Florida Frontiers/Native Earth Cultural Center, Inc. is a not for profit corporation with 501c# status sponsored by the Historic Florida Militia, Inc. All contributions are tax deductible.

Join us in creating an educational environment, at a permanent St. Petersburg location, in which to offer the wonders of this beautiful State of Florida and its ancient treasures. We visualize a building which will house a museum, a gift shop, an art gallery and meeting rooms for presentations and workshops.

Contributions are invested and earnings will be used to support our future work. Your donation to the 1st annual Embrace the Earth music festival will help us to continue our mission of bringing high-quality educational programs to people of all ages. This contribution will help us cover ur expenses of bringing this free concert to the Tampa Bay community.

Make checks out to: Florida Frontiers. Mail to 5409 21st Avenue South, Gulfport, Florida 33707.

Hermann Trappman

Traditional Sacred ways stress the close balance human beings must maintain with Creation. Stories are told about animals, the weather, and about Mother Earth , herself, to explain that balance. Trees and mountains have thoughts and feelings, and animals speak their own languages in these stories.

The earth is our Mother. Native people felt their connection to their Mother, the Earth. The grandparents taught that all Creation had equal weight. All Creation deserves respect. There are many places in the landscape that command the awe of Earth’s children. Mountains, rivers, and trees are related to human beings. People paid respect to these special places and even though all Creation was Sacred some places called to the people. There were Sacred spots where people traditionally worshipped. They felt close to the power in the stones, the soil, and the bones of Mother Earth in those places.

To stand quietly, surrounded by nature, open and willing to experience the Mystery, is the conscious awakening of that which is within and around a person. It is the heart of the ability to understand the reverence American Indians hold for the land. The willingness to suspend western notions of superiority or authority is crucial. This is where appreciation for Creation can take root and begin to grow.

There is a low ridge in central Ohio. This ridge stretches a quarter of a mile. If the ridge is looked at from a height it seems transformed into a huge snake lying on the earth. This snake holds an egg in its open mouth. This earthen snake lies in the midst of thousands of huge mounds lining the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys.

The mounds stand over the rolling river plains west of the Mississippi. The largest extant mound has been re-named Monk’s mound because a Christian monastery was built there in the nineteenth century. Monk’s Mound still stands in east St. Louis. Its base exceeds the measurements of all the great Egyptian pyramids. Archaeologists believe these mounds and the great snake were built by an ancient people they have named the “Adena.”

Though thousands of the Adena people’s mounds can still be walked upon, once there were many more. Most have been leveled to make way for farms, cities, and parking lots. Some have been knocked down and used as fill for football fields. More than a few were torn apart by treasure hunters digging for ancient gold that was never there. The treasure hunters cost the land its memory of what was here before them.

Some of the mounds were burial pyramids. Others are the bases of vanished temples and healing centers. Some mounds, like the giant Ohio serpent, may have been votive statues of spiders, eagles, and the sun itself.

Why the Adena built these thousands of mounds or what place the huge snake held in their Sacred imaginations is a mystery. People who see the huge snake and walk the surface of the remaining mounds realize these are Sacred places. The mounds remain as part of the memory of ancient Native people who once worshipped their Creator there.

The belief that power is imparted from natural forms to individuals is another thread that weaves its way through the Sacred paths of Turtle Island’s native people. It remains part of the Great Mystery through which rock passed on power and safety to the great Ogallala chief Crazy Horse.

Black Elk, a Lakota holy man, received spiritual power through visions. His visions were alive with many-colored horses, the bison, the eagle and what Black Elk called “Thunder Beings.”

We regard all created beings as sacred and important, for everything has wochangi, or influence, which can be given to us, through which we may gain a little more understanding if we are attentive.

CRYING FOR A VISION

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An intrinsic difference dividing western religions from native Sacred ways is the way knowledge and wisdom are gained. In the west dogma is taught by one person to another. To guarantee and protect religious beliefs, holy books, such as the Torah, the Bible, and the Q’uran are written down and passed on. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all declare themselves “People of the Book.”

There have always been wise people and storytellers who passed on the Sacred ways from one generation to the next, but holy books never existed on Turtle Island. Stress has always been placed on the individual’s connection to the Sacred. The path that leads to the heart of Creation depends on direct experience. To discover this path many native tribes have performed “vision quests.” Though the form varied the quest for direct knowledge of the Sacred followed similar patterns.

