Each one must learn for himself the highest wisdom. It cannot be taught in words… Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams.
Chief Smohalla to Captain E.L. Huggins as quoted in Dreamer Prophets of the Columbia Plateau:Smohalla and Skolaskin, Ruby, Robert H and Brown, John A.
A recent trip to our local library introduced me to a pictorial book about Native American faith and religious practices. It wasn’t a large book. As someone who descends from European and Cherokee Christian missionaries to Native Americans in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, I picked it up and flipped through the pages. A brief article on the Native American Dreamer Religion caught my attention. It briefly mentioned Chief Smohalla (~1815 – 1895) and his followers who predated the Ghost Dance movement but were instrumental in warning their tribesman against adopting “the White Man’s ways.”
My curiosity grew as I learned more about Chief Smohalla through web searches and through the book Dreamer Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin, written by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown.
Smohalla’s quote above about how wisdom comes to us in dreams and men who work cannot dream really spoke to me and to the modern day pilgrim on their spiritual journey. Some may look at the works, faith, beliefs and practices of Smohalla and his followers, Skolaskin and his followers, Wovoka and those he inspired with the Ghost Dance prophecies and practices and think that all these were in vain. Their actions and beliefs were to no avail. They only further prolonged the suffering of Native Americans and inflamed white animosity towards them.
Some, 120 years later, as global warming advances at a fast pace, as our carbon foot print has made so much impact on the earth, as the pursuit of “happiness” in a capitalistic culture further and further reveals that someone always “wins” at the expense and cost of others, were their practices and the intent with which they worshipped and dreamed and danced in vain?
What if without their practices, their teachings, the spiritual effects of their actions, 120 years later there was no voice crying out for protecting the earth, for honoring and protecting the cosmos from the harms of mankind seeking only personal gain? What if their actions are the the very things that helped spark and bring forth the modern Earth Day celebration observed this past week? What if their actions and the affects of their actions are the very reason some still learn that wisdom, still capture glimpses of that highest wisdom that comes to us in dreams? What if, the very reason why some of us are still “dreamers” walking along that spiritual path and journey, still dreaming despite living lives further removed from the rhythm of life of nature, the cosmos that our ancestors lived and knew is because of the actions of these dreamer-prophets?
Chief Smohalla, thank you for your wisdom and mission and sharing it with the world as your people struggled to maintain some control over their vanishing way of life as American settlement spread west and into the Pacific Northwest of the United State. Chief Smohalla, dream for us, teach us to dream and learn that highest wisdom from God. Chief Smohalla, pray for us.