It is hard to imagine any time or place on Earth when so radical a change in the culture or economy occurred in such a short time as occurred on the Great Plains in the two hundred years between the late seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. For ten thousand years before that, humans thrived on the Plains, in Kearney before Kearney. Five hundred generations, fathers to sons five hundred times, made their lives in this place. Those many thousands lived good lives, had all they needed to survive for all those years. That is a remarkable achievement, in ingenuity, adaptability, perseverance. They did what they needed to do to deal with changes in conditions slowly but surely.

They likely had a name for themselves, but without a written record we can only guess what it was. I suspect it was People of the Grass, since that was the constant resource that sustained them. Or maybe it was Tatanka’s People-the grass sustained Tatanka, the buffalo; the buffalo sustained the people. They moved when they needed to, to where the winds blew them. And it worked, for ten thousand years. Maybe this form of the number, 10,000, is more stirring. It’s a long, damn time.

They laughed; they played; they worshiped their gods; they gave gifts; they fought; they moved when they needed to; they stayed when they could. They made love, had babies: generation 118, around 7640 BC; or generation 418, 1640 BC.

I suspect they were smarter than we are. They figured out how to live in a place for 10,000 years. They had formal education, pre-K through Doctoral level. Education, after all, is the passing down from one generation to the next, all the accumulated knowledge they had acquired over the centuries. Life for them was one continuous field trip, on the hunt or around the council fires.

I’m guessing that one day, around 1646, a scout returned to his village near here, and reported to the Eldest Elder, “I saw something today that frightened me. I saw a man riding atop a huge four-legged. It wasn’t one of the Pawnee. He would have waved. This rider looked different. And the four-legged, it was much taller than any man I have ever seen.” All the men of the village gathered around the council fires that night. They agreed that was a disturbing report and that they should be watchful and prepared.

That man was a Lakota Sioux, pushed out of their traditional lands in Minnesota and Wisconsin by the Cree and Anishinaabe. Over the next few generations, the pressures grew between these tribes.

Radical Winds ~ by Steve Buttress, posted by Chuck Peek