Once a person declared that he was set on performing a vision quest there were steps to be followed. Though I am using the masculine pronoun here, women were often involved in what the Lakota and other people called “crying for a vision.” The Sacred way has never been the province of either men or women. The spirit is the Creator’s, and the heart comes from Mother Earth.

A vision quest was never a rite of initiation into adulthood. Western religions stress rituals such as Confirmation, baptism, or the Bar Mitzvah as the bridge to maturity. Indian people might seek direction through vision quests many times during a lifetime – even though the first steps on the Sacred path might coincide with their entry into adolescence.

In some tribes the truth seeker might build a sweat lodge or “inipi” to make preparation for the ordeal that was coming. An inipi is usually a small, domed shelter. Water was poured on heated stones in a pit in the middle of the sweat lodge. The inipi filled with steam. The heat and the steam released impurities from the body and the spirit to allow the vision seeker to separate from the world and to be set aside to dream of the Sacred.

Closing the door to the lodge, which traditionally faced east, created total darkness. This darkness signified ignorance and the darkness of the soul. As the people sat in a circle around the pit, prayers were recited and Sacred songs were sung. The pipe was passed around the circle of people four times. The door was opened at the ceremony’s end, allowing light to enter the inipi. With all impurities left behind, the person now symbolically entered a world of wisdom.

The light enters the darkness, that we may see not only with our two eyes, but with the one eye which is of the heart, and with which we know all that is true and good.

- Joseph Epes Brown

The truth seeker separated himself from home and traveled into the wilderness to hear Sacred words or to dream holy dreams. Supplicants found their ways into pathless forests, climbed lonely mountains, or even walked out into deserts, so they could be alone to listen to the voice of the Mystery uninterrupted by daily life.

Once the truth seeker was alone fasting began. In many traditions the fasting lasted three days. Fasting, as did the sweat lodge, cleared the supplicant’s mind of trivial thoughts and tuned the entire body and spirit to hear Sacred truths. After fasting, the vision seeker found himself transported into a place where time no longer existed - the Spirit World. Visions and dreams were found here.

A dream might look into the future. A dream could order the direction of a person’s life. A dream might tell the dreamer that his spiritual father was an elk, or a spirit buffalo, a bear, or even a whirlwind. The spiritual presence entered a person’s heart and changed it. That heart now shared the Sacred power of that totem animal or force.

There was a boy named Curly. He had light skin and brown curling hair. This seemed peculiar to his people, the Ogallala. He was sometimes called the “Strange One.” His father was a Holy Man named Crazy Horse, and his mother was the sister of a war chief named Spotted Tail. When Curly was twelve, he watched Ogallala warriors slaughter thirty U.S. cavalry soldiers at a place called Fort Laramie in the Wyoming territory.

On his way home after the battle Curly left the war party. He lay on a hilltop for three days waiting for the Mystery. This was a thing many Ogallala boys did at his age. He fasted and went without water for the three days. Curly was given a vision. In his vision Curly saw a horseman riding toward him across the prairie. The air was filled with arrows, but none touched the rider. Curly saw a streak of lightning painted on the rider’s cheek. The warrior’s body was painted with dots that seemed to be hailstones to Curly. He wore a small stone behind his ear.

Curly kept his vision to himself for a time, but finally he told his father, Crazy Horse, about the rider in his vision. Curly’s father knew his son had been given a powerful direction. His father knew Curly would never be harmed in battle if he stayed true to his vision. Before Curly fought in his first battle, he painted himself like the rider in the vision. He wasn’t wounded, and he proved himself to be a warrior. After the battle, Curly’s father renamed his son “Crazy Horse.” Then his father took the name “Worm” for himself. Crazy Horse remained true to his vision all his life.

Crazy Horse believed his vision gave him strength and the direction he needed to lead his battle. Crazy Horse fought Colonel George A. Custer and the federal 7th Cavalry at the battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. The 7th Cavalry and Custer were rubbed out to the last trooper. Crazy Horse was untouched.

Crazy Horse fought to lead his people as true human beings even though their way of life was being destroyed by federal soldiers and eastern land-grabbers. Crazy Horse fought for Ogallala freedom and the traditional Sacred ways until forced to surrender in the spring of 1877. Crazy Horse swore to fight “no more.” Crazy Horse was murdered by a federal soldier that fall in a prison cell.

Weedon Island (Pinellas County, Florida)