Before I go on with my story of that very special lariat given me by my childhood friend Sakawa in 1938, I would just like to say that it is not the only special “gift” he gave me.
Sakawa was and gave so much to this life. The tracks he left ran deep. He had always a new surprise, like the time he cut a “Y” shape from the outer branch of a young willow tree, and joyfully showed me how it would turn, as if alive, when held in a certain way in both our hands as we walked forward and back, from side to side, thereby designating a certain spot or area where “her spirit” talked to us through the willow branch.
He would explain, “here she is.” “Her” and “she–” the spirit, was the way he almost playfully described an event of “water witching” or other terms which would leave anyone mostly dumbfounded and wide-eyed.
At times we walked with our mustangs following us like dogs and he would all of a sudden say “obsidian,” savoring, it seemed, each syllable. Ob…sid..i…an! As I’ve mentioned in our website Sakawa came to our homestead for my Aunt Amy’s tutelage. His English was better then than mine.
He would always pick up the obsidian and keep it, sometimes chipping it from the stone outward, bringing it to a cutting edge. Native Americans used obsidian and flint nodules, amazingly for various cutting, scraping tools, and, of course, arrowheads.
In med school I learned about the importance of minerals to our bodies. Well, rocks ARE minerals, and obsidian is therefore both a rock and a mineral. Now while I was a fairly good med student absorbing all this and more, I could not help wondering how much Sakawa knew about that one “rock” when he would gleefully spot one so distinctly as he utters “ob…sid..i…an.”
It’s a shame that our Early American History have portrayed Native Americans as little else but savages. We stole their lands, broke virtually every treaty we had with them. The “Trail of Tears” was worse than the Bataan Death March of World War II. And the killings at Wounded Knee were unspeakable and beyond reason. Shame.
I try to make the effort at amends where I can for I knew differently.
-DM
Posted on November 12th, 2007 by dogmaste
Filed under: Memoirs