SACRED GROUND: INDIAN ORIGIN, LEGEND AND SPIRIT

[Music] [Music] The history of this ground, the soil, the fields, the forests, mountains, and rivers. The ground that is now known to us as the United States has become known to us within the unhappy conflict of two different cultures, ours and that of the American Indian. The older of these two cultures, the Indians, began within the ground itself. Every moment of their ancient experience is related to the ground. Our culture began long ago in Europe and only as recently as 1492 did we begin our history on this ground. Attempting to share the Indians ground in a way which we understood so differently created a conflict which has never been resolved. Christopher Columbus in a letter written in 1493 gave his impression of the Native Americans. As soon as they see that they are safe and have laid aside all fear, they are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, they exhibit great love toward others in preference to themselves. In May of6007, at what is now Jamestown, Virginia, 105 people seeking religious and personal freedom established the first English colony and immediately sought help from the Indians. Two years later, Pohatan, the father of Pocahontas and the man responsible for the survival of the colony, spoke with great innocence and wonderment to a thankless John Smith. Why should you take by force from us that which you have by love? Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food? [Music] The great migration from Europe continued. The differences between the two cultures became increasingly marked. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson declared, "It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will be taken from the Indian without his consent." >> Behind the reassuring words, the Indian began to see what was meant as opposed to what was said. Inspired by the philosophy of manifest destiny and urged on by the peculiarly limited view of Christianity, the white man marched across the lands of the Indian. In his message to Congress in 1867, President Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln successor, declared, "If the savage resists, civilization with the Ten Commandments in one hand and the sword in the other demands his immediate extermination. Mint firing a will. [Applause] >> Take no prisoners. >> An entire culture was virtually eliminated in less than 300 years. Those who remain were confined to reservations on strange ground. distant from their ancestral homes. But the white man did not succeed in destroying the Indians instinctual relationship to the ground. The Indians relationship to the ground endures. He has been removed from this ground, but it remains sacred to him. It remains a part of him. And so his existence returns to it for sustenance and guidance forever. >> Our religion is the tradition of our ancestors. The dreams of our old men to us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. Every part of the soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley has been hallowed by some happy or sad event in days gone past. The great chief Seattle spoke those words. You and I celebrate our past. But maybe we celebrate our past without enough awareness of the ground upon which our history has been created. The ground whose own history makes our brief history look microscopic in comparison. The American Indian found his sacred grounds instinctively. Within this land, he found the symbols for the meaning of his life. and he succeeded in answering his questions about himself far better, it seems, than we have done for ourselves. As we visit these places, it will become evident to us what the American Indian knew of his land and what he knew can be recognized by us. The profound relationship of the American Indian with the land began with his origin. The ground was the womb which held him. The earth his mother. But the emergence from the earth was only the start of a long journey for the Indian. There was yet the journey which takes him across the land. The journey which leads him through time. For the Pueblo Indian, his creation and the journey, the obstacles he overcame and the lessons he learned make his history. They are the story of his existence. The Pueblo journey is not measured in decades and centuries. Their journey is a journey of the spirit as much as it is the migration of a people. While they do not know when the journey began, nor if it has yet ended, they do know that it started far north of here above the great plains. The Pueblo recalls in detail all the features of each place along the journey which brought him here. They point to these places to prove that the journey did take place. To the north, in the canyons, cliffs, and mea tops of the four corners area of the southwest, we can recognize the evidence that the Pueblo people's journey did begin within the earth. Their earliest habitations were circular pit houses laboriously burrowed by hand into the earth. [Music] Each day as the Indian emerged from the protective womb of the pit house, he entered into the face of the rising sun. Just as he originally climbed from the dark bowels of the earth toward the sun, so he is reborn each new day. Soon the growing population forced an expansion of the single unit pit house into elaborate multi-level cliff house dwellings. However, the pit house remained in the form of a subterranean ceremonial chamber called aka. As the tribe grew, they moved southward and the world