The Tale Of The Pizzle Stick

A pizzle stick is generally treated as a chewing implement for dogs.
The Tale Of The Pizzle Stick

By Dakota Wind
I have a story I’d like to share about the pizzle stick.

One time, back at the greatest park in North Dakota, an old supervisor paid a visit bearing a pizzle stick to put on display in the earth lodge. He told me, in an authorative voice that it was a pizzle stick to display along with the many reproductions within the “living” lodge, an earth lodge outfitted to look as though the Nu’Eta (Mandan) lived there and had only just stepped out.

“What’s a pizzle stick?” he asked, waving it around.

“It’s a horse whip,” I nonchalantly responded, looking down at the edge of Missouri River as though something vaguely interesting were there.

“Ah. A horse whip,” he said with great newfound respect and then laid it on a woven cattail mat next to the hearth.

In those days, interpreters (or tour guides) stood around in the abandoned village, greeted visitors, provided interpretive programming, and answer questions to the best of our ability. Working with the general public is something that I wish everyone could experience. Some days brought educated guests, other days were filled with the challenges that only the general public brings. Some visitors were of the live and let live philosophy. Some had read a book and became an overnight expert. Some wanted to see Indians.

It so happened one day that there came a-visiting, a rather gregarious and rowdy bunch of visitors. I was having a tough go of it trying to engage this group and maintain their interest. I suspected that they may have had ingested a few alcoholic libations with their belligerence, raucious laughter, bawdy jokes and repeated questions.

So how does one engage such a group? Like for like? I decided to press my luck when a woman asked about the pizzle stick. She even had the audacity to lean down and pluck it from its place among the reproductions. I saw her bold behavior and thought to meet her coterie’s inebriated wit with pluck.

“I say, what kind of stick is this?” she inquired, completely uninterested in pottery, beadwork, quillwork or the painted elk hide.

I leaned forward a little, lowered my head, and lowered my voice a smidge and said in a conspiratorial tone, and amazingly, they all quieted, “That, is a pizzle stick.” Then I waited for any sign of recognition from her and her party. When none came, a naughty notion struck me, “The ‘Indians’,’” I used the term “Indians” liberally in a grand show of undetected sarcasm, “used the pizzle stick for luck. Like a rabbit’s foot.”

At this point, if you reader, don’t know what a pizzle stick it, you may want to run a quick internet search about it.

“And like the rabbit’s foot, they would stroke it several times for good luck,” and a few of the women pawed at it, giggling as they stoked it and exchanged sexual overtones with one another. I continued in overwhelming confidence, “The women would rub it on their faces.”

I struggled to keep a straight face at how close the women were in their exchange of sexual gesticulations with the pizzle stick. I shook my head at their minstration of the stick, and they laughed, thinking they were embarrassing me. However, just as one woman was about to caress the stick with her cheek I had to speak, feigning newly remembered knowledge, “I do apologize, but it is in fact a horse whip. And [dramatic pause] It’s made from a buffalo penis.” 

Really, some men did in fact use it for a horse whip.

My Trip to Fort Buford and Back, a Photo Essay

"A village of the Hidatsa tribe at Knife River," by George Catlin.My Trip to Fort Buford and Back
A Photo Essay, Part 1
By Dakota Wind
Hi!  So, I was invited to the 130th Anniversary of Sitting Bull's return from Canada at Fort Buford, a North Dakota State Historic Site. On my way up I thought that I'd stop at some sites along the way. I left my home north of Mandan and crossed the interstate bridge (I had to stop by the State Historical Society of North Dakota and drop off some really important stuff) then I headed north on HWY 85 to Washburn. I wanted to check out Fort Mandan, but the fort was dangerously close to sitting smack in the Missouri - due the flood. The Cottonwood Giftshop was surrounded by an earthen ditch and sandbags. I didn't want to show a North Dakota site when its in such a sad state so I took no pictures. Sorry.  If you don't know about the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 and you're American, shame on you and go look it up - however, if you're a foreigner, I can forgive you. The Lakota stole an iron-shod pony from the Corps of Discovery in February 1805 at Fort Mandan, then burned down an old Mandan Indian village to prevent the Corps from mounting chase. 

My first stop on the way to Fort Buford was at Fort Mandan up in Washburn, ND. All the Indians (as if there's a whole bunch of them up there - there's only one) on staff up there were gone. 

So, being that I didn't want to take any pictures of the reconstructed Fort Mandan as it was nearly surrounded by water, I crossed the bridge there in Washburn and made my way to Fort Clark. 

I took the bridge in Washburn across the Missouri River to Fort Clark. 

