Spirit Prayer
It was an amazing experience.
I was in my familiar Governor’s Cup coffee shop in Salem Oregon talking with my friend when I told her I didn’t know what to do with all the Indian rocks my father inadvertently dug up while tilling the soil on his sheep ranch in Klamath County. She pointed to a guy with a long pony tail and said, why don’t you talk to him. He happened to be a Native American with a doctorate in anthropology. So he contacted someone with the Klamath Tribe. It just happened that people with the Tribe were coming to Salem for a Tribal meeting a few days after David picked up the rocks. So he transferred them to the Tribal members.
The reason so many of them were broken, he said, was that when someone was buried they broke up their household bowls and pestles and buried them along with the body. So the Tribe is going to rebury them on Tribal land. David asked me to write a prayer to the Spirits and to cleanse the house with a sage smudge.
Prayer To The Spirits
My heart is gladdened to thank you—you ancestral native spirits who first blessed the rich black earth and running water near Bonanza Oregon on the 500 acre Lost River Sheep Ranch that gave my father (Cecil Hunt) and his family sustenance from the 1930’s until 1973 when he sold the ranch and moved to Salem to be near his offspring.The ranch bordered Lost River that ran by the perimeter of the city of Bonanza in Klamath County. It was our understanding that the property, on which was also located extensive fresh water running springs, was a Klamath Indian campground prior to the influx of the White man.
While my father was plowing and harrowing the soil to prepare for the alfaLfa and grain crops for feeding the sheep, he would occasionally unearth Native household tools…many of them broken but also some platters and bowls and pestles which had remained intact. My father so respected these artifacts, most of them found near the springs, that he collected and protected them.
I thank especially the spirits of the men and women who shaped the household tools that they fashioned from this earth and who used them to care for their tribe.
Not understanding the brokenness of these artifacts but intuitively respecting you spirits contained in them he continued to protect them and brought them along when he retired and moved to Salem Oregon to be near his daughter and grandchildren.
I, Eunice (Hunt) Goetz, Cecil’s daughter, have continued to protect them and honor their spirits in my home in Salem.
While I was growing up on this land among you…I also thank you for your children…among them my only childhood friend, Bonnie Weiser, who accepted me when no other children of my kind would because they thought with my long black braids, and skin a little darker than theirs, that I was also Native.
For many years I have wanted to give these artifacts back to the Klamath Tribe but didn’t know who to contact. Finally, in May 2015, I thank the Spirits who led me to Dr. David Lewis Ph.D Anthropology…who was in that coffee shop in Salem that day. David graciously came to my home to collect the pieces and through his inquiries found the appropriate people to give them to, and who, incidentally were in Salem for a Tribal meeting at the time. It is my understanding that the artifacts will be reburied on Klamath Tribal land.
I thankfully release you Spirits, with a sage smudge, to rest at home in perfect harmony.
Tags: Culture, Oregon, Touching Experiences, USA
Zoe
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