Gift or Wishful Thinking?

I’ve been on and off sick for the last six weeks or so. On the Fourth of July I was not feeling great—fever, chills, tired. We had a potluck with some friends, roasted marshmallows, shot off fireworks—you know, the usual good American fun minus the guns. (As a kid our Fourth of July included John Phillips Sousa marches played loudly, fireworks, a cookout, and the shooting of the family guns.) As the party carried on, I got into bed. While in bed it occurred to me that I hadn’t done a few things that might have an effect on my illness—things my Creek Indian friends have taught me to do. One was to put some tobacco in the fire, which would carry a prayer to the Creator above. A second was to leave a treat outside for the Little People and also some tobacco and a prayer of thanks for the firewood. The Little People are the keepers of the natural world and they can really mess with you if you don’t respect them and Nature.

As I got back into bed my mind immediately went to a series of images that kept coming and coming. I tried my best to keep track of them and remember them and I finally had to “look away” because it was all too much to keep up with. The images and their sequence made perfect sense from the perspective of a Creek worldview. I saw things that I learned about at the ceremonial grounds and read about in Creek sacred narratives.

These are things that are the subject of my professional study, so they are things I have thought a lot about, written about, and taught students about. For the past several years I have been trying to understand contemporary but traditional Creek understandings of the cosmos and how things work—I’ve been trying to learn how to see the world like an Indian. My reasoning, and this is by no means unique or new, is that theirs is the mental framework that created the archaeology and imagery I study so theirs is a useful worldview from which to understand and interpret the remains of Creek Indian pasts.

So I am left wondering. Was this really something from another reality revealed to me? Or was this a product of a feverish mind filled with these images and ideas and therefore primed for such a vision? One could argue that I have predisposed myself for something like this because I have tried to learn, understand, and even practice the ideas of a modern traditional Creek world view. Is this something I planted in my head and manufactured through my desire to think like an Indian?

Now if I wasn’t Mr. Whitey McWhitebread, this wouldn’t even be an issue. If I was an Indian, there is no reason why I couldn’t have and believe such a vision. If you abandon the whole Indian-Non-Indian thing, then it really doesn’t matter. I am taught that the Fire (the ceremonial fire is the embodiment of the community and its connection to the Creator and Power) draws anyone who is open and willing to it. Therefore, I am no more or less predisposed than any other person who understands this stuff. If I am to think like an Indian, then the most reasonable thing to do is accept that this was a gift to me and that it is something to which I should pay attention and from which I should learn.

Honestly, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen things that I think came to me from somewhere else. My first teacher and mentor, Jim Hatch, visited me not long after he died, someone visited me during the time I was converting to Judaism, and I went on a vision quest in my sleep not long after I participated in a traditional Lakota Inipi ceremony. Maybe all of these things are just creations of an active and creative subconscious—wishful thinking. I choose to think otherwise...because it makes life a hell of a lot more interesting.

In case you were wondering if it was possible for me to do a post without mentioning my bike, I’ll just say that it was in my vision, too.