which surrounded them changed. Instinctively, the Pueblo people adapted to this new ground. They shaped and clustered house blocks in the sandy stone of this new land. The openings of these houses still faced the beneficent sun. They incorporated the ka into the house blocks so that the memory of their great journey and their origin would always be with them. Here in these kas the leaders could commune between the world of the living and the spirit world beyond. Eventually the practical world's necessities crowded the ka out into the open. There it continued as an indelible reminder of where the pueblo journey of existence began. This grand ka near cities centuries old in the long abandoned Largo Canyon on the high desert of New Mexico exemplifies a continuing evolution of a people. Here within these sunken walls, people from several surrounding communities could come and satisfy their spiritual needs. Even though the ka's shape and location within the physical world has changed, the feelings it engenders have not. From its beginnings on the side of a cliff far to the north in a small burrowed pit house, the ka evolved into the focal point for the spiritual needs of the Pueeblo people. Here within the walls of this great ka, the Pueblo people can still feel a part of their journey and be content that their migration as a people does in fact have a final destination. [Music] When tribes like the Kya migrated eastward, descending out of their original mountains, they came down onto the great plains of Wyoming. And here on the shore of these plains as their eyes scanned the horizon, they saw in the distance a giant stone tower rising alone and against the vast sky. A quiet invaded the hearts of the immigrants. The sight of this awesome shape stirred images of the unknown and the supernatural in their minds because its presence was unnatural within the calm expanse of the prairie. They recognized it as a bad spirits tower. The Kya knew that they must find an explanation for this tower. For if they did not, they like this unnatural shape would remain forever alien to the plains. Throughout human history, man has explained the unknown to himself by creating legend. For the Greeks, hierarchies of gods wooed and fought one another for the control of man. For the early Christians, the instincts which forced man's behavior took the form of angels. or demons. For the Indian, the spirits which guide him are within the trees, the rivers, within the ground which surrounds him. For all men, the divine was gifted with miracles. This tower rising so unexpectedly from the plains inspired this Kya legend. Eight children were at play, seven sisters and their brother. [Music] Suddenly the boy was struck dumb. He trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, his body covered with fur. There was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified. They ran, but the bear chased after them. [Music] They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It urged them to climb upon it, and as they did so, it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. It reared against the tree and scored the bark with its claws. [Music] The seven sisters were born safely into the sky. They became the stars of the Big Dipper. From that moment and so long as this legend lives, the Kyas have kinsmen in the night sky. These seven stars, as constant each night as the sun is each dawn, assures the Indian that the spirits above, continue to guide him. Having explained the ominous tower to themselves, they were free to cross into the plains where they, like the tower, became masters of the great spaces that surround them. The Yuma, Puma, and Miraopa tribes of the Southwest believed that everything of importance in life, both now and in later worlds, was revealed in dreams. The culture of these tribes was based entirely upon the ability to dream, the knowledge of how to induce dreaming and the interpretation of dreams. [Music] The origin of these tribes is Avikcom, a brooding mountain in the Mojave Desert. The world of these tribes is bordered by Avikcom on the west and a thousand miles to the east encompassed by the crescent-shaped basin formed by the Superstition Mountains, the Hila River, and the vertebraelike Estrella Mountains. This is the valley of the sun. The contrasts of this land are stark and forboding. Superstition and mystery haunt this ground. Here the earth exudes a spiritual and menacing brooding. The ground itself induces dreams. Among the tribes of the Puma, Maricopa and the Yuma, women were many times given the greatest power to dream and from their dreams receive the knowledge, the guidance to lead their tribe. At puberty, a young girl is called by the ancestral spirits and transported in astral projection of dreams to a sacred cave. [Music] [Music] [Music] Her physical and spiritual dream journey will take her through the valley of the sun, over the astrralis where the ashes of the ancestors are buried, to the top of the western face of the superstitions, and among the slender columns that are the petrified bodies of her ancestral people. Here, this chosen girl will be given the power to interpret her dreams and those of her tribe, enabling her to advise and lead her people. The tall spires of the superstitions are sacred ground imbued with the spirits of her forefathers, and they stand in silent vigil, ever watchful over the people. There's a hopey legend that once, long ago, all the tribes were one. They came first