THE FOOL

The mythical liberation of the buffalo from the hill in which they had been locked up is the focus of the Okipa celebration among the Mandan: the dances performed with animal masks had the purpose to obtain the liberation of the animals shut into the hill.  The participation of  hoita (the Spotted Eagle) to the celebration took the form of a supervision of the fast and sacrifice of the dancers  (Bowers 1950: p.120-125). The latter, with their fasting, imitated the buffalo shut up in Dog Den Butte, while the Sacred Lodge in which the ritual was held represented the cave into which the animals stood. In front of the Sacred Lodge, offering were put on poles, among which a white buffalo skin stood out.

Mandan Buffalo mask employed during the Okipa ceremony (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming)

 

In this way, the Okipa was intended to promote a good hunting, favoring the reproduction  of animals and making the buffalo spirits come out from their underground places, into the hills, and be reborn in the herds spread on the prairies. The painter George Catlin observed that the dances, with animal masks and costumes, had the object to call the buffalo near the village. Among the animal dancers are also described two individuals impersonating wolves, wearing white wolf skins, a detail reminiscent of the Cheyenne massaum ceremony, where two wolves represented the spirits ruling over the animal world  (Schlesier 1987).
On the third day of the ceremony, among the masked dancers impersonating the mythological figures associated with particular sacred bundles or with certain episodes of the creation story, appeared a bewildering character: oxinhede, the “Fool”. Catlin identifies him as the Evil Spirit, who once lived into the sun.

 

The Fool, masked personage with body paintings, during the celebration of the Okipa, a ritual which recalled the Mandan origin myth (from G. Catlin, O-Kee-Pa, A Religious Ceremony, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1867)

 

 

In the “Folium Reservatum”, a document kept in the British Museum, the details of this figure are more explicitly described: he was provided with a huge wooden penis, with which he dashed on the women, who ran away, a “modern Priapus” with the glans painted red  (Taylor 1996: 100). He simulated the coitus with one of the buffalo dancers, imitating the buffalo bull in the mating season  (Catlin 1867 [1967: 83-84]).

 

Buffalo Dancer who is going to have intercourse with the Fool during the ceremony reproducing the Mandan origin myth (from G. Catlin, O-Kee-Pa, A Religious Ceremony, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1867)

 

This sort of clown seems to be a personification of the trickster, like the Lakota heyoka and other ritual buffoons, representing the forces of disorder or what escapes from the control of man and society. According to Bowers, the Fool represented those who did not respect the sacred things, and disregarded fast and sacrifice. However, the meaning of this figure seems to be wider: on his black body the images of the sun, moon and stars were painted. He is described as a cannibal, because his origin is in the sun. The Fool came near two women, one wise and the other mindless: this episode is reminiscent of the myth of the women who married the sun and the moon  (Bowers 1950: 144-146). It is the well-known myth of the star-husband, widely spread in the Plains area. But these details are enough to indicate how this ritual clown personified an important component of the universe, an overwhelming and uncontrollable force, with a destructive, but also a creative power  (Comba 2012).
The ambiguous power of the Fool was blocked by the intervention of Lone Man, who paralyzed his adversary showing his pipe. Lone Man represented the individual who survived to the flood, and the pipe is the sacred object he saved from the waters and brought in the big canoe, which is represented in the centre of the village. The Fool was at last sent away by the women, who seized his sexual organ. The latter was brought in the village, above a wild sage bundle, “as she would a child”, while a “matron” declared publicly her power to create and attract the buffalo  (Catlin 1867 [1967: 61, 85]; Taylor 1996: 102).

 

 

George Catlin's painting, 1832, illustrating two moments of the ceremony to which the mythical character called "Foolish One", according to Bowers. This creature showed huge sexual attributes, as a symbol of fecundity and fertility, which the village women tried to seize (Taylor, 1996).