Excerpt from "The World We Used to Live In" (Vine DeLoria, Jr.)
The World We Used To Live In
By Vine Deloria Jr.
Chapter 5 - The Land and the Cosmos
Among the powers granted to medicine people were relationships with the land, the plants, and the elements. Over the generations, different tribes learned to coordinate their activities with the forces and entities of the natural world, and they produced an amazing knowledge of how the larger world functioned. Thus the Osage and Pawnee planted their corn and then moved the whole village westward in search of game. When a certain flower turned colors, they packed up their camp and the meat they had dried during the hunt and went back to the villages. When they arrived, their corn was ready for harvest. One could say that they had an intimate knowledge of the flora over a 500- to 600-mile radius, since they ensured that their activities were nicely dovetailed with what the plant people were doing in their growth and death cycle.
Stories abound in which certain plants talk to people or appear in dreams to inform humans of their uses. If this were not so, we would have to imagine that through tedious trial and error, knowledge of plants was formed. That may have worked for plants easily located, but what about plants that had no visible presence? How did the people know that they were there or that they were useful? John C. Ceremony reported on the plant knowledge of Sons-in-Jah, an Apache who demonstrated that his tribe’s knowledge quite easily encompassed all the plants of the immediate environment.
Sons-in-Jah and Desert Potatoes
There appeared to be no herbage whatever on the spot. The earth was completely bare, and my inexperienced eyes could detect nothing. Stooping down he dug with his knife, about six inches deep, and soon unearthed a small root about the size of a large gooseberry. “Taste that,” said he; I did and found it excellent, somewhat resembling in flavor a raw sweet potato, but more palatable. He then pointed out to me a small dry stalk, not larger than an ordinary match, and about half as long. “Wherever you find these,” he added, “you will find potatoes.” This was in October, and a few days afterward the field was covered with Indians digging these roots, of which they obtained large quantities.
There was another kind of knowledge, the province of the medicine people over and above the sophisticated plant knowledge shared by all members of the tribe, and if we cannot credit superior knowledge with an initial revelation to a medicine person, we can see in the stories a special kind of knowledge about plants that manifested in spectacular fashion. This power enabled the medicine people to grow a kernel or seed to its full maturity in a matter of hours. This knowledge was apparently widespread, because we find stories about it in many tribal traditions.
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Vine DeLoria, Jr. (1933-2005), was a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, lawyer, professor, theologian, historian, author, and activist-leader. He was first educated at reservation schools, then graduated from Iowa State University in 1958 with a degree in general science. He served in the United States Marines Corps from 1954 through 1956. Originally planning to be a minister like his father, Deloria earned a theology degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 1963. In 1970 he earned his law degree from University of Colorado. (Wikipedia) During his exceptionally prolific career Mr. Deloria wrote more than 25 books, taught in university, served as a pivotal executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian. His extensive written works are held in the highest regard today. The World We Used to Live In, his final work, “takes us into the realm of the spiritual and reveals through eyewitness accounts the immense power of medicine men.” The World We Used to LIve In is published by Fulcrum Publishing. Learn more / purchase here. This excerpt is part of our Fall 2021 collection, Sacred Relationship, exploring the Native American sense of sacred relationship with Earth’s other living creatures.
