Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Sweat lodge
December 15, 2004

“The rocks are talking,” I told myself as I realized a greatly varied set of sounds was coming from the center of the sweat lodge. The rocks whistled, snapped, crackled, and sizzled in soft sibilant cacophony. At times the sounds gave the illusion of people talking. I was hunched over in the dark, in a space no bigger than eight feet across and three feet high with eight other people. No one had spoken as the first scoops of water were poured on rocks red-hot from a firepit outside. Sweat ran in rivulets off of my face, cascading onto a leg crossed below.

The steam billowed up, unseen, for as soon as the water hit the rocks even that faint glow disappeared. I inhaled deeply, tasting the smoke from cedar chips placed on the rocks before the water, replacing the strong taste of sage tea sipped before entry into the sweat lodge. I have been in many saunas, especially when I lived in rainy Seattle as a young man, but this was my first sweat lodge. Many cultures utilize steam baths besides the Finnish style saunas found at most exercise gyms. Greeks had laconia, Romans balneums, Japanese the mushi-boro, Russians had paritsia, and Arabic people have what Americans know as Turkish baths. Many western African people also have a tradition of steam baths, as well. Steam baths are healthy, and can rid the body of toxins and some bacterial and viral infections.

Sweat lodges are native American. In almost every part of the western Hemisphere, sweat lodges were illegal for centuries in English and Spanish colonies. Indians were considered subhuman savages and their practices deemed un-Christian. Europeans rarely took any sort of a bath during the 16th through 18th centuries, relying on perfumes to mask bodily odors, so the belief that bathing weakened one’s health supplemented the colonists’ prejudices instilled by religion. Indians not only saw sweat baths as a path to cleanliness and to a healthy body, but also as a ritualistic meditation that psychically purified a person before or after any major endeavor.

I had invited to the sweat lodge by a person who had first experienced a sweat lodge at a corporate management retreat. The sweat lodge at the retreat was part of a complete program that also involved outdoor adventure experiences, ropes courses, and dreamwork classes all designed to promote company unity. He had been going to this particular sweat lodge once a month for over two and a half years, and had learned the songs and drumbeats associated with the ceremonial aspect of the practice.

After the second time water was poured on the stones, a drumbeat started, in the rhythm of a person’s beating heart. More water was poured as the drumbeat continued, and after the fourth time water was poured, voices lifted up in song in a language not my own. Lakota people of the northern Great Plains preserved the tradition despite the decades of religious discrimination. In the last forty years Lakotas have taught their ceremonial songs to other Native Americans seeking to rediscover their Indian heritage, and to non-Indians who not only appreciate the sweat lodge for its healthful benefits, but who also find the ceremony emotionally and spiritually enriching.

As I listened, I became introspective. Behind my closed eyelids, I was transported to a different time. I could have been in a sweat lodge at that very same place 150 years ago, or 300, or 1000, or even 5000 years ago. I was near a draw in a west Texas town, although I was in a neighborhood of modest houses. The very location of the sweat lodge is where Indians camped in the past, for buried fire-rings and arrowheads have been found in the neighborhood.

I was thankful for the chance to participate, for it is a story of one of the diverse cultures of the Llano Estacado, my home. Sweat lodges have been around a long time. On the Llano Estacado today a number of people have sweat lodges. I listened as prayers of thanks were offered to “Grandfather.” Not everyone was required to speak and offer a prayer. I stayed silent. The spoken prayers asked for “Grandfather” to look after the troops in Iraq, to bless or to heal family and friends, and for guidance in making personal decisions, much like public prayers I have heard offered in Christian churches. Before the evening was over, we had entered the sweat lodge five times in four hours, interspersed with cooling off periods sitting around the fire heating the rocks. On the day after I felt drained physically, but invigorated mentally and emotionally calmed.

The person leading the sweat lodge had Indian ancestors who hunted on the Llano Estacado. Part of this person’s family tree has Indian branches of several different tribes, as well as Hispanic branches. Some of the other participants had Indian ancestors, but not all.

Until after the changes brought by the Mexican Revolution in the first part of the 1900s, a social caste system rigidly shaped the country’s politics, and those of any Indian blood rarely gained political power or social standing. My son-in-law, Ignacio Garcia, for example, denies having any Indian blood, because of those centuries of discrimination. In Mexico and other Latin American countries, mestizo people have, in recent decades, made great strides in becoming part of the social and political dynamic. The Chicano movement, begun in the United States in the 1960s, has given Hispanic Americans pride in all facets of their heritage, including Indian.

The text of the main display at the Sibley Nature Center is narrated by a 19th century Lipan Apache who introduces the wildlife of the Llano Estacado as well as its ecological and human history. There are also pictures of other tribal people who have utilized the Llano Estacado. Information about the hundreds of years of Hispanic use of the Llano before Anglo settlement is also part of the display.

At the Sibley Nature Center I have had a child tell of his or her family’s Indian heritage many times. Some of these kids were blonde and blue-eyed, some were Hispanic, some were full-blood Indian, and one was of Black-Seminole descent. Some, like the leader of the sweat lodge, trace part of their ancestry to Indian groups that once used the Llano Estacado. All people want to know about their forefathers, and to be proud of their specific ethnic heritage. People of every country and every culture of the world are found in the United States. We are all Americans.