The Owl, a Modern Indian Legend

Sweat Lodge and White Birds

In the early summer of 1993 I was standing in a particular place in the yard one evening, looking out
to the West over an iron fence that my father had built during his retirement years, and thinking
about the strange things that had happened. It was a muggy, hazy, pitch black evening, the sort of
night that in past times might have made me so uneasy I would have stayed indoors in the light.
Embracing the strange things in life had made them less terrifying; now I wandered around at night
looking for things, because I found it all very interesting.

It was in that exact place, just to the east of that iron fence full of scrap metal, that I had been dancing
the Eagle Dance in a dream, and one of my teachers had given me my song. Just to my right