I knew I had heard of something like this before.
Thanks iamnormal, for reminding me where. (A Man Called Horse and Return of a Man Called Horse)
It is called the Sun Dance ritual, and it was (and maybe still is) performed by various Sioux tribes on young men going into manhood.
http://www.bmeworld.com/flesh/suspen...orynative.html
Quote:
Strange as it may seem, the practice of piercing the body and ritually pulling or suspending it to achieve some kind of union with a divine being developed quite independently on the North American continent. The exact time is unknown since there were no written records left by tribal peoples who practiced the custom - only verbal records, stories, told to Europeans in the late 1700s and early 1880s. The most significant chronicler was George Catlin who lived among the Mandan and other plains tribes - painting and writing about their customs in the 1830s. His notes, letters, and sketches indicate that the Mandan, who were not hunters and gatherers and who lived in villages along the Missouri River in what is now South Dakota and North Dakota, were given the O-KEE-PA piercing and suspension as a rite-of-passage by a white man who came down from the mountain.
After many days of complex ritual, young men who were about to become adults and enter adult life were pierced twice in the chest and twice in the back. Under the guidance of an older man who had "taken the journey before" (a Ka-See-Ka), they were then suspended by either set of piercings from the roof of a lodge. In trance, the young men hung from the piercings for about twenty minutes and sought communication with "The Great White Spirit" (Note: subject of the recent movie, MAN CALLED HORSE with Richard Harris). Apparently through the years, neighboring tribes, especially the Arikara and Minnetaree, were exposed to the Mandan's ritual and developed their own piercing rites - often more severe!
Various Sioux tribes (like the Lakota, Oglala, Yellowhand, and Teton) living in the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana also adopted or developed piercing rites - chief of which is called the SUN DANCE in which the pledgers are pierced once or twice in the chest, fastened to a tree or pole and vow to pull against the piercing until the flesh breaks. Again, the object is to enter an extraordinary state and meet an animal ally or the "Great White Spirit" - either as communion, healing or to obtain special knowledge. The Sun Dance played an important part in another recent movie with Richard Harris: RETURN OF THE MAN CALLED HORSE. Both the O-Kee-Pa and Sun Dance rituals experienced by Fakir and Jim Ward in 1982 are also documented in the film DANCES SACRED AND PROFANE by Mark and Dan Jury.
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I've read about the Sun Dance ritual in a few Western novels and it seems the Army outlawed any practice of it back in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
I don't know if it still is illegal or not.
Does anyone here know?