South Dakota, Cheyenne River Valley

      This life is set among the Indians of the South Dakota.
      My first memory is of standing on a rise, wrapped in a buffalo skin, looking down towards a fall or early winter village on the bank of a small river - the Cheyenne River, north of present day Wasta, SD.
      The trees have already dropped their leaves. The river valley is just a dip in a desert flatland. There are hills off in the distance across the river. The landscape is rolling, except for the floor of the river valley, which is like an oasis.
      It is early morning, with the sun having just risen behind me. The village is beginning to stir. The smoke columns rise from the airholes of the teepees, as the dew-covered wood is lit to take away the morning chill. There are women and children walking back and forth to the river to get water.
      I know that this is not a village of my people. I know that I have come a fairly long way southeast of here, and I know that I have no village or people to which to return. I (now) think my village got sick or starved to death. It has been an early and hard winter for everyone.
      I approach the village hesitantly, since I am not one of them. I am young - late teens/early 20's. I could easily be seen as a threat to the young males of the tribe. But I am hungry and cold, which makes me hesitate a bit less.
      As I get close to the edge of the village, a young maiden, returning from the river with water, sees me and smiles piercingly - apparently I'm not bad looking from the way she looks at me. She does not stop to talk, and continues into the village and into her teepee.
      I continue into the village and find the chief's teepee, as people begin to peek out of their teepees at me.
      I sit on the ground before the chief's tent, and wait.

      Shortly the chief appears from inside and begins the conversation.
      I ask for help, warmth and food. In return, I offer my services to him and his people as a medicine man.
      He asks me what happened to my village.
      I tell him there was no food to feed the people when they became sick, so they died.
      From behind him, I heard a female voice call to him, "Not a very good medicine man, I would say! And we already have our shaman."
      After more conversation, the chief's wife "dictated" that I would not be given shelter in the village, and I was to leave.
      I was given a small loaf and a piece of meat, and sent on my way.
      As I was leaving the village, walking down to the water to get a drink, the maiden whom I had seen earlier came after me, and we began to talk.
      She brought me back to the village to her teepee and took me in.
      I don't quite understand her authority to contramand the chief's wife, but she had it. I think it may have had something to do with who she was, her age and, maybe, her parents. -The concepts are a bit fuzzy.- Whatever it was, I was sponsored into the tribe by her and I settled in with her.
      I soon met the medicine man of the tribe, an old, wisened man. We actually became very good friends. But the medicine man died within the year, and the tribe needed a replacement. I became that replacement.
      By this time, I had proven my usefulness to the tribe and was a welcomed member by most - though I still wasn't welcomed by the chief's wife. (It wasn't until many, many years later that I discovered she'd had a vision, that I would replace her husband as chief.)
      Years passed, and times stayed relatively peaceful.
      Finally, the chief grew old and died. He left behind the wife, who still had a problem with me.
      As much as she fought, the rest of the tribe made me her husband's successor.
      Since she was old and alone, and her husband had been a good friend to me and my wife, I talked with my wife. It was my place to start the conversation, since it was me with whom she had the antagonism. But my wife was willing to go along with the suggestion, since the widow had never treated her, as she treated me.
      We brought her in to live with us.
      Soon, to everyone's surprise, we were getting along very well.
      She later admitted to me that she thought I was among them to take her husband away from the tribe, though she still didn't mention her vision - which, in a way, had come true, though not the way she originally thought it would. She had thought I had cast a spell on him, beguiling him into liking me.
      As she spent more time around me and saw how I and my wife got along, she realized that I was actually straight forward and simple - that I really was the way I had been with her husband.
      She lived with us for the rest of her life and was the grandmother to our natural and foster children. As was custom, we took in children from other families and clans to foster. This sealed agreements, help less well-to-do families, or bound clans tighter.


Lessons:

• Forgiveness for slights - slights are often rooted in one's own misunderstanding of an impression one holds. It may take years to bring it out into the light, but may be worth continuing to try, if you are in a position to tolerate the wait.
• Don't filter your impressions, nor assume disaster - she thought the vision represented a threat to her and hers, when it was just a picture of things to come.
• Indian lore - learned to be a shaman / medicine man.

The chief's wife: Pat, my aunt on my mother's side.

My wife: Pat's best friend, Priscilla, since they were kids.

My children: Natural - Barb and Cyndy from Venezuela. Foster - Tylaurie.