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A few years ago, Mr. Tucker, a neighbor of the Carters in Boydton, wrote a Letter to the Editor stating that Mr. Coles, my children’s Ancestor, was an Indian, he used to eat turtle hearts raw to make him strong.
I bought a book yesterday, “Keeper of the Female Medicine Bundle,” a biography of Wihopa, a Santee lady in SD. The Santee are particularly interesting for us, since they were living here in NC at the time of contact, allied to the Catawba. Some have told me that some left and went out west and became a band of the Dakota/Lakota people. They were at Little Big Horn. (A people of rare foresight I would say. They went from being the first to go down, to being the last.)
In this book, on p. 17, I quote:
Interviewer: You have so many turtles [figures] around, why?
Harvey: A turtle is a symbol of long life. They are hard to kill.
Interviewer: Harvey is right. One day we cut a turtle into pieces and the heart was still pounding.
Harvey: We butchered one once. They tell the story that if you swallow the live heart you would be brave. So we did — we swallowed the heart and it was beating when we did this.
If it can be demonstrated that this belief is unique to the Sioux, or even unique to the Santee, we will have found strong evidence that the Indian families remaining near Occoneechee Island were in fact Siouan.
Anybody ever heard anything about this?
Linda,
I think it likely similar customs crossed lines with other tribes.
Is it known with certainty the Santee Sioux came from the East? Where are records of the migration? If so that would be very intereting.
vance
Their web page makes no claim of migrating from South Carolina, but they have the exact same name . . . odd . . .
also
http://www.500nations.com/South_Dakota_Tribes.asp
Flandreau Santee Sioux
Post Office Box 283
Flandreau
SD 57028-
(605) 997-3981
Fax: 997-3878
vance
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