The Name of the Brave

Mountains of purple and orange were visible far across the flat brushland when the Indian boy emerged quietly from his teepee. It was essential that he not wake his father and mother and especially his little brother, who would most certainly want to tag along on this, the most important journey of his life. He wanted to slip away alone and unnoticed from his village.

The air was cool and crisp and the village was peaceful, quite a contrast to the events of the preceding evening. Demanding ritual and wild celebration had marked this boy’s thirteenth summer. Tribal law dictated that in order to become a ‘brave’, to pass from boyhood to manhood, one must complete a series of tests administered by other members of the tribe.

It was with a great deal of pride that the boy walked stealthily through the slumbering village. He had passed all of the tests including the final gauntlet run where everyone in the village had lined up in two long parallel rows; men, women, and children, each armed with sticks, rawhide whips, and thorned branches. Approximately one hundred paces separated the beginning and the end of the gauntlet. The boy had to run the distance without stopping. Failure would result in humiliation and a life of working with the squaws and never hunting or fighting with the other braves.

Although bloodied and beaten, the boy did not – could not – be driven to that humiliation. He took all of the blows designed with every intention of stopping him and fell to the ground only after passing the last of the men in the gauntlet. (The strongest braves were situated last in the gauntlet line.) With blood spilling from every part of his body and welts rising where blood was absent, the boy stood to his feet and raised both fists skyward and through swollen lips gave the exultant shout of a triumphant warrior!

Women picked up the boy and carried him to the “Big Running Water” where he was scrubbed from head to foot to signify a washing away of the old nature, and then applied the bright red, black, and white war paint. He had never been prouder. The women then retired with the children to their teepees and, for the first time, the boy was allowed to sit among the men of the tribe and smoke from the ancestral pipe passed from man to man as it had been passed from generation to generation.

The boy wrapped his newest possession, a band of deer hide with a copper clasp and a long gray eagle feather, around his long, raven-colored hair and set out on the final leg of his adventure. He would walk a day’s trek toward the “Great Mountain” where the ‘sun goes to rest’ and receive the “Name of the Brave” from the Great Spirit.

Until then, he had been known only as ‘boy’ just as every other boy in the tribe, but having passed the tests devised by his tribe, he would now be given an Indian warrior’s name along with a mission and a blessing to be given by the Great Spirit. Simply, he was told to remain in the wilderness until the Great Spirit provided his new name, and that he would know when the Spirit came to him. With some trepidation but a great Faith, the boy stepped into the unknown.

The day’s travel was long, hot, and uneventful and the boy felt very lonely. He saw no living creature, only much flat land and scrub brush. Toward the end of the day, he was tired and hungry and longed to return to his family and especially to the meal that he knew his mother was preparing. But he also knew that he must return only after having seen or heard a sign from the Spirit. The boy’s father was the Chief of his people and he would know if the boy returned prematurely, and the rewards that had been so courageously obtained would be taken away.

When the light of day began to creep away behind the Great Mountain, the boy chose a protected spot in the foothills near a high rocky outcropping. In the shelter of these gray rocks, he built a small fire with the dry brush and the flint rocks he always carried in a deerskin pouch. Soon he lay down near the fire and slept.

He awoke to the sounds of deep, rolling thunder and found that the clear blue sky of yesterday’s journey had been replaced with thick, dark gray – almost black – ominous clouds. He could not see the Great Mountain, but in that direction, flashes of bright yellow “Arrows of Fire” frequently connected Land and Sky.

The fire that he had built the night before was now only dark, smoky ashes and as he turned toward the high rocks at his back, his eyes and ears together warned him of immediate peril. He was frozen with terror at the sight and sound of a coiled rattlesnake on the rocks only a few feet from him about chest high and ready to strike!

His heart pounded and he wanted to run but he was mesmerized by the snake’s rattle, its slowly weaving head and flickering forked tongue, and he was unable to move. The boy knew the snake’s bite was deadly. He had seen a horse die within minutes after a snake attack. No longer did he remember the events of the days past or his family or his pride in his accomplishments. All he sensed now was an instinctive fear of Death.

He thought of what his father had taught him about Death – that every brave must face the “Bringer of Death”, and one’s position in the “Life After” would be determined by how he responded to Death. Some day the Great Spirit would cover all the land with the Great Net and those who were deemed worthy would be taken up in the net to a place of Happiness and Beauty.

But these thoughts did not stop the boy’s fear or the snake’s anger. It happened in only a moment, only a twinkling of an eye, but the boy saw it all slowly, as though it occurred over many minutes. The snake struck, its long muscular body reaching toward the boy, its fangs bared toward the boy’s heart. And in that same moment an “Arrow of Fire” from the Great Spirit pierced the deadly rattler and the force of the powerful bolt from the sky knocked the boy down and he was overcome by darkness.

When he awakened this time, the skies were clearing and his first vision was of the Great Mountain’s face reflecting the rays of the sun and he felt a cool breeze upon his skin. He remembered the snake as though it had been a “Dream of Evil” but a burning sensation on his chest reminded him that the Great Spirit had visited. He looked down to the burning and saw a mark seared into his skin in the likeness of a striking snake and an “Arrow of Fire”.

The boy rose to return to his People. He would someday replace his father as the tribal chief of a great people and become a famed warrior and a compassionate but powerful leader of the braves. The name given by the blessing of the Great Spirit in the Indian language translated as “Arrow of Fire Which Brings Death to the Great Snake”, but when the White Man arrived many moons later, he would spread the name of the Great Indian Chief with the tattoo emblazoned on his chest. In the White Man’s tongue, the brave would become a legend called –

LIGHTNING SNAKE!!!