DEER-MAN

In a Californian myth is narrated of a young man who is dressed in a deerskin, with horns on his head, and turns into a deer, so that his people will have deer meat killing him. The tale establishes the origin of a hunting way and emphasizes a Native American common element: the difference between  humans and game animals is dim, rather the animals could be seen as outwardly transformed humans.

 

Wooden mask of a deer-man found in a burial mound at Spiro Mound, Oklahoma. Its dating is between the IXth and  XVIth centuries A.D. (National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.)

 

In a British Columbia Nlaka’pamuk (also known as Thompson Indians) tale a young hunter, particularly skillful in hunting deer, one day, pursuing the tracks of a doe with its fawn, found himself suddenly in front of a woman with her child. The woman proposed him to become her husband and took him among her people, who lived underground, into a hill. Here he found a large house full of people who were just like Indians. They were dressed in clothes of deer skin. The following day he was invited to join a hunting expedition, during which his wife’s two brothers began to run and appeared in deer shape. They offered themselves to the arrows of the hunter and were killed. After they had eaten, he was advised to save all the bones of the animals and put them away, wrapping them in a bundle and throwing them into the water. A little after, the two brothers-in-law returned unharmed. When the rutting season comes, the chief of the people puts his deer skin on him and transforms him into a buck. He has to learn how to fight the other bucks to win the company of his wife. After they had returned to visit the human group to whom he belonged, the young hunter decides to abandon his fellows and to remain forever with his foster family, changing into a deer (Thompson 1929: p. 169-173).

 

Rock painting showing an anthropomorphic being with deer antlers, holding a snake in his hand (Head of Sinbad Canyon, Utah)

 

The Lakota had a ceremonial society which gathered all those who had visionary experiences with the elk, Cervus elaphus canadensis. It was believed that the individuals who had these visions would acquire special powers in alluring women for sex, in warfare and in healing. Members of the society celebrated periodically an Elk Dance, wearing elk skin masks with the horns attached which covered entirely the dancer’s head. Furthermore, they held in their hand a bundle of leafy branches and a wooden hoop covered with fur, which represented symbolically a snare, into which the dancer could entice the game animals but also the enemies in war and the women in love affairs. As witness of their power, the dancers walked on soft soil, showing that they left deer instead of human tracks. In this way, they showed that they had acquired the outward aspect of a deer, they had changed into animals (Sundstrom 2004).

 

Drawings of Lakota masked dancers impersonating the elk, realized by Lakota artist Walter Bone Shirt around 1890 (Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, Missoula, Montana)