O: Oak to Ova-herero 213
Okipa
The outstanding ceremony of North Dakota’s Mandan Indians, whose earlier
home was in the Ohio Valley. Before any significant contact with White Americans,
the Mandan occasionally evidenced fairer skin, light-colored eyes, and auburn
hair, with less Amerindian facial features, suggesting interracial contacts at some
early period in their history. They were first brought to general attention by the
American artist, George Catlin, who painted many portraits of the Mandan, and
was the first white man to witness their Okipa ceremony. This was an annual event
in which the whole village participated. It began with an actor covered in white
clay representing a white man, a survivor of the Great Flood, approaching the
village from the east, the direction in which the cataclysm was said to have occurred.
At the center of the village, occupying a circular open space 150 feet in diameter,
was a barrel-like object. This was the “Okipa,” about 10 feet high, made of planks
and hoops. Known as a representation of “the big canoe” that rode out the Deluge,
it was a kind of tabernacle containing objects sacred to folk memory of the cataclysm.
These included the Eeh-teeh-ka—four sewn-together, turtle-shaped sacks allegedly
containing the original waters of the Great Flood from the four quarters of the
world, signifying the catastrophe’s Earth-wide magnitude.
Families from every wigwam donated edged tools, symbols of the construction
that went into the original “big canoe.” They were collected in a medicine lodge
for the duration of the ceremony, but on its last day were sacrificed by throwing
them into the deepest place of a nearby river to at once commemorate the Deluge
and spiritually prevent another from taking place. The Okipa concluded with
Bel-lohck-na-pie, a dance of 12 men painted white, black, and yellow (representing
the three major races of mankind) around the “big canoe.”
(See Nu-mohk-muck-a-na)Oklatabashih
Choctaw for “Survivor from the Great Flood,” the tribe’s forefather.Olle
North America’s Tuleyone Indians preserve the oral account of a time, long
ago, in the days of their ancestors, when a fiery demon remembered as Sahte
appeared in the sky, and incinerated most of the world. Its terrified inhabitants
prayed for salvation from the gods, one of whom, Olle, came to their rescue. He
was a colossal giant wearing a horned helmet. Olle saw at once that only the most
radical measures could prevent Earth from being completely consumed by the
conflagration, so he caused a sudden flood that submerged all land, except for the
tallest mountain at the center of the world. On its summit he placed some human
survivors, who later became the ancestors of a new humanity.