecting it into four bundles which are then used symbolically by the battle spiritual leader [p 74] and by the akida (“warriors” or defenders?) [p 76] Their serving function is highlighted again on the first day of travel, when the battle excursion is interrupted for the conducting of another ceremony The eight battle commanders build a small purification (or sweat) lodge and heat stones for the ceremony 25 Once the eight are inside the lodge, the kettle carriers (and not the akida, the rank and file battle-ready 21 Unfortunately, this is also true of important Osage writers J.J Matthews slips into the pattern of taking the colonizer text at face value in his own judgment of Big Soldier in his Osages (University of Oklahoma, ), 22 “An Account of the War Customs of the Osages,” The American Naturalist (1884): 113-133 23 Contemporary Two Spirit people understandably object to the term All too often this word whose meaning is long lost has been interpreted to mean “kept boy” or male prostitute Will Roscoe, 24 25 In the wawalon ceremony description (Peace Ceremony) the tséxek’in are called servants: “kettle carriers or servants” (WCPC, p 206); or subordinates: “…when one of the subordinates, a Tse′ -xe-k’in, is sent to bring water for the people to drink” (p 221) [Cf Tixier, where serving water was precisely the function of the marmitons in an Osage feast: Tixier’s Travels, p 172.] Called i’n ugthin, sitting in the stones Kettle Carriers: defenders) function as attendants for the ceremony that ensues One of the kettle carriers takes the hawk bundle and removes the sacred bird inside it and places the bird on the top of the lodge It will then be his duty to recover the bird at the end of the ceremony, after the lodge has been completely tipped over by those inside, and to interpret an important omen for the success of the outing If the Ṭse′-xe-k'in replies, "It lies breast upward," the Xthe′-ṭs'a-ge [battle commanders] say: "It is well, it is well." This they take as a sign that the expedition will succeed and that none of the warriors will be lost If the bird is found to have fallen breast downward they receive the report in silence, for the bird had taken the position of a fallen warrior, a sign that the war party will suffer losses.26 [p 78] Once the enemy have been located and the battle commanders have devised the immediate strategy, the fighting component of the contingent begins its approach to the enemy At that point, La Flesche reports: “The Do-don΄-hon-ga and some of the Tse-xe-k’in remain where they were left by the attacking warriors, the former to continue the duties of his office and the latter to care for the pack horses and the camp utensils” [OWC, p.79] Here we find two distinct duties spelled out for the kettle carriers Namely, they are to care for the horses (pack horses are named, but other horses (extra mounts) were no doubt also left behind with these caretakers) and to care for the camp itself While the latter duty is named simply as care for camp utensils, one is driven to the conclusion that the kettle carriers have a more specific task involving the camp and the use of the utensils, namely in the preparation of food, a description confirmed by Tixier in his use of the term marmiton and in identifying the marmitons as “cooks for the braves” (Tixier, 99) The kettle carriers, then, are non-combatant Osage men who were brought along as cooks and horse herders, and the term signifies the kettle carriers’ principle occupation as cooks, especially on excursions that would be dangerous or difficult for women That there were men among the Osage who assumed women’s duties such as cooking and the care of cooking utensils is already well-known, and Tixier identifies them for us clearly in the historical context of the mid-nineteenth century even if he did not explicitly identify them by the name of tsexek’in.27 V Big Soldier in France: Tixier announces a curious response of Big Soldier to the arrival of french citizens in his home territory of Missouri (St Louis, in this case) Meeting Tixier, Big Soldier shows great pleasure in reminiscing over his own visit to France and recalling, as Tixier reports, that he “had been astonished by what he had seen in our country, and remembered with particular pleasure that he had been married three times there” (Tixier, p.99) So how we correlate our assumption of Big Soldier’s sexual orientation with his claim to have been married three times while in France? This is not at all difficult when we remember the general characterization of the berdache in terms of their mischievous impudence, the impish and playful audaciousness (La 26 WCPC, p 78 Here we need to note particularly that even the loss of one life is an unacceptable trauma to an Osage community See the return to the village narrative in the Osage War Ceremony 27 Even Burns misunderstands and mis-identifies the phenomenon of kettle carrier / marmiton Stanley Vestal, in