I have gotten a little
into Native American studies while down here in Myrtle Beach this winter.
Completed a book on Native
American philosophy and am now slowly plodding through a book on the Lakotas,
who claim the Black Hills are theirs. I have some Indian blood in me and
so I am not insensitive to their plight, but Indians used to go to war and take
land away from each other all the time. The Lakotas were farther east and
as they were pushed west they actually took the Black Hills away from another
tribe and were only its claimants when the whites finally wanted to get it away
from them because they wanted gold and the mountain lifestyle.
My mother loved Indians because she was born on a reservation she
said at Wisner, Nebraska. She collected Indian art and they passed on to
me. The four prints by John Clymer include two of my favorites, one of a
Sioux proudly parading some horses past his village, and the other an Indian
war or hunting party return home in cold weather. Clymer painted ice hanging
down from the horses heads to show the cold. Very nice piece. Back
in little LA I used to rotate them. Hanging the Sioux camp in the living
room in summer and then the winter scene would replace it in winter while the
other moved to a back bedroom.
But another print I have
shows Chief Joseph at the top of a hill and his people strung out behind him as
he attempted to lead them across Idaho and Montana into Canada. A very
historic epic and another art piece I have come to admire more as I study
Indian history.
One of the translations
of Chief Joseph'es Indian name is Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, or Thunder
Rising up the Mountain. He was chief of a Nez Pierce band in Wallowa in
eastern Oregon
I guess Indians had long
imaginative names sometimes. One chief was called Man Afraid of His
Horses but in reality the Indian phrase was something like Man Whose Horses
Cause Fear and Trembling.
When I was reading my
Native American philosophy one night I came across a statement by Cochise -
Like Ironweed, who once said
"You must speak straight
so that your words go as sunlight into our hearts".
I wish I could think and
write like that.
Indian historian Kent Nerburn notes that Indians would be slow to speak because they would take time to reflect over what they were going to say. And they wanted to say it well.