At Fort Clark, a prominent American Fur Trade Post in the 1820s and 1830s, I stopped to admire the majesty of the Missouri River. The site itself doesn't offer much other than shade and outhouses. Back in the 1830s, a smallpox epidemic struck the Mandan living at the fort and nearly wiped them all out, by 1838, there were maybe only 500 Mandan Indians left. The saddest story I heard about the fort was about a mother who had just given birth. The mother died of smallpox, they wrapped her and her baby up, thinking the baby died as well, and buried them outside the fort. For a day, the people around the fort nearly went mad because they could all hear a baby crying and none could remember where the baby and mother were buried. I was moved to tears the first time I heard this from Amy Mossett, a Mandan Indian from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. 

An interpretive sign summing up the activity at the site, and the smallpox epidemic.

If you could see it from above, you'd see depressions of where earthlodges used to be, and outlines of the fort's buildings, including a rectangular ceremonial lodge about 65' x 120', about twice the size the biggest earthlodge at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. 

This lone building provides a modest shelter in inclement weather. There's also a log for visitors to sign in, but the size of the building only adds to the solitude of the site. 

From Fort Clark, I went up to Knife River, only a ten minute drive away. I sometimes like to measure my trips by how many songs I can get there in, and this one was about the length of Def Leppard's "Rocket (Extended Atomic Mix)" which is about ten minutes. 

Knife River Indian Villages is designated a National Historic Site. Behind the building and bushes is the site of three Hidatsa Indian villages and a late woodlands linear mound. I used to work here as an Interpretive Ranger. 

The main entrance of the visitor center at Knife River. The main foyer of the building is designed on the ground flood plan of an earthlodge. A roof window lets in natural light as the smoke whole in an earthlodge would too. 

Here's a Hidatsa Indian earthlodge. The entrance faces east, towards the rising sun. An earthlodge typically only lasts about a dozen years due to the wood decaying, but with a cement ring and treated lumber this earthlodge has been standing over twenty years and looks great.

The Hidatsa Indians were an agricultural society. Here is a garden, but due to the odd weather this year in North Dakota, the planting of corn, squash, and beans was put on hold, and tobacco was planted. You can see that it is flourishing with this year's unseasonably wet weather. The Hidatsa would even put up scarecrows too. 

A replica of Four Bears' robe. Four Bears was the last war chief of the Mandan Indians. Even though this rests in a Hidatsa earthlodge, it looks at home. 

Parfleche boxes hang from the ceiling.  I disk is suspended on the leather ties above the parfleche, so that if rodents tried to get at whatever may be in the parfleche (maybe food) they'd slip and fall to the ground. 

Two examples of horse saddles and robe hang on the posts near the entrance of the lodge. The idea that Mandans or Hidatsas bringing their horses into the earthlodge is debated today.  I think they brought their horses in after the 1781 epidemic of smallpox, because there was so few to protect their horses from theft, certainly by Karl Bodmer's and George Catlin's time they did (the 1830s). The low rise and light weight Plains Indian saddles were the basis for General George McClellan's saddle the US Cavalry used in the the latter half of the 1800s. 

Mandan and Hidatsa women produced pottery. Here's a reproduction. 

A bunch of stuff sits on a cattail mat.  I nearly helped myself to that beaded knife sheath. 

A catlinite pipe and stem among other implements (including a wing fan) sit at rest here in the place of honor. The Hidatsa call this spot the Ituka. I nearly took that pipe too, because I'm sure that the Mandan and Hidatsa would want me to have it. 

A bed made of bison robes and elk skins.  A buckskin pillow stuffed with bison hair completes this bed set.

An anvil stone. If one were to look closely and carefully around this stone, one would find flint chips and flakes. The stone has several grooves in the top of it. Its glacial granite from the Canadian Rockies. It was used for nearly ten thousand years to make flint arrowheads, knifes, hatchets, and other tools. 

This is the Sakakawea Site where the Corps of Discovery first encountered Sakakawea.  Natural grasses and flowers were reintroduced to the site back in 2006.  The earthlodge depressions are mowed regularly so that visitors may clearly see where the village used to be.  Jean-Baptiste Charboneau was born here in 1805. 

From Knife River Indian Villages near Stanton, ND, I drove to Dunn Center, or to privately owned land near Dunn Center to pay a visit to the ancient Knife River flint quarry. 

On top of this bluffline is the ancient Knife River flint quarry. Flint was quarried here for about ten thousand years and traded across the North American continent. It is a form of silicon, hard pressed over the ages of the world, and actually began as a plant. This quarry is on private property near the community of Dunn Center, ND. 

From the flint quarry, I took off to Williston State Collge.  I made it with ten minutes to spare for the social and unveiling of the Sitting Bull statue.  I'll post those pictures and my time at Fort Union and Fort Buford next.