The Missouri (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1967), reports that the “Osages had a class of men who served as chefs or cooks, devoting themselves to the culinary art, to preparing and presiding over formal feasts, and also acting as town criers,” p 214 Burns, after citing Vestal, responds: “these unusual men were called marmitons by the French In most instances, they were old warriors who had no other way of making a living,” A History of the Osage People, p 283 Here Burns completely misunderstands the communal and extended family structures of his own ancestors’ world (“making a living” is a eurowestern category of discourse) and fails to note that the kettle carriers, coming in all sorts of ages from young to old, were a society of alternative-gendered men in the Osage world Of course, La Flesche had already put the lie to any notion that the marmiton were a category of “old men” in his description of the “songs of the kettle carriers.” He characterizes the kettle carrier’s songs as marked by the “uncontrolled exuberance of the younger element.” Osage War Ceremony, p 33 See note 27, below Burns’ understanding of the marmiton seems to have been informed by a longer history of misinformation Din and Nasitir, The Imperial Osage, pp 12f., give a nearly identical report, pointing to Chapman and Washington Irving before him: In addition to the elders, the Osages had officials who served as marmitons, town criers, and cooks, enjoying prestige and serving prominent persons They were usually warriors who could no longer fight because of age or injury Washington Irving, who traveled through the west in the 1830s, laconically described the functions of one of these men: “Chief cook of Osage villagers—a great dignitary—combining grand chamberlain, minister of state, master of ceremonies and town crier—has undercooks He tastes broth &c When strangers arrive he goes about the village and makes proclamation—great white man, great chief arrived Warriors turn out to greet him properly Chief lodge prepared for reception—mats placed, etc.” [Annotating Chapman, “Origin,” 57; and John Francis McDermott, ed., The Western Journals of Washington Irving, 135.] Kettle Carriers: Flesche),28 the flamboyance (Tixier, p 199), or their deliberate countercultural social affectation 29 As a kettle carrier, then, why would Big Soldier not have take particular pleasure in receiving offers of marriage to French women? To have engaged in the actual ceremony of marriage three times, by his own count, would be a peculiarly bold and blatantly audacious act on his part, one that would have given unique pleasure to one who had so decisively rejected euro-culture only a half decade before in response to his first visit to Washington DC On that occasion, of course, he had allowed that perhaps his own sons would make different choices than he himself was making with regard to the invitation to accede to american culture and its values Does this not present further prima facie evidence against any notion of Big Soldier as a two spirit man? Here one must remember two particularities about American Indian cultures First of all, it is important to recognize that the Indian family was never reduced to the mere “nuclear” family of euro-western cultures Indian families were made up of extensive relationships that coursed through the whole of a community and throughout the whole of a nation Not only did aunts and uncles carry the name and responsibilities of parents to nephews and nieces, but they were also grandparents to the children of those nephews and nieces Cousins customarily were understood to be close siblings, brothers and sisters Thus, Big Soldier could count numerous sons and daughters in his immediate family—without having engaged in the sexual penetration of a woman Secondly, however, we need to remember that the plains two spirit man had a typical responsibility for teaching younger boys in the technical arts of becoming men in those societies Indeed, it is not inconceivable that in accounts of the battle engagement the category of “kettle carriers” includes young boys who are not two spirit at all, but are under the care of the kettle carriers who are accompanying the battle detachment That is to say, young boys who are not yet old enough to attack the enemy and to count coup in the engagement but are nevertheless old enough to accompany the contingent on its excursion but must remain in camp and assist the adult kettle carriers in their activities of keeping the camp and caring for the horses left behind, and thus technically have the name kettle carriers What is known is that the two spirit man had distinct responsibilities in most plains communities for teaching those young boys who were too old to be with their mothers yet too young to regularly accompany their fathers on hunting excursions.30 Finally, the general Indian cultural notion of adoption would just as easily play