In the Okipa ceremony of the Mandan, a masse personnage called “the Fool” (oxinhede) personified a wild and wanton being, a cannibal, holding in his hand a stick with a human head on the top; he came from the Sun and had painted on his body the images of the sun, moon and stars.
The buffalo calves are born in spring, around April and May. Some months later, in late summer, the mating season begins, in August and September. The Mandan Okipa ceremony contained various elements that emphasized these aspects. The character known as the Fool appeared with a huge penis and behaved in a funny and ridiculous way, imitating the buffalo bulls when covering females during the mating season (Bowers 1950: 145). Ii seems that this form of intercourse of the Fool with the buffalo dancers was regarded as a necessary act for the reproduction of the animals. The characteristics of the Fool shows also that the generative energies were perceived as beneficent and required to assuring the continuity of life, but also potentially dangerous and destructive. The Fool incarnated the dark and worrying side of the world and identified himself with the cannibal Sun of Mandan mythology.
 |
George Catlin's painting, around 1833, representing the Buffalo Dance, during the Okipa ceremony of the Mandan (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
|
On the third day of the ceremony, among the masked dancers that impersonated the mythological characters associated with certain sacred bundles and with episodes of the creation story, the Fool appeared again. Catlin identifies him as the Evil Spirit that once lived in the Sun (Catlin 1867 [1967: 59]; Taylor 1996: 61-62). In the “Folium Reservatum”, a document in the British Museum, the details of this character are more explicitly described: he was provided with a huge wooden penis, with which he dashed out against the women who ran away, as a “modern Priapus” with the penis painted in red on the top (Taylor 1996: 100). He simulated the coitus with one of the buffalo dancers, imitating the buffalo bull during the mating season. This sort of a clown seems to represent a personification of the trickster, like the Lakota heyoka and other ceremonial buffoons, that represented the forces of disorder and what escapes to the possibility of control from man and society.
 |
|
According to Bowers, the Fool represents those who did not respect the sacred things and disregard the fast and sacrifice. However, the meaning of this figure seems to be larger: on his black body the sun, moon and stars were painted. He was described as a cannibal having his origin in the Sun. The ritual clown personified an important component of the universe, an overwhelming and uncontrollable force, with a destructive but also a creative power (Comba 2012).
|
Detail of Catlin's painting (see above) in which is better shown the Fool, with his body painted in black and holding in his hand a staff with a human head at its summit |
|
|
|
Animals