Burning the East Gate.

Ward, Jared

I carried the last rock, dug from glowing coals, to the sweat lodge where six Indians waited. They were nearly naked inside, sitting cross-legged around a hole in the ground. The hole was filled with four or five rocks and a puddle from the water poured on them.

I'd brought the rocks minutes earlier. They made the puddle.

Stone and metal grated as my rock rolled in the shovel blade. I balanced it up the three limestone stairs. It was the size of two fists held together and heavy. It was round. Too round. At the mouth of the lodge, I stopped, reaching the shovel to the pit inside. My arms shook as they got further from my body. I held the rock six inches above the others and began to lower it when I felt the balance shift. It rolled off the blade and into the puddle, scalding men with few clothes.

I knew it was too round.

The chief sat nearest the opening. He slapped a palm to his thigh where the water hit and rubbed the burn out. When the others quieted, he turned to me and shook his head.

"Sorry," I said.

"Mitakuye oyas'in," he said as he closed the flap to the lodge.

It was summer in South Dakota and I was on the Rosebud Reservation, tending fire for a Sun Dance. The year 2000 was the driest in the last thirty. Every day there were reports of fire, giant forests in California turned to kindling, winds blowing in from the Pacific and spreading flames over growing portions of the teleprompted map. We moved to Rapid City when there were thousands of Harleys rolling in for Sturgis, when black smoke loomed in the distance above Harney Peak, the Needles, and, of course, the Heads. The Black Hills were on fire.

In the midst of the Rally and the burning, my wife and I arrived towing a U-haul behind a Chevy S-10 that never should have made it from Texas. The truck had a hole in the floorboard, which we covered with a twelve-dollar mat from Wal-Mart, and the air conditioning had gone out around Muskogee. It was a four cylinder not meant to tow trailers, and sixteen miles out of Rapid I thought we were screwed. It was the steepest hill of the trip. We were going thirty-five on the interstate with the pedal on the floor. Bikers swarmed past us shaking their heads while we white-knuckled the dash all the way to the top.

We got to Matt's in the late afternoon when the sycamores cast their shadows. Our friend Gus had invited us to watch him dance that weekend. It was a two-hour drive to the Rosebud, and we left that night. My wife couldn't go. Her period was supposed to start, and we were told the Sioux believed bleeding women carried bad spirits. So Matt and I loaded the car, driving through the Badlands to the little farm with the limestone fire pit and the field of dancers.

The Sun Dance is a sacred ceremony of the Plains Indians. Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and many others observe the ritual, though the actual ceremonies differ. Regardless of the nation, there are two core elements that link them: sacrifice and pain. Dancers subject themselves to these elements in order to unify themselves with the earth, and also to be reborn into a cleaner life.

There is a clearing in a field, surrounded by a ring of trees, the dancing ring. The trees are tall and the shade is good for watching. Inside the ring there are barefoot dancers and dry prairie grass. There is a pole in the center with ropes that hang from high up on it.

There are two entrances to the Sun Dance circle--the east and west gates, gaps in the tree ring. The west gate is what the dancers use during the middle rounds. The east gate is where they enter in the morning and leave at sunset. It's where spirits are said to come and go throughout the ceremony.

Outside the ring, there is a twenty-foot firepit, made from large blocks of limestone. There are stairs on the southern side, three that lead up to the sweat lodge, a wooden frame bound together and covered with enough material to block out light and keep in heat. This is where the dancers go between rounds and at night when the plains still simmer from the memory of the midday sun. They sit in the dark, around a pile of rocks brought up from the glowing coals. When water is poured on the rocks, the steam is a suffocating blanket of wet heat. They sing songs and pray, calling O mitakuye oyas'in when it is time to get out. Once out, they breathe deep breaths and stand as though they were hundreds of years away. Compared to the belly of the sweat lodge, the summer heat is cool.

I don't know about other Sun Dances, couldn't tell you what the Cheyenne or Kiowa might change in theirs. And I don't know if the Lakota dance I saw is standard for all Sioux, or if it's even standard for that band from year to year. Some might say I don't know what I'm talking about. That I don't know the real Sun Dance.

They're probably right

"Not like that."

I turned, sweating from the flames, my shirt blackened from smoke. An Indian man in his thirties had spoken.

"The fire. Not like that." He held his hand out at an angle, then walked away.

Sticks I had gathered were laid flat on the still burning embers.

"White man make bad fire," Matt said, laughing. He tossed me a branch and I knocked the flat sticks off, letting them cool before angling them teepee style. They lit up in seconds, yellow flames licking the night air.