a role in Big Soldier’s claim to having sons As one who had played a significant role in the upbringing of any number of young boys, a kettle carrier would have every right and expectation, in an Indian understanding of family relationship, to call on these young men as his sons, long after they had left his tutelage for adult life and their own marriage and family Their children would certainly be his grandchildren Two spirit status would never deprive a man of gaining status either as parent or as grandparent! One example that brings these things together is Tixier’s description of a Kaw (Kansa) marmiton who rides into the Osage hunting camp accompanied by a couple of Kaw boys (kangas) Using the untranslatable word lapânie as a synonym for marmiton, Tixier reports an encounter with a Kaw visitor that helps us fill in Tixier’s conception of this group of men called marmiton, whom we now know as kettle carriers In this case, the colorful Kaw man ostentatiously rides into an Osage hunting camp accompanied by two young Kaw boys fresh from participating in a hunting expedition (their “saddles were laden with fresh meat”) “This lapânie,” Tixier says, “was a perfect type of his kind Boldness, insolence, cleverness, vanity, and baseness were all together in this pasquin of the redskins.”31 Boldness is a curious adjective to apply to someone that Tixier and other european observers also accuse of cowardice! 28 29 “The audacious and boastful character of the Ṭsé-xe-k’in songs is in strong contrast to the Xthé-ts'a-ge and Do-doń-hon-ga songs; the former voice the uncontrolled exuberance of the younger element and the latter the seriousness of the older and more experienced class.” La Flesche, WCPC, p 33 We might particularly remember here the insight of Ella Deloria with regard to a Lakota named Slukela who is remembered in the “No Ears Winter Count.” Slukela, translated “skinned penis” by DeMallie, is explained by Deloria thus: “The name has all the indications of vulgarity, as if bestowed by a hermaphrodite [winkte] The winkte, transvestites, frequently bestowed upon people obscene or scatological nicknames which became commonly used.” James R Walker, Lakota Society, Raymond J DeMallie, ed (University of Nebraska, 1982), p 127 Big Soldier’s French marriages are fully in keeping with Indian humor generally (see Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins) and Osage humor particularly (see Burns, The Osage People, pp 290f.) 30 Williams? Sabina? Roscoe? 31 Tixier, p 199 Kettle Carriers: With a conspicuous flamboyancy, as Tixier describes the incident, the marmiton singled out an Osage lodge marked by the tethering of particularly nice looking horses and engaged in an ostentatious and disingenuous public exaltation of the lodge’s occupant The Kansa had, says Tixier, “cleverly found out” the man’s name and “cried out several times about the camp that Ishta-ska was the greatest Osage warrior.” Not really knowing Indian cultures and probably relying on the far from perfect translating skills of a french trader, Tixier tells his readers that the marmiton’s public proclamation of the occupant as a famous Osage hunter results in the Osage man’s response of giving the marmiton a very fine horse as a gift “Such proclamation is paid for dearly,” says Tixier, “The pride of a savage inclines him to encourage the one who flatters him Proclaimed the bravest, the wealthiest, the most generous in the nation, he pays as a rich, generous man.” What Tixier could not have known is whether the two men were already well-acquainted The Kaw and Osage were closely related tribes, and indeed, the Kaw were originally a part of the Osages who split off in some earlier historical time They spoke the same language and retained very similar ceremonial structure, clan structure, general culture, etc So this lapânie would clearly know Osage cultural values and responses since they would be identical to his own More than that, it is extremely likely that the two already knew each other from previous encounters and may have already been engaged in a reciprocal gift-giving relationship In any case, what draws our attention here is Tixier’s rather vivid description of the lapânie and his explicit comparing of this Kaw man with Big Soldier After recounting the antics of this marmiton, Tixier goes on to say, “The lapânie constantly makes faces and contortions, he never has the calm, dignified attitude which characterizes the soldier If you remember Big Soldier, who went to Paris, you have a correct idea of what the Indian marmitons look like.” Tixier’s description here certainly accords with other descriptions of cross-gendered men and their social function in plains Indian communities We might particularly remember here the insight of Ella Deloria with regard to the Lakota winkte, Lakota / Dakota two spirit men, whom she also calls hermaphrodites or transvestites Slukela, which DeMallie translates as “Skinned Penis,” is memorialized in the “No Ears Winter Count.” In commenting on the cultural meaning of the name and its intrinsic vulgar humor, Deloria suggests that the vulgar character of the name indicates that it was given to the man by a winkte The winkte “frequently bestowed upon people obscene or scatological nicknames which became commonly used.” While european and amereuropean people might see this as impudence, it is socially accepted impudence among the Lakota The names stick and become common usage, as Deloria notes; moreover, they often become the names remembered in the “official” documents, the tribal winter counts 32 Thus, Big Soldier’s French marriages can be understood as fully in keeping with Indian humor generally and Osage humor particularly.33 The impudent and presumptuous character of Tixier’s Kaw marmiton is actually mirrored in La Flesche’s description of the kettle carriers, albeit one in which La Flesche still fails to give any real definition of the category Here it has to with the kettle carrier songs that are sung on the first public day of the war ceremony “The audacious and boastful character of the Ṭsé-xe-k’in songs is in strong contrast to the Xthé-ts'a-ge and Do-doń-hon-ga songs,” reports La Flesche; “the former voice the uncontrolled exuberance of the younger element and the latter the seriousness of the older and more experienced class.”34 The xthé-ts'a-ge and do-doń-hon-ga, of course, are 32 James R Walker, Lakota Society, Raymond J DeMallie, ed (University of Nebraska, 1982), p 127 33 See Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, for examples of Indian humor generally; and for Osage humor see Burns, The Osage People, pp 290f 34 WCPC, p 33 Of course, the power of euro-White fetishizing of American Indians knows no limits Fenton and Kurath give a very different (and appreciably later) take on the stately dance and songs of the Xthéts'age They seem blissfully unaware that the ceremony they are ostensibly describing is the “Wa-sha′ -be A-thin watsi” (dance of the charcoal carriers, or Osage war ceremony) that had been detailed by La Flesche a decade-and-a-half before (although they cite La Flesche later in their text) OSAGE MÉDICINE DU CHARBON “Among the seminomadic [sic.] Osage the ceremony [pipe dance!?] either escaped recording, or else strongly emphasized belligerence, for the only dance noted even by the observant Victor Tixier is the Médicine du Charbon (Tixier, 1844, pp 211215, ill p 225) In preparation for war, warriors blackened themselves with charcoal and danced around camp in two opposite groups with "maniacal contortions beating drums or blowing ts-tsêhs (reed flutes); some took up a warlike song which they accompanied by striking their fans on some piece of wood." Among other objects they carried a calumet, a small calabash fined with pebbles, wings of calumet birds (bald eagle) which they used as a fan In the picture they hop or crouch low The dance was preceded by a ceremony of striking the post and boasting, and a War Dance by successive soloists, jumping on both feet and enacting battle mime, as in Iroquois wasase ( Tixier, 1844, p 215) It is possible that the Kettle Carriers: 10 community elders, selected from among the council of elders to be leaders in the military engagement “Calm and dignified” captures their demeanor both in Tixier’s experience and in La Flesche’s description of their part in the Osage war ceremony Yet the kettle carrier songs cannot be merely the voice of the uncontrolled exuberance of youth As we have already seen, the kettle carriers society includes men of all ages, including particularly elder kettle carriers, leaders of kettle carriers and chief kettle carriers To the contrary, La Flesche calls these songs the songs of the “elder” kettle carriers (tsexek’in nonhon wathon, WXPC, 33) The tenor of these songs must instead reflect something intrinsic to the character of kettle carriers, something that La Flesche intentionally obscures out of his desire to win respect among his White readers for the Indian worldview and for the value system of the Osage Nation he is describing in his work Taking our clue from Tixier’s description of the marmiton, we can suggest that the kettle carriers had a societal responsibility to behave in ways that challenged the inherent masculine arrogance of men socially defined in terms of their hunting and military defensive responsibilities, in this case through the use of exaggeration and caricaturization Thus La Flesche can rightly describe the songs as “audacious and boastful.” It is certainly not insignificant that the Kaw kettle carrier / marmiton that Tixier encounters is traveling, evidently alone, with two young boys Thus, the one thing modern euro-american society fears the most about gay men35 is built into plains Indian culture as a strong social value This kettle carrier has custody for these two boys precisely because one of his social functions is that of teacher, a responsibility for teaching young boys how to become men In any case, Tixier reminds us, if we remember his description of Big Soldier we will have “a correct idea of what the Indian marmitons look like.” The kettle carrier that entered the Osage hunting camp was, for Tixier, of the same mold as Big Soldier It should not go unnoticed, however, that one of Tixier’s countrymen who had preceded his own visit with the Osages, articulated a much higher opinion of these men than he did Another French adventurer, Louis Cortambert, Foreman reminds us, “who had visited the Osages a few years before, gave the marmiton, or scullion, a higher station in the tribe.” 