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INTRODUCTION
The imminent Corps of Discovery bicentennial observances offer an excellent opportunity for us indigenous people to learn about non-indigenous people and for them to learn about us as a contemporary presence. After more than 500 years, both groups still have a lot to learn about each other.
I think the first thing non-indigenous people in this country have to learn is that American history did not begin with Columbus, and Western American history did not begin with Lewis and Clark. (However, I do have it on good authority that South Dakota history did begin with the completion of Mt. Rushmore and that the date will be revised when the Crazy Horse monument is completed.)
We Cheyenne people encountered Lewis and Clark in 1804 along the Missouri River in present day North Dakota, but that's not when our history began. For us Cheyenne people, this initial contact with a different culture was equivalent to what happened to us Americans on September 11, 2001. This 1804 encounter launched irreversible and, sometimes, catastrophic changes for the Cheyenne people and, indeed, for all of the indigenous people of this land.
PROPHECIES FULFILLED
Long before Lewis and Clark arrived, our Cheyenne prophet, Sweet Medicine, predicted much of what has happened to the Cheyenne and to other indigenous people.
As most Cheyennes, I have heard stories about Sweet Medicine's prophecies ever since I was young. Sweet Medicine prophesied the coming of the white race and of the horse and cattle. He said that we would adopt many of the things and many of the ways that the white man brought to us, and when we did so, we would lose our culture. We would eat the quivering meat of the white man's cattle, and we would quiver like that meat. We would eat sweet water (sugar) and become lost because of it. He predicted the coming of fast transportation. Pointing to some distant hills, he said that we would be able to reach them in less than a day. Much of what he predicted has come to pass.
There was a time when a non-traditional Cheyenne like me, even though my first language is Cheyenne, could neither talk nor write about Sweet Medicine. He was that holy. However, since non-Cheyennes...