Our lives are a series of unfolding stories. Some chapters happen to us whether we like it or not. Others we write ourselves. Our narratives seem routine at the time, not worth a mention, but given time, inspection and introspection they take on meaning, even if just for ourselves. The stories are never dull and we should tell them. This is the way Native Americans created and preserved their rich and beautiful culture. By telling stories around campfires and repeating them often. A coincidental series of events can happen that have a lasting effect on a person. This story is about such a series of events in my life.

It is May 17, 1972. An eventful and tumultuous year.

So far, a Japanese soldier who had lived in the jungles of Guam for 28 years, unaware that World War II was over, finally surrenders. A coal sludge spill kills 125 people in West Virginia. Congress votes to send the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. Arthur Bremer shoots Alabama Governor George C. Wallace. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI and Bob Douglas is the first black man elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. The Vietnam war rages on.

My good friend George Lowman and I are standing at the corner of Barterbrook Road and Greenville Avenue in Staunton, Virginia, my hometown. My mother has just delivered us here. We climb out of my father’s 1957 baby blue, 235.5 cubic inches, Blue Flame I6 powered, 3-speed manual transmission on the column driven, Chevy Bel Air 4-door sedan complete with fender skirts and custom mud flaps.

I speculate that my mother is probably relieved to be rid of my sorry ass for a while. But just for a moment. I know my mother. She’s is my biggest fan.

“Are you sure about this?”, she asked mournfully. “Yes, we are, definitely. I think we are. I don’t know, ask him!”

“Please write and call”, she petitions. “Of course, I will, of course,” I replied. After protective hugs and kisses, she reluctantly gets in that beautiful 1957 Bel Air, drops the gear shift lever into first, eases out on the clutch, gives it too much throttle like she always does and pulls away cautiously. I listened to the gears going through the sequence from first to third and the smooth hum of that Blue Flame I6 as it purrs its way back to Blandford Street. I suspect she is thinking that we will be back in a couple of days after a drenching summer rainstorm does us in.

George and I have just finished out a year of teaching at the Staunton Military Academy, he as an English master, me as a chemistry whisperer. I whispered so the students would not find out just how little chemistry I really know. This year was my first and last at SMA.

SMA has been a fixture in Staunton since 1883 when Captain William Hartman Kable moved it here from Charles Town, West Virginia. Kable, who served in the Confederate Army with distinction in the 10^th Virginia Cavalry, founded the school in 1860 as the Charles Town Male Academy. In Staunton Kable renamed it the Staunton Male Academy and again in 1886 as the Staunton Military Academy. I think in my year at SMA I was using the same chemistry lab apparatus that Kable brought with him from Charles Town. SMA closed in 1973. I hope it didn’t have anything to do with me being there.

By hook or crook, George and I are heading west. This was day one. At the end of our trip ninety days later, we would have hitched our way in cars, trucks, and trains across the mid-west, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Canada, crossing that great country west to east from Calvary, Alberta to Thunder Bay, Ontario, stowed away on a freight train for some of the time.

We could have driven, but the idea of hitchhiking was exciting and rebellious. It was the seventies. Life was wild. Pretty much the way it is now. There were lots of young people hitchhiking across America in those days; hippies, beatniks, Jesus freaks, Rainbow people, veterans, adventurers, homeless folks and clueless guys like us. What could go wrong?

One time west of Boulder, Colorado. We got a ride with two guys in a 1950 F1 Ford pickup truck. They were hauling a teepee to Alaska, where they intended to “homestead”. Yes, one could still legally homestead in Alaska in those times. We jumped into the bed of that truck, gladly accepted a joint thrust upon us by our new friends and once aboard met a fellow hitchhiker, a beautiful young lady traveling with a goat. Not an “old goat” like I am now, but an actual goat.

George and I have fashionable Kelty backpacks fully loaded with space blankets, knives, forks, spoons, the latest Svea white gas backpacking stove, all-in-one cook sets, sleeping bags, extra clothes, rain gear, food, flashlights, whistles, compass, and one-man tents. We carried walking sticks to go with our new walking boots, a copy of Walden, a Rolling Stone Magazine excerpt of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and cash in our wallets. I was carrying a little hash in my back pocket and I don’t mean corn beef. We were fashionable for those days, wearing bell-bottom jeans and tie-dyed tee shirts.