36 Foreman continues by quoting Cortambert: In speaking of Osage dignitaries, one must not forget to speak of the marmiton, an important personage in each village At the time I found myself there, they commenced to return from the great autumn hunt; it was an occasion of rejoicing The marmiton, dressed in an old French braided coat, showed himself at the same time all over the village, proclaiming the names of those who made him presents to contribute to some gala, bawling in each lodge invitations to the ball The marmiton has the right to indiscretion and insolence; the marmiton knows all that happens; the marmiton is the gazette of the village.37 Here we see in this short description a couple of the aspects of the marmiton that are coming into clearer focus First of all, the marmiton appears to have a “town crier” function, similar to a description in Tixier.38 Secondly, Cortambert reaffirms the “audacious” character of the marmiton, something detailed in Tixier’s account of the Kansa lapaniê (a word he uses as a synonym for Osage devised a different form from that of their archenemies, the Pawnee Even if this dance does not represent the calumet ceremony, notwithstanding similar paraphernalia and actions, yet it is of interest in showing the merging of the various concepts and the recurrence of the same elements in dances variously for peace and war.” William N Fenton and Gertrude Prokosch Kurath The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 156 (U.S Gov Printing Office, 1953), p 278: “Maniacal contortion”? This is a bizarre and extraordinarily prejudicial use of language for two people who had never witnessed the ceremony Moreover, the description is all the more wacky given that La Flesche had published his interpretation of the war ceremony in the same series a decade and a half earlier and who characterizes the dance as “stately” (p 33) 35 The phobia is perhaps justified in the case of too many roman catholic priests, where a skewed dynamic of sexual repression has functioned, but that calls for another, fuller analysis 36 Grant Foreman, p 127 37 Louis Richard Cortambert, Voyage au Pays des Osages (1837), 35 Cited from Foreman, pp 127f 38 Tixier, p 187: “Baptiste suggested a race among the little boys A lapânie fulfilled the functions of town crier and announced the race, carrying at the end of a long staff a scarlet breech cloth, the prize to be given to the winner All the kangas under eighteen were allowed to compete.” Interestingly, Matthews also gives a description of the town crier that seems to connect the crier with the kettle carrier: “The town crier of the Little Ones [Osages] was called wah-tdse-pia’n, the humble one He had special privileges, and was usually a born exhibitionist and parader He was privileged to tell lies, to make jokes at the expense of the most dignified, even about the Grand Hunkah or the Grand Tzi-Sho….” The description continues Here again we can see a close connection with Ella Deloria’s description of the Lakokta winkte Matthews, The Osages, 165 Kettle Carriers: 11 marmiton) and mentioned as an aspect of the kettle carrier’s character by La Flesche The marmiton’s right to indiscretion here fits once again with the report of the winkte among the Lakota in Ella Deloria’s account Now, however, we must respond to Tixier’s charge that despite his pretentious name, Big Soldier only passed himself off “in Paris for an important chieftain” and was “not even a warrior in his own nation.” Here we must return to Big Soldier’s name and attempt to explain how one who is “only a marmiton” came to posses such and imposing and important name among the Osages Big Soldier’s Name Big Soldier’s name does not really translate as Big Soldier The translation actually presumes the White, eurowestern stereotype of Indian peoples, namely, that Indians were militaristic societies where all the men were “warriors” or “braves.” It perpetuates the amereuropean myth that Indian men customarily and recklessly pursued some warrior ideal living in militaristic societies that gave in to primitive blood thirst with constant warfare Yet, there is really no word for “soldier” or even “warrior” in Osage, a lack that is consistent with all pre-contact Indian communities in north