Societies & Their Purpose with Dennis Fox Jr.

The first society that I was inducted to was the Antelope society and I have and all had an Uncle Dean P Fox who held a position in that society the Antelope society and that is Grant’s grasp that society that was purchased from the Dakota Sioux over in Devil’s Lake Spirit Lake they call it and we practiced that today we pray we carry on a ceremony that has been handed down from generation to generation since the time of the purchase to make sure things go good and that when people do a celebration and they have a good ceremonial aspect to it and they maintain the traditions of that grasp that’s to make sure that things go right and we pray for everybody when that happens we carry on that ceremony I hold the death stick my uncle held a dance stick or a drum stick and there’s four drumstick carriers in the society and when he passed away they usually go to the family and say is there what do you want to do in this case the family got together and said we would like Dennis to step forward and take that position so we went through the purchasing of that position from the society when you when you a position is within a society yet and somebody passes away that automatically goes back to the society and so you have to purchase that from the society to keep the battling men I’ve been bees I’ve been on that society for 20-some years I think and then the next society the blackmail Society was kind of a revitalization of that society the Society actually died out the last blackmail Society member that was told to me was Rufus Stevenson of shell Creek and that’s a Police Society for the mad Dan’s and Haddad says you’ve been there Rick Ross you know they don’t claim it I argue with the chairman all the time about grant but within that the blackmail Society was created by good furred robe way back when at the time the corn bundle of the Mandans was evolving and when that corn bundle was given to us by the spirits in this way that kind of in a spiritual realm that certain things are handed down with that bundle that you got to carry out and there’s there’s three men or three beings at that time that took care of it and that was corn husk earrings good furred robe and uses his head for a rattle and what the one the meant one of the main ones was good furred robe and he created the goose Society which is a woman society that took care of the corn planting in the corn priests and all the things that have to do with that corn bundle and the black Mouth society was created to take care of and police those ceremonies and make sure everybody was safe while those ceremonies happened planting happened the village at the time when they were planting or harvesting that you weren’t involved well to attack so they created that black Mouth Society and the black Mouth Society has become the essential police force or the maintaining of the traditions for the villages in the Mandana doubt the culture and even the reason you say that okay and today upon that revitalization there was an opportunity when we were coordinating the Bice’s or the Quinn Centennial for the Lewis and Clark expedition and the leader at the time the Haddad is a leader in Mandarin mr.Nate Hale asked my uncle Tex who’s been a longtime police officer chief of police to bring together a society the black male society to kind of in an effort to keep people safe and show that we respect our ways and when we had saga’ go via here and we believe that well there’s not all of us believe but there’s a lot of us that believe saga’ Galia came from is from the Haddad’s a nation and when she was when that group was here and she was here at that time there was a black male society and they maintained that order so we asked that Gerald Tex Fox bring together that black Mouth Society again so he there was a lot of preparation that went on and he called upon his wife April Fox and she made us all the uniforms and traditional things that we should wear and we met a number of times for about I’d say a year-and-a-half determining what we were gonna do and how we present ourselves and essentially followed the lead of Gerald text box and the person who asked made Hale to bring back the black Mouth society so there’s a lot of prayers and initiations that we had to go through and figuring things out and reading text books and trying to understand who remembers that history of the blackball society and then we danced in at little show that year of the quinn centenary and that was quite something it was the first time people had seen the black Mouth society and a number of years and I don’t I don’t know exactly how long but since proof or Stevenson passed away but if you look at the pictures some of their stories storica pictures that depict shale Creek in the Hirsch go band and the Haddad’s is that you’ll see that there are black male society members throughout the photos and people are painted up were there in those paintings they’ll have the black Mouth symbolism on them and such and so we’re you really feel honored to be bringing that society back the black Mouth society and so today we don’t have the authority we once did there was there’s a lot of stories of how the black Mouth disciplined people and took care of arguments and went on hunts and if people did do their duty on hunts there was disciplinary actions and if you went on a war society or war went out to war and defended the village and did what you had to do and if you didn’t follow orders they were disciplinary act that youth would have to go through and we don’t essentially do that anymore they’re kind of some laws and such they go along with it but we pray we pray significantly and try to determine how best is our nation sitting today and today we have a real battle with drugs and alcohol and we have endorsed the black Mouth Society has endorsed the drug task force here on the reservation and we even let him use our symbolism because our number one enemy is drugs and we have a couple black Mouth members that are on the drug task force we pray for them they pray for their agents and there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t worry about those agents trying to protect there are people here