It is a beautiful spring day in the Shenandoah Valley, in this sleepy one-horse town where I grew up. We are heading southwest down Interstate 81, parts of which I helped build in the summer of 1967. Then south on Interstate 81 to Knoxville, TN to pick up westbound Interstate 40. The section of Interstate 64 from Lexington, VA to Charleston, WV had not been built.

No sooner than when that 1957 baby blue, 235.5 cubic inches Blue Flame I6 powered, 3-speed manual transmission on the column driven, Chevy Bel Air 4-door sedan with fender skirts and mud flaps had disappeared around the bend we had our first ride. Not very far. We were grateful though because our chauffeur dropped us off at the interstate entrance in Mint Springs, a good staging spot for our departure.

Thus, we started a grand journey filled with magnificent natural wonders to see, exciting and creative people to meet and exhilarating experiences to have. But this story is about one specific experience, one that I shall never forget. One that is with me still.

On a hot, dusty day in July after an adventure filled trip across Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado George and I found ourselves standing at the junction of routes 26, 132 and 133, a remote crossroads in the middle of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, a place where Eastern Shoshoni and Northern Arapaho Native American tribes call home. We are westbound for Yellowstone National Park. A few cars pass through, occupied by native Americans, but they are all turning south.

The Wind River Reservation is the 7^th largest Indian reservation in America. Of course, it is a mere pittance compared to the original area over which the Shoshoni and Arapaho people freely roamed before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The US government established the reservation in 1868 for the Shoshoni and later the army moved the Arapaho there. Tribal Headquarters are in at Fort Washakie, named after Shoshoni Chief Washakie. Some say, Sacagawea, who guided Lewis and Clark across this region, is interred there, although that is a matter of some debate. There is a marker at an assumed gravesite at the fort.

The US government marginalized these magnificent First People and forced them to live in abject poverty on reservations like this. Our government exterminated the American Bison, the Indian’s primary food resource, and subjugated these once proud people in every way possible. They made Indian children attend government schools and attempted to inculcate them in the ways of the white man. Government agents and others to strip the Indians of every aspect of their cultural history, every aspect of their fundamental rights as human beings. This happened in America in those days. The record is clear on that.

How could this happen? Our government in the mid 19th century dehumanized them. Bluntly put, white people of that time were of the opinion that Native Americans were not human or, more accurately, the “Indian part” of their being was not human. So the government engaged in a policy to “Kill the Indian in him and Save the Man.” When you dehumanize a people, when you say that they are not actually human, it makes it is easier to justify abuse, onerous mistreatment, and theft of their assets, the land, water, sky, plants, and animals.

Today, life on the reservation for them is probably a little better, emphasis on a ‘little bit’, but they are still plagued by poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, underemployment, and crime.

Bad stuff happens when you treat people like savages when you dehumanize them. I had no idea in my youth how badly we treated Native Americans. I’m better informed now.

Back to the present, or past, I suppose. Since no one is going west toward Yellowstone, maybe it’s time to follow the crowd south.

An old beat up Oldsmobile Rocket 88 turns into the crossroad and slows down. I know this car because my father owned one in 1959. I am duly impressed. A Rocket 88 leaves a dramatic impression on one’s memory. The driver, an elderly Native American, stops, smiles and says, “You are going to have a hard time getting a westward ride because everyone going south to Ethete for the annual Sun Dance Ceremony”.

Immediately, scenes from the 1970 movie “A Man Called Horse” leaps into my head, a movie in which Sioux Indians capture John Morris, played by Richard Harris, an English aristocrat traveling in America. Morgan goes through an initiation ceremony in which the Sioux insert eagle talons attached to ropes through the skin over his chest and haul him up in midair and spin him around for a time. For that, he gets membership in the tribe and the native name “Shunkawakan”, (A Man Called Horse), as his Sioux name; and probably an extremely sore chest for a while. I am not particularly interested in being hung by the chest with eagle talons, having a long-established aversion to pain. So, I hesitate about getting into the Rocket.

The driver looks harmless enough though and his broad smile helps allay my anxiety. Anyway, if you’re driving a Rocket 88, no matter how beat up, it’s a sure bet you’re probably not dangerous. His way is pleasant, inviting and full of promise. He offers us a ride to Ethete. George looks at me incredulously and exclaims, “What in the world is happening? We are going to a Native American Sundance Ceremony in the middle of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. What could be better than this?”