America Thus, a-ki’-da ton-ka, or big a-ki’-da, is really a problematic name to translate into english While some want to translate a-ki’-da as warrior, and the word was indeed used to name the members of a military detachment, translating the word as warrior in english actually biases the whole understanding of the phenomenon for english language speakers We have seen in the previous chapter that warfare was relatively non-violent among Indian peoples generally prior to the european invasion of the continent Combat was ultimately oriented towards the defense of the people.39 The total destruction or conquest of an enemy was never a military objective Indeed, the killing of an enemy was not usually accorded the same high honor as “counting coup” or touching an enemy in battle without being touched in return A-ki’-da, then, really refers to defense, that is, defense of the village or defender of the people, as we shall explain, and the same seems to be true in other Indian communities Some young Lakota men were determined to honor a returning veteran from the Vietnam War and called on some of their elders to give the young man a Lakota name, a “warrior” name they insisted After thinking the request through for a time, the elders finally announced that they had chosen a name but that it had been difficult to comply fully with the request There is, they replied, no word in Lakota for warrior All the words that refer to battle and the function of young men in battle had to with the notion of defense Thus, they gave the returning veteran the name of “defender of the people.”40 The Osage word a-ki’-da has such a variety of meanings in different contexts that the common translation of warrior or soldier is certainly false One example of a-ki’-da are the mon-shon’ a-ki-da, those who “watch over the land” or “protectors of the land.”41 These were members of a men’s society among the Osage whose task was the defensive patrol of Osage heartlands A couple members of the society were always on patrol to monitor enemy incursions into Osage land and to give Osage towns adequate notice for protecting themselves Another sense of the word, however, seems inherent in Big Soldier’s name, namely the akida gahíga First of all, the word tonka can mean big or large in terms of size, but it also refers to some sense of rank or hierarchy In the latter sense it would modify an adjective in terms of status or leadership A “big” a-ki’-da could undoubtedly be one of the five a-ki’-da appointed by each of the two village headmen or chiefs (ga-hi’-ga) These are the men whom La Flesche calls aida gahíga, “chief protectors,” since one of their principal functions is to protect the chief or headman who appointed them In turn, these ten chief protectors had special responsibilities for maintaining order in the town and lived in houses constructed immediately around the chiefs’ 39 See Tom Holm’s excellent description of Indian warfare in Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls: Native American Veterans of the Vietnam War (University of Texas, 1996) Especially Chapter 3: “Native American Warfare and the Warrior’s Place in Tribal Societies,” pp 26-65 40 This story was relayed to me recently by Russell Means, and the young man is question was one of his relatives 41 Louis Burns, History of the Osage People, pp 66, 93 Francis La Flesche, A Dictionary of the Osage Language, BAE Bulletin 59 (US Government Printing Office, 1932 Reprinted by Indian Tribal Series: Phoenix, 1975) Even Burns continues the practice of calling these a-ki’-da “soldiers.” Indeed, he calls the chief protectors and the protectors of the land “the only standing military force permitted” in Osage society (p 93) This explanation presumes too much the normativity of european military and societal notions Kettle Carriers: 12 houses in the center of the village Thus, they served a key political function in each town.42 That they might commonly have been veterans of military encounters is only tangentially relevant, since their immediate role has to with maintaining domestic order It would have been this important social status that would have mandated that Big Soldier act as a signatory to the early Osage treaties with the United States In other words, he was indeed a “chief” and worthy of his name—even though he may have never functioned as a military combatant 43 Kettle Carriers and the Conclusion to the War Ceremony Finally, the real social importance of the kettle carriers and their society in Osage culture leaps to the fore in the ceremonial drama that accompanies the return of the military contingent to the town after combat with an enemy In the case that their foray has resulted in an enemy casualty, the combatants cut a slender sapling to make a staff, to the top of which they attach a small sapling hoop upon which they mount the scalp The staff is then presented to the dodón honga, the spiritual leader and pipe carrier