N: Naacals to Nyoe 205
Nowah’wus
Cheyenne name for Bear Butte, a 1,200-foot high mountain standing alone
in a South Dakota prairie not far from the Black Hills. Geologically, the formation
is classified as a laccolith, an irregularly formed body of solidified magma in-
truded between layers of sedimentary rock, making them bulge outward, about
.5 million years ago. Together with Minnesota’s Pipestone, Bear Butte was and
is the most sacred site dedicated to the Great Flood, and a pilgrimage center for
tribes from all over North America. Bear Butte was the scene for the Mandans’
mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha, or “Settling of the Waters.” The performance of this an-
nual ritual was an adjunct to their Okipa commemorative ceremony intended to
prevent a recurrence of the cataclysm by assuring the Great Spirit that the Mandans
had kept his laws and sacrificing sharp-edged implements symbolic of the tools
which made the “big canoe” in which the deluge-survivors saved themselves.
The mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha took place when the willow leaf was in full
growth at mid-spring, because it was a leaf from this plant that was brought
back in the bill of a turtle dove to Nu-mohk-muck-a-na, the Mandan flood hero,
as a sign that “The Settling of the Waters” had begun. He then followed the bird’s
flight to Bear Butte, where Nu-mahk-muck-nan instituted the commemorative
mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha ceremony. Ever since, both the dove and the willow
leaf were revered as the Indians’ most sacred images.
Resemblance of Nu-mohk-muck-a-na to the biblical Noah is remarkable, even
to the Cheyenne name for the butte, Noawah’wus. Sioux Indians refer to the
laccolith as Mato Paha, or “Bear Butte,” supposedly because it resembles a crouch-
ing bear when seen from the northeast. Be that as it may, more cogently, the bear
symbolizes regeneration after a death-like winter hibernation. It awakens with
the onset of spring, when the willow leaf is in full bloom, signaling the beginning
of the mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha ceremony. So too, the Atlantean people were re-
born after the death of their homeland, commemorated at Mato Paha, in the
survivors who settled among the Mandan.
The site may have been originally chosen for the mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha
because of its physical resemblance to Atlantis. From the mid-spring celebration
until early fall, Bear Butte stands towering among waving prairies resembling a
great island in the sea.
(See Noah, Okipa)Ntlakapamuk
A British Columbian tribe in residence at the Thompson River. Ntlakapamuk
shamans speak of a time when the Earth was consumed by a fire so universal only
a worldwide flood succeeded in extinguishing it.
(See Asteroid Theory)