The Resuscitation of the Only Daughter
The Resuscitation of the Only Daughter is a Sioux story about a young maiden who dies and returns to life, helped by a hunter and his wife, and then lives into old age. The story is open to many interpretations including the concept of fate and that there is a time appointed for one's death.
The story could be interpreted in accordance with one of the seven sacred rites of the Sioux – the Keeping of the Soul – in which a lock of hair from the deceased is taken, purified, and kept in one's sacred bundle (also known as one's medicine bag) for a certain time, usually a year, before it is released to the air, freeing the soul to return to the Great Mystery (Wakan Tanka) at its appointed time. The tale might also be interpreted as encouraging one to make the most of the time one has been given, to mourn one's loss for a culturally appropriate season and then let go and move on, and also to emphasize the importance of hospitality and kindness to strangers – even if they come from the land of the dead.
The tale – which is given as an account of a historical event – includes several details relating to the funerary rituals of the Sioux and their understanding of life after death. The corpse of the young maiden is raised on a scaffold outside of the village and her parents cut their hair short after her death and go into mourning. The hunter and his wife make their camp a half mile away from the burial ground to avoid any "things of the shadow" – the realm of the dead – and yet, when the resurrected young maiden approaches, they welcome her without fear and offer her all hospitality as though she were a living stranger, completely in keeping with the Sioux practice of hospitality in the past as well as today.
At the same time, the Sioux held – and hold – that the dead belong in their own realm and should not return to the world of the living. The story, therefore, inverts a central cultural belief in that the resurrected woman, after being welcomed and healed by the hunter and his wife, goes on to lead a full life, marries three times, and becomes a distinguished physician. Even so, as her life after her resurrection seems to lead to the deaths of her three husbands, the story may still be understood as maintaining the understanding that interaction with the dead is a risky business that brings trouble to those who engage in it, even if it might result in good for others.
Sioux Funerary Rites & Keeping of the Soul
The Sioux, like all Native American nations, believe in the eternal nature of the soul. After the physical death of the body, that which had animated it survives and needs to be acknowledged. The funerary rituals only lay to rest the physical remains of the person, not necessarily their spirit. Scholar Larry J. Zimmerman comments on the Sioux funerary rituals:
A corpse might be cremated, buried, or left to decompose in the open air on a scaffold or in trees. The resulting bones might be left on the ground or later gathered for interment in a conical or linear burial mound. Both scaffolds and burial mounds were sacred areas deemed by some to be spiritually dangerous. Among the Lakota , wanagi ("things of the shadow") spirits are said to guard the graves and can harm anyone who disturbs the dead. (247)
The soul itself, however, might also "stand guard" over the corpse, especially, if it had been released from the body before its appointed time. Whether in cases such as these (when a person died young or without an apparent cause) or any other, the Sioux developed the concept of the ritual of the Keeping of the Soul, which has several stages. After a person dies, a lock of their hair is taken and purified over the smoke of sweet grass or sage and is then placed in a sacred bundle. The person who agrees to keep that hair – and so care for the soul of the deceased – takes a vow to live harmoniously for a given time – not engaging in angry altercations or in other types of behavior that might dishonor the spirit they are entrusted with – for at least a year.
At the end of that time (however long it may be), in a ritual ceremony, the soul is released to the heavens and is understood to travel along the Milky Way to attain union with the Great Mystery, the creative force of the universe. The soul is thereby thought to have been released at the appropriate time for such a union in that the Great Mystery (or Great Spirit) will be expecting it. Although there is no mention of this ritual in the story, it may be assumed that the parents of the maiden would have engaged in it and, perhaps, this is how she is able to return to life, because her spirit had not been released to travel on to eternity.
Ghosts who remained on earth to haunt the living, for whatever reason, were not usually welcome – as in many cultures worldwide throughout history – unless they were recognized as friends or family members who had come to deliver some important message. One of the many fascinating aspects of this story is that the maiden, dead two years, returns as an animated corpse and requires the kindness and ministrations of the hunter and his wife to return fully to life. If the hunter were simply cursed afterwards for helping to revitalize the living corpse, this would be in keeping with the cultural understanding of how it was always unwise to interact with the spirits of the dead.
In this story, however, the actions of the hunter and his wife not only revive the maiden but also relieve her parents of their grief and, presumably, restore them to the community and, further, provide the people with an exceptional healer who goes on to help her people into her old age. Although the hunter, and then the maiden's two other husbands, seem to pay for this with their lives, the overall message of the story is positive, which, generally speaking, is at odds with the Native American understanding of interactions with the spirits of the dead.
As in many Native American tales, however, the obvious interpretation is not always the correct one. This story, like many others of the Sioux and other Native American nations, offers many different possibilities of meaning, and ultimately, it is up to an audience to arrive at their own conclusion as to what the final message of the piece might be.
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