Native American Wisdom

"Comforter" by Lee Bogle
And Words From The Heart

Love and the cycle of life were sacred matters to the Native American. Knowledge about his world was passed to an Indian child by his parents and tribal elders, but his true wisdom came from visions, dreams and the whispers he heard from every living thing and element with which he came in contact during his life.  His heart and ear were always listening for the soft voice of the wind in the pine, the mournful song of the coyote or the gentle laughter that danced on the ripples in the brook.  He heard words in the soft breathing of his newborn child, the stirrings of his sleeping wife, and the wrinkles in the faces of his grandparents.   Everything spoke to him and he held great respect for all life.  Here are a few of my favorite words of wisdom and love.

Apache Wedding Poem

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no loneliness for you;
for now there is no more loneliness.

Now you are two bodies,
but there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,
to enter into your days together.

And may your days be good
and long on the earth

Shaman Song of Uvavnuk,
an Eskimo woman and shaman

The great sea
Has set me adrift
It moves me
As the weed in a great river
Earth and the great weather
Move me
Have carried me away
And move my inward parts with joy.

A Prayer to the Great Spirit

O' GREAT SPIRIT, Whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me!

I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom.

Let Me Walk In Beauty, and make my eyes ever behold 
the red and purple sunset.

Make My Hands respect the things you have made and
my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make Me Wise so that I may understand the things
You have taught my people.

Let Me Learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.

I Seek Strength, not to be greater than my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy---myself.

Make Me Always Ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes.

So When Life Fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you without shame.

Anonymous
Shoshone

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keeping what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Chief Dan George
Coast Salish (Hereditary chief)

My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love.

Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves.

With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.

Anonymous
Canadian Indian Betrothal

Father, I love your daughter, will you give her to me, that the small roots of her heart may entangle with mine, so that the strongest wind that blows shall never separate them.

It is true that I love him only, whose heart is like the sweet juice that runs from the sugar-tree and is brother to the aspen leaf, that always lives and shivers.

Black Elk
Sauk and Fox Brave

During the first year a newly married couple discovers whether they can agree with each other and can be happy---if not, they part, and look for other partners. If we were to live together and disagree, we should be as foolish as the whites.

No indiscretion can banish a woman from her parental lodge. It makes no difference how many children she may bring home; she is always welcome. The kettle is over the fire to feed them.

Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa)
Santee Sioux

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother's recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child's second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother's spiritual influence was supremely important.

Her attitude and secret meditations must be such as to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother.

She wanders prayerful in the stillness of great woods, or on the bosom of the untrodden prairie, and to her poetic mind the imminent birth of her child prefigures the advent of a hero---a thought conceived in the virgin breast of primeval nature, and dreamed out in a hush that is broken only by the sighing for the pine tree or the thrilling orchestra of a distant waterfall.

And when the day of days in her life dawns---the day in which there is to be a new life, the miracle of whose making has been entrusted to her---she seeks no human aid. She has been trained and prepared in body and mind for this, her holiest duty, ever since she can remember.

Childbirth is best met alone, where no curious embarrass her, where all nature says to her spirit: "It's love! It's love! The fulfilling of life!" When a sacred voice comes to her in the wilderness, she knows with joy that she has borne well her part in the greatest song of creation!

Presently she returns to the camp, carrying the mysterious, the holy, the dearest bundle! She feels the endearing warmth of it and hears its soft breathing. It is still a part of herself, since both are nourished by the same mouthful, and no look of a lover could be sweeter than its deep, trusting gaze.

Ten Bears
Yamparika Comanche

My heart is filled with joy, when I see you here, as the brooks fill with water when the snows melt in the spring, and I feel glad, as the ponies are when the fresh grass starts in the beginning of the year.

I heard of your coming, when I was many sleeps away, and I made but a few camps before I met you. I knew that you had come to do good to me and to my people. I look for the benefits, which would last forever, and so my face shines with joy, as I look upon you.

Orpingalik
Netsilingmuit Eskimo (Shaman)

My breath----this is what I call my song, for it is just as necessary to me to sing as it is to me to breathe. I will sing this song, a song that is strong...

Songs are thoughts, sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech no longer suffices. Man is moved just like the ice floe sailing here and there out in the current. His thoughts are driven by a flowing force when he feels joy, when he feels sorrow. Thoughts can wash over him like a flood, making his blood come in gasps, then it will happen that we, who always think we are small, will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves---we get a new song.

Crowfoot
Blackfoot
(His last words before dying)

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is a little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Spirit Voices
Copyright©1997