Read this excerpt from “The Medicine Bag.” “He carefully prepared for his quest with a purifying sweat bath, and then he went al
one to a high butte top to fast and pray. After three days he received his sacred dream—in which he found, after long searching, the white man’s iron. He did not understand his vision of finding something belonging to the white people, for in that time they were the enemy. When he came down from the butte to cleanse himself at the stream below, he found the remains of a campfire and the broken shell of an iron kettle. This was a sign that reinforced his dream. He took a piece of the iron for his medicine bag, which he had made of elk skin years before, to prepare for his quest. “He returned to his village, where he told his dream to the wise old men of the tribe. They gave him the name Iron Shell, but neither did they understand the meaning of the dream. The first Iron Shell kept the piece of iron with him at all times and believed it gave him protection from the evils of those unhappy days. “Then a terrible thing happened to Iron Shell. He and several other young men were taken from their homes by the soldiers and sent far away to a white man’s boarding school. He was angry and lonesome for his parents and the young girl he had wed before he was taken away. At first Iron Shell resisted the teacher’s attempts to change him, and he did not try to learn. One day it was his turn to work in the school’s blacksmith shop. As he walked into the place, he knew that his medicine had brought him there to learn and work with the white man’s iron. “Iron Shell became a blacksmith and worked at the trade when he returned to the reservation. All of his life he treasured the medicine bag.” What is symbolic about the piece of the iron that Iron Shell keeps in his medicine bag? It represents a mixing of two cultures. It explains how Iron Shell became a blacksmith. It represents a young man giving up on his traditions. It explains the history of the reservation.
To my mind, it symbolizes the history of the reservation. The medicine bag is passed from one generation to another and it represents the reservation’s cultural heritage. Besides, it has a considerable cultural significance and importance to the Sioux and the development of events in their history.
