I had dreams like that, too, CatLady. Fortunately, some of them I've managed to fulfill. When I was a kid, we used to play cowboys and Indians, and I always wanted to be an Indian. I don't know why. I must have read somewhere how Indians could walk quietly
through the woods without snapping a stick, and I'd practice this. We lived, until I was 12, in an area of Philadelphia that was near Fairmout Park, the Wissahickon Valley, which had Indians on the land before I was born. There was a statue of the last Indian who decided rather than leave his land to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff into the Wissahickon Creek below. I hear now that park is dangerous, but when I was a kid, I ran wild in it. I hiked the trails, played in the small tributary creeks, ice skated at Valley Green, rode horses
through the hill trails.
In 1988, Bill & I traveled west from NYC to go live in California. But we drove a circuitous route, stopping to see anything interesting in our path. For most of the trip, I planned our route and what we stopped to see, but after a little while, I asked Bill what he'd like to see, and he said the site of Custer's Last Stand. So we went there. It's in Montana. We viewed the site and the grave markers set out where the soldiers fell, then went to the info center to hear a talk by an Indian on their side of the story. BTW, the speaker mentioned that just down the road, at Crow Agency, Montana, was an Indian powwow. We decided to go see it. We had a travel trailer hitched to the back of an old but stalwart 1975 Plymouth Valiant. It had been
through the wars of NYC and had some dents and rust, but it was a sturdy car, and it pulled the trailer across the country and served us well for a while afterward.
So we went to the Crow Indian Festival at Crow Agency, Montana. It cost us $5 to get in, and then we could stay as log as we wanted, which meant a week. We saw many dances, which were competitions, and here's a fairly representative video.
Crow Nation Pow Wow 2011.wmv - YouTube
There were booths with people selling stuff, and the food booths interested me a bit more than those that offered quick fixes for the costumes. I learned about Indian fry bread, which I love to this day, though you can't find it often in this area.
We watched the dancers and drummers and singers, and I recorded some of the music on my portable box radio with dual tape deck. I got into the music, which at first sounded too alien but after several days of continuous listening, grew on me. We stayed up one night till the end, and then they had something called the Serenade and 49. That meant that the last group playing, which was older men -- I think the younger groups that might have actually had more energy to go on longer deferred and left so the old guys could be the last -- walked from tent to tent, playing and singing at a very late hour outside the tents till they got a small token, sort of like trick or treat.
We went back to our trailer after, to find a woman rapping at our door. She was an Apache visiting and staying at a motel somewhere, and she wanted us to drive her there. We obliged, and then had to find our way back in the darkness to the place where the festival was. I don't know how we did it, but we got to her motel and back. The next day, I saw that woman and waved to her, and she acted like she had never seen me. I asked a Crow woman sitting next to me in the bleachers, and she said Apaches are all crazy, and that's why. This lady had befriended me and explained things about the dancing, etc.
One day we walked through a field to go see the rodeo. They warned us that there were rattlesnakes, so I wore combat boots that at least protected my ankles. We didn't see any snakes. There was an arena with bleachers, and we sat to watch the usual rodeo stuff. One thing that impressed me was that one guy, riding the bareback broncs, had his horse fall, and when the horse rose again to his feet, the guy was still on his back!
To me, this embodied the Indian's way. Stick it out. Don't give out. Be the last one standing, even if it kills you. It's a good way to die. Not in bed but with your boots on.
Alice shes a big 2 Yr old.....shes helping me type.....lol....
