1st posting
Emily Schaffer (ejs2572@silver.sdsmt.edu)
Thu, 30 Oct 1997 15:54:46 -0700 (MST)
In the traditional beliefs of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, they are
sure that everything happens because of something bad that someone did.
If they do not try and fix their wrong with old rituals then bad things
would happen. For example there is a passage after Ku'oosh visited Tayo
on page 37-38, that illustrates this. After they had killed or touched
dead enemies they must do things like eat the blue cornmeal and other
rituals. I think that the beliefs of the Laguna Pueblo tribe are much
deeper than that of the white christian beliefs in the book. The white
christians in the book don't seem to give sickness as much thought as the
Laguna Pueblos. For example on page 8 in the book Tayo and Rocky are on
the battlefield and Rocky is trying to force Tayo to look at the corpses,
but Tayo keeps thinking he is seeing Josiah, so he starts screaming. So
the sargeant called for a medic and they gave him some drugs to help him
sleep. They assumed it was battle fatigue and that his hallucinations
came from malarial fever. It seems as though the white christians take
the "easy" way out when searching for the answer to health problems, while
Ku'oosh had total different beliefs about healing the sick. Instead of
giving sleeping medicine, Ku'oosh would have probably had a Scalp Ceremony
if he would have been there at the time.
I think that these views are contrasted in the book to show that
the Laguna Pueblo tribe wanted to keep their views as they were, they
liked that it separated them from the white christians. If they thought
as the white christians did, they would lose their heritage. The Laguna
Pueblo tribe is not about to have that happen!
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