upon the land and found but one inhabitant, the creator. They knew they must first ask him for permission to settle. The creator being wise agreed, but with many instructions and prophecies. He instructed that as the Indian migrated across the land, they were to record their history upon the rocks. Because as a creator prophesied, the Indian would one day be conquered by another race. In time, that conquering race would vanish and the Indian writings would remain the voice of the past. Testimonial that this land was for the Indian but had only one rightful owner, the creator. As the tribes divided and migrated across the land, the rock riding sites took their sacred place in the evolving culture. One such place exists at Nuva Hoot in the scorching southwestern desert of Nevada. The red sandstone outcropping at the base covered with ancient rock writings acts as a giant tongue for this mute sacred mountain. Pictorial accounts of important human events are recorded here, preserving the past and awaiting the future on this sacred ground. Like all communication systems, rockwriting was born of necessity. It portrays its message, ideas, and feelings through picture and symbol, patterned and influenced by the sign language common to most tribes. Rock writing served many functions and its usage became important to daily survival. In sign language, fingers of both hands spreading in a senuous downward movement is the sign language symbol for snow. At the base of Nuva a hunt, we find the rockwriting symbol for snow. Its similarity to sign language is obvious. It was then an easy matter to incorporate the symbol for snow with this symbol which means sacred. Literally translated, this rockwriting symbol says to go around both sides and not within. We then have an easily understood pictorial phrase that simply says a sacred place where it snows. The rock writer often used the existing features and positions of the rocks in his message. A crack could indicate a river or canyon. A hump on the surface might be a high place. Nearby, a traumatic event is recorded. It tells of a great drought illustrated by the polywog, the hopy symbol for abundant water and placed next to the symbol for diminish as well as a smaller polywag. The reader interprets the writing as abundant water went away in what is now Washington County, Utah. Another rockwriting sacred ground tells an awesome Indian experience that was recorded on this large panel. It is the pictorial record of the first contact with the white man by a particular tribe of Hopi descendants. It was the Escalante expedition. It was the year of independence for the American colonist. It was 1776. [Music] The detail involved in this panel reflects the Indians apprehension and anxiety that resulted from this encounter. Although it translates as a peaceful initial meeting and adheres to the Spanish diary of the same incident, the Indian viewpoint has a sense of anticipation and wonderment. Leave your history on the rocks, for another race will conquer you, but will someday vanish and this land will again be yours and have but one rightful owner. For according to many of the old men, all that has happened was prophesied. But for the Indian, the prophecies are not yet fulfilled. The rocks have yet to speak all that they know and have yet to fulfill their sacred destiny. [Music] Many of the Indian sacred grounds are located at places which rise above the rest of his land. These high places put him closer to the spirits and strengthen his opportunity to appeal to the gods. The Indians need to communicate with his creator and the spirits above send him to those places which reach up from the earth into the sky. At these elevations, he is exhilarated by the sight of his physical world below and by the presence of the spirit world around him. [Music] Highest of the sacred high places are the volcanic peaks which rise above the clouds in the Pacific Northwest. Here, no matter how far the Indian travels, the great mountain watches him. He knows that the benefits he receives and the calamities which befall him originate within the spirit of the great mountain. These mountains are not climbed by the Indian seeking communication with the spirits. These mountains are the spirits. [Music] It is said that these great spirit mountains once fought among themselves for power. The collapse of their volcanic summits is explained by the battles between the spirits in which the conqueror broke off the heads of the other mountains so that the sun put a light upon his head earliest each dawn. [Music] All men are stirred by the sight of high places. The Indian knows these heights for the spirits which can be reached from them or for the spirits which they are. He knows these high places will always be in his horizon because they are eternal. [Music] [Applause] [Music] in their relationship to the land. The difference between the white man and the Indian is that the white man wishes to be dominant upon the landscape. The Indian is but one of the many living creatures within a universe of living things. The white man is moved by nature as is the Indian. But when the wind blows through a forest, the Indian does not hear its sound. He hears the voice of a spirit which speaks to him. Now, finally, we've become conscientious in our efforts to preserve those very things which the Indian fought to save not so very long ago. We've learned from the wisdom of an older people the value of the earth, the sacredness of the ground.