drift

I've been carrying this photo on my cell phone for weeks. 

It was with me when I flew to NYC and spent timeless days with others not of this earth and  yet entirely of this earth. Why did I go and what happened to me while I was out there? Before I could determine the answers I came home to family fighting floods and spent an evening gauging atmospheric conditions in our tornado-ripened sky (when do we dive into the crawl space for shelter??) All the while this quote I found hanging in the Western Heritage Museum staying with me. 

How does this feel -- to follow one another out of this world? And what of the text left unwritten: And into the next world.

How did the Northern Cheyenne end up in Montana? History tells us they drifted. The Chippewa were pressed west, which pressed the Sioux further west, which displaced the Chaa to areas in North Dakota where they could still occupy fixed villages, make pottery and practice agriculture. And then came the day they were driven into the plains, losing their arts and learning instead to become roving buffalo hunters in order to survive.

To this day, in sacred ceremonies, the spiritual keeper of stories tells how it came to be that the tribe lost the corn upon being forced to live after leaving their eastern country. 

If you study the stories of Dull Knife and the Northern Cheyenne, you will be told how the Indians drifted. Did they, do we, do I? Underneath the buffalo-hunter's robes is the spirit of a roving corn-planter.