Rubbing Ceremony

The Rubbing Ceremony was part of the initiation to the seventh, Nunaha'wu degree of Arapaho warrior society. It involved drawing the initiate's name in wet clay, then pouring water over it until it was erased. At the same time, family members would sing the individual out of existence by skipping their names in the song of ancestors. In the rhythmic language of the Arapaho, a nonsense exclamation like e'yahe'eye or he'e'e would be said in place of the initiate's name until the song flowed over the person's place in it. The ritual mimicked the self-erasure of Grandfather Paradox from history, and the Nunaha'wu song-patterns resembled the rhythmic codes later used by the Faction to subvert the open door portals of the Great Houses. The Arapaho tribe learned this ritual by their involvement in Faction Paradox's Native American Remote experiments. (PROSE: The Book of the War)