My fear of physical pain at the hands of wild Indians melts away.

So, we board the Rocket, which is somewhat like boarding a cruise ship. And away we go Kelty packs and all. Our chauffeur delivers us to the Episcopal St Michael’s Mission in the center of Ethete, a town of fifteen hundred souls, ninety-six percent Native American. Ethete, which means “a good place” in the Shoshone language, grew up around the mission, established by Reverend John Roberts in 1887 to minister to the Arapaho and Shoshone people, who the American government forced to live on the reservation then.

At the time of the mission’s founding, John Roberts had the good sense to seek permission from Shoshone Chief  Washakie to do so. Chief Washakie’s people named Pinaquanah, “Smells-of-Sugar” at birth. Apparently, it was a name he did not particularly like, so he renamed himself Washakie, “Shoots-on-the Run”, in reference to his prowess in battle. It is Chief Washakie who named the new settlement Ethete.

By all accounts Chief Washakie was a remarkable man and so was John Roberts. A white man killed Washakie’s son in 1883 and Washakie vowed revenge against all whites. Roberts offered his own life in exchange for Washakie’s son’s death. This dramatic gesture earned Washakie’s respect for Roberts and Washakie went on to work with Roberts on projects to enhance Indian life including establishing a boarding school for Shoshone girls. Roberts took the time to learn Shoshone customs, beliefs and language. He lived and worked among the Indians. Washakie became an Episcopalian and John Roberts baptized him in 1897. He died in 1900 and John Roberts presided over his burial service.

Roberts built a small log church in the area, which officials moved three miles to the center of the growing settlement of Ethete in 1920 and named “The Church of our Father’s House”. Today several buildings, including the original log church, a former schoolhouse, residences, and a cultural center exist around an oval here.

It is this place, “a good place”, that George and I will call home for the next three days and where, upon exiting the Rocket 88, the first person we meet, a meeting I’m coming to believe that our mischievous chauffeur planned, is St. Michael’s Mission Rector, Davis S. Duncombe, known to the Arapaho and Shoshoni people as NIHOONOE’ET, Yellow Cloud, “The Light After a Storm”.

Father Dumcombe, an attractive and pleasant-looking fellow adorned in a black clerical shirt and white-collar and wearing a mischievous smile, wasted no time. He shakes our hands in a robust fashion as if we were long-lost, friends. His way immediately put me at ease. I felt like I belonged in this place at that moment. His way was trusting, inviting and full of promise.

“Hello and welcome to St. Michael’s Mission”, he says genuinely. “Make yourself at home. Let me show you where you can bed down and put your stuff.” He shows us to the schoolhouse where he assigns bunk beds. Then off we go on a grand tour of the grounds, with Father Duncombe chatting away as he proudly tells us about the mission. Our tour culminates in a visit to the small log church, the “Church of Our Father’s House”, the very same church John Roberts built. Right up to the altar he takes us, where he shows us a small, gem-studded cross that he explains is held in very high esteem by the indigenous people who are congregants of the church. He didn’t know us from Adam. We could have stolen that cross. But then the prospect of having eagle talons affixed to my chest hauled up and spun around crossed my mind.

“We heard about the Sundance ceremony, all very much by accident”, we say. Father Duncombe speaks about the ceremony in detail, its significance to the Natives; how it brings the Arapaho and Shoshone together, two tribes who were traditional enemies. He says the Natives will welcome us to the celebration but, “please, no pictures”.

We find out later that in the mid-19^th century the United States of America banned all Native American religious ceremonies.

The United States of America, governed by the US Constitution which included at that time the First Amendment, adopted in 1791…” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” had summarily eliminated the practice of Native American religion. What part of “make no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” is hard to understand? Remember, when you dehumanize people bad things happen. It was not until 1978 and the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act that Native Americans could freely practice their religion.

So, the ceremony we were about to go see was illegal in 1972.

“Eat, shower, definitely take a shower, rest a while, then I’ll take you to the celebration site”, says Father Duncombe. Yes, without saying it directly, it must have been obvious that we needed showers.

So, just like that, with no planning on our part, we are about to experience a remarkable thing indeed, an actual Native American Sundance ceremony. We hurried through our glorious showers in anxious anticipation of our impending trip to the Sun Dance site. The next three days changed my life. These three days wrote a part of a story I’m telling you now.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2. The Sundance Ceremony.