of the military contingent, along with any captives and captured goods, who then directs the contingent toward home At this point, the dodon΄ honga, carrying the staff, seems to take over the direct leadership of the detachment—since the return to the village is a ceremonial movement Thus, he is the one who leads the group’s procession to the town At some distance from town, however, he sends a kettle carrier (rather than a shoka / messenger) to announce the impending arrival of the detachment to the village, once again reminding us of the “crier” function of a lapânie / marmaton in Tixier’s account of an Osage village event in 1840 and Cortambert’s description a couple of years earlier Reaching the perimeter of the town, the dodón honga, in a strikingly significant move, then hands the staff to his “chief kettle carrier,” and this kettle carrier is the one who receives very special the honor of parading the trophy into the village itself Thus, this crucial non-combatant figure assumes the first of some very important and very public ceremonial tasks just as the military detachment reenters the village Particularly striking is the role of the chief kettle carrier in that part of the ceremony called “releasing the spirit(s) of the slain enemy.” As the dodón honga enters the village, he is closely followed by his chief kettle carrier (carrying the willow sapling with the enemy scalp) and the xoka (master of ceremonies, and elder who remained in the village throughout) In that ceremonial order they finally enter the “house of mysteries” which had been constructed solely for the purpose of the war ceremony; and moving to the left around the inside perimeter they approach the smoke hole in the roof at one end of the lodge All of this is done in a sacred, ceremonial way, accompanied by songs, prayers, and sacred action Then in an act that must be incongruous for euro-american people, it is the chief kettle carrier, a non-combatant, Tixier’s “only a marmiton,” who is responsible for the decisive action that releases the spirit(s) of the slain enemy: [T]he Chief Tse′ -xe-k’in with a quick movement thrusts the slender poles on which are suspended scalps, through the opening to the sky and pulls them in again, by which act the spirits of the slain are released (WCPC, 81) It is an action born out of utter respect for one’s enemy and one that calls forth the renewed balancing of the cosmos after its decisive disruption in an act of military combat Yet, it is the principal non-combatant, flamboyant and ostentatious kettle carrier who is given the ultimate responsibility for the final success of the military engagement This is a high honor indeed for any person That it accrues to one who in another culture might be despised and marginalized ought to give pause, especially if one hopes to understand the complexity and depth of an American Indian culture and its commitment to the balance and harmony of all existence Being a kettle carrier, then, certainly did not deprive one of social status of any kind Clearly, just the opposite is the case The kettle carrier had every possibility for attaining high esteem and high status in an Osage community As we reflect back on the mixed european respect for the man called akida tonga (Big Soldier) and read carefully between the lines, we see a highly respected elder, a chiefly personage, who was in some contexts a key spokesperson for 42 43 See especially Francis La Flesche, “Wa-sha′ -be A-thin, or War Ceremony,” in WCPC, pp XX Matthews suggests another interpretation of the meaning of Big Soldier’s name Kettle Carriers: 13 his people We can imagine that he himself had functioned as the chief tséxek’in on the return of a military contingent to their home village and had performed the soul releasing ceremony And now we can see more clearly that the man who gave what Deloria calls the best speech an Indian ever gave was queer! And, most importantly, he was not alone in his community, but rather he was a member of the formal society called Kettle Carriers In fact, he was probably the chief queer of the Osages by the end of his life, the head of his Kettle Carriers society Such a scenario could only happen in the indigenous world of American Indians Keeping this discussion in mind, then, we can turn to the Osage war and peace ceremonies themselves Words: 10,470 ... whole of a community and throughout the whole of a nation Not only did aunts and uncles carry the name and responsibilities of parents to nephews and nieces, but they were also grandparents to the... protectors and the protectors of the land “the only standing military force permitted” in Osage society (p 93) This explanation presumes too much the normativity of european military and societal... might be despised and marginalized ought to give pause, especially if one hopes to understand the complexity and depth of an American Indian culture and its commitment to the balance and harmony of