Two Bundles, Two Keepers, and What Neither Is Shown

Cheyenne religious life is anchored by two sacred bundles, the Sacred Arrows, Mahuts, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat, Esevone, each entrusted to a keeper who holds it on behalf of the whole Cheyenne nation. Neither bundle is photographed or displayed for a general audience, and this article does not describe their appearance or how a keeper handles them. What can be said is their place in Cheyenne history and public ceremonial life: the Arrows are renewed in the Arrow Renewal ceremony, one of the longer continuously observed rites on the North American Plains, and the Sun Dance stands alongside the bundle rites as a major yearly observance.

The keeper's office is personal, passed on according to Cheyenne custom rather than by outside appointment, and it has continued through the nation's forced removal from the Northern Plains and the later division between the Northern Cheyenne of Montana and the Southern Cheyenne, now joined with the Arapaho in Oklahoma. That two communities separated by relocation still maintain their own ceremonial life around the bundles and the Sun Dance is itself the public fact worth recording, a religion that survived removal by continuing to practice, not by publishing what it practices.