We'd assumed the role of fire-tenders right away. Organization on the Rosebud was loose, and there was either no one available or no one dumb enough to tend fire in hundred-degree weather.

We didn't mind, though the work was harder than they made it sound. "Just keep the fire going, and carry rocks to the lodge between rounds," Gus said. Seemed simple enough, and it included us in a way we hadn't expected.

We were part of the Sun Dance.

We were fire-tenders.

Our main role, besides transferring rocks from the coals to the sweat lodge, was to hold the smudge cans at the west gate after each round. Matt and I were to stand on either side as they filed past. Behind us, they would enter what looked like a prehistoric baseball dugout, a wooden frame covered with pine limbs to keep out the sun.

The smudge can was exactly that--a can, specifically coffee, more specifically a Folger's can with part of a tree branch screwed to the side like a frying pan handle. Inside the can was a base of coals with cedar greens thrown on top, which smoked so the dancers could smudge themselves, wave smoke over their faces and heads to ward off evil spirits.

Pre-white folks, there would have been no can. A smudge shell, maybe, but no can, and it seemed out of place. When Gus had invited us to see him dance, I was excited. A Sun Dance with real Indians on a real reservation. There would be feathers and beads, chants and drums. I planned on communing with nature, being enveloped by a ceremony of spirits and ancient mysticism. The smudge can intruded on my fantasy.

It may not sound too demanding--toss some coals in a can, add cedar, and presto: smoke. Hold it for the dancers, then head back to the fire so you can carry some rocks to the sweat lodge. And we had the first part down. We were at the west gate in plenty of time, cans smoking away. We smiled at each other, secure in our new role as smudge-bearers.

Right around this time, we discovered two problems. First, we didn't speak Lakota, and second, we'd never been to a Sun Dance.

The singing reached a crescendo, stopped, and we both straightened up, prepared our cans. Smoke curled out of both openings in a steady stream. Then the singing began again. We looked at each other and shrugged. Having nowhere to go, we waited. Then it happened again. And again.

Meanwhile, we were learning interesting things about the properties of cedar greens and coals and how they react when mixed. It seems that eventually the cedar will turn papery white, and when that happens, no more smoke. When you add more cedar, you run the risk of smothering the coals, at which point the result is very much the same. No smoke.

This discovery was made right around the time the dancers formed their line to leave the ring. What once had been glorious smudge cans, with smoke billowing in perfect clouds to chase away bad spirits, had become two dead Folger's cans filled with a bunch of ash and cedar. I glanced at Matt, saw an expression I felt.

Blood warmed my cheeks as I stared at the ground. The dancers came through, waving at the cans with the bound feathers they danced with in a futile attempt to bring the smoke out. A couple of them even tried blowing inside. The only thing resembling smoke was some ash drifting out.

When they were all in the dugout, we slipped back to the fire.

One of the big rules of this particular Sun Dance was the dancers weren't supposed to drink water during daylight. Midway through the second day, I saw a couple of boys drinking from a clay pot.

"Thought you couldn't have water," I said while they lounged in the dugout.

The older boy looked at me and laughed. He grabbed a handful of cedar and tossed it in. "Tea," he said, and I'm still not sure if the look on his face said go fuck yourself, white boy, or like you could begin to understand.

Probably both.

Matt and I were the guests of the white dancer, which I think made us whiter. Matt, skinny and pale, with his frayed red ballcap and red-tinted stubble, was of German descent and obviously foreign. So was I. My black hair and brown skin and the fact that I'm half Mexican-Indian meant nothing. In that culture, I was nowhere near Indian.

Still, there were plenty of moments that drew me in, made my wife and Texas and finding a new job in a new place seem far away. Every time I stood outside the entrance of the sweat lodge, waiting to release the men inside, I listened to their singing, their praying. Every time the call rang out, O mitakuye oyas'in, I lifted the blanket, steam and heat washing over me.

I watched the dancers pierce their chests with a small rod of bone, hooking one end of a rope to the bone and the other to the pole in the center of the ring, pulling until the bone stretched the skin all the way out. Hanging there, eyes closed. Singing, and god knows how much they hurt.

I watched as the dance became a dance of sins relieved, forgiven. Saw the bones rip from their bodies when they drew near to the pole, then turned and flung themselves from it. Saw the flesh tear, left behind in a tribute to the ignorance and life they themselves were leaving behind.

I watched as Gus pierced his back and dragged eight buffalo skulls around and around the ring, his flesh refusing to give. Why would you do it? was the question, later. But some things in life, some shadows of our personal history, aren't meant to be questioned.

To this day I don't know what changed my feelings toward the dance, or when they were changed. It could have been many things, but more than anything, I think it might have been as simple as inclusion.

Midway through the first day of dancing, we noticed a change. As the dancers filed past, they began wafting the smoke over themselves and us as well. They would pat our heads and shoulders with the bound feathers, singing and closing their eyes in prayer.

Sometimes the feathers sounded like a rush of wings, and I swear it felt like flying.

By the end, it was the praying, the penitence, the rebirth that transformed me from a white-Mexican-Indian there for a show, into a member of the moment.

I felt I belonged.

It felt good.

Before the final round of dancing, Gus came to us and asked if we would go to the east gate at the end of the ceremony. It was an honor, he explained; the chief wanted to thank us for working so hard.

Even by the end, there were some things I didn't understand. Some big things, like what possesses a man to drag buffalo skulls with his back when no one is forcing him? Some little things, like how do a few sprigs of cedar turn water to tea, and what the hell does mitakuye oyas'in mean?

In the end, there was both understanding and a failure to understand.

What Matt and I both understood, what was conveyed to us in no uncertain terms on the first morning of smudge-bearing, is that no one was to cross the opening of the east gate. It was only used at the beginning and end of each day, as the dancers entered and exited once and only once.

"Spirits come through," one of the men said when I asked. He was sitting near the fire, staring at the night sky.

"The dancers go through," I said.

He nodded. "We're protected."

"So what if I cross it, accidentally?"

His hands came together, his right one skimming off the palm of the left with a whisking sound.

"Your spirit gets taken," he said. "And another one takes you."

At the time, it was a whatever comment. By the end, I wasn't messing around with the east gate spirits.

What didn't we understand?

The smudge cans. The goddamn smudge cans.

Even after a few days, we rarely got it right. Each time I did, I thought I'd figured it out, only to get stuck holding a thin wisp of smoke the next time.

But this was the final round, and we were damned if we were going to go smokeless at the end. We grabbed a sack of cedar, ten times more than necessary, tossed a layer of coals in our cans, and headed to the far side of the east gate.

"Just be there at the end," Gus had said.

Which led us to a familiar problem. We ended up standing by the east gate for at least half an hour. After twenty minutes, we knew it was done. So we dumped a handful of cedar in each can, and within seconds had a solid smudge going. A few minutes later, it was clear there would be no smoke when the dancers came, so we both did what came naturally--panicked.

I grabbed a big handful of greens and dropped it in. Matt did the same, and we stood there, staring at our cans filled three-quarters full of cedar greens. We had just ruined the final smudge of the Sun Dance. We couldn't run all the way back to the fire and start the cans over, because for all we knew, the dancers would leave any second. Better to hold smudgeless smudge cans than no cans at all.

Of course, they didn't leave any second, or any minute for that matter, and we stood with our cans full of cedar feeling dumber with every rising falsetto.

Then, a Sun Dance miracle. Smoke, curling ever so slightly from Matt's can. We both saw it and froze, afraid to breathe.

Our education picked up once again. We learned the extra cedar doesn't completely smother the coals. In fact, the coals just need some time to heat the greens up to a smoking point again.

Another interesting thing is that the property of the cedar itself changes. The reason they use greens is that they are, after elements like dirt and water, some of the shittiest fire starters in the world. Lots of smoke, not a lot of flame.

That is until they dry out, at which point they become something altogether different.

Wood.

As the dancers finally formed a line, Matt and I were no longer holding smudge cans; we had replaced them with fire cans spitting serpentine flames, orange and black and nasty.

On cue, a gust of wind kicked up, snapping my shirt against my chest. For the first time since we arrived I felt cold, watching a piece of burning cedar drift across the mouth of the east gate.

Even before it landed, the decision was made. Should we cross the east gate, risking a permanent loss of spirit, and violating the single largest taboo of the Sun Dance, or should we stand with our thumbs in our asses and hope to god someone notices before the whole place is in flames?

I imagine it was the sight of a bunch of barefoot Indians trying to stomp out a wildfire that made the guys in boots come running, not Matt and me and our disappearing thumbs.

After the Sun Dance, as we were driving back to Rapid City, we were told two very important things.

First, you can cross the east gate if you've just set it on fire and risk burning down not only the dance ring, but the adjoining house and about a hundred or so people as well.

And second, you only have coals in the can until the dancers form their line to leave the ring, then you add cedar.