Day 24

Coteeakun went on to say that some day Saghalee Tyee would again overturn the mountains and so expose these bones, which, having been preserved so long a time, would be reoccupied by the spirits which now dwell in the mountain tops, watching their descendants on earth and waiting for the resurrection to come. The voices of the spririts of the dead can be heard at all times in the mountains, and often they answer when spoken to.   From James Mooney's report on the Ghost Dance religion, 1896

Originally published in 1896, James Mooney's book, The Ghost Dance religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 was commissioned by the Bureau of Ethnology. A government at war with the continent's original inhabitants, and faced with an expanding population of white people in a hard to police frontier who often simply took lands that were allotted to the natives by federal treaty had hired Mooney to report on a new religion among the natives.

This was a religion that risked bringing all native tribes together under a common cause. a religion that forbade drinking alcohol, that urged a return to ways of life before the white man arrived. The report Mooney issued is a comprehensive book, full of long passages of quotes from all concerned regarding starvation, theft of lands, massacre and hope.

That James Mooney wrote a book so sympathetic to the Natives, a book that really painted the sorrow of the defeated natives, in a context we would now call Genocide, is remarkable. That it was commissioned by the United States government is more remarkable still. Imagine Hitler's regime commissioning a history of the Gypsies in Germany, or a history of Jews that was sympathetic towards the subject.

I had this book years ago, and since had lost it. It is full of poetry, of stories, pictures and diagrams. It goes at length to provide an understanding of the mentality and world view of the Native American. Shortly before I left for the desert, a friend gave me his copy, and I brought it with me as a research book. I read it at night after driving and hiking all over the desert and mountains all day.

As it turns out, this new religion of the Natives swept through this area, and the tribe indigenous to Death Valley indeed practiced The Ghost Dance Religion at one point.

The picture above, taken two mornings ago, is of a volcano crater about 45 minutes north of where I stay. I drove there with both cameras at dawn. After hiking to the summit, I sat on the edge of abyss, looking into its variations of rock, color and sand. I began thinking of the Father and the Mother, the sun and the earth. I sat still for a while, when two ravens landed near me. I made clicking sounds with my tongue and they started to walk around me in opposite directions. Not once did they fly, but when I made a different sound with my throat, one of them would hop. Sometimes they would stop, and peck around for something to eat, sometimes to rest under a small bush. It took about 50 minutes of me sitting still, the morning sun warming my back, but they made a full circle around me. I bade them a good day, got to my truck, and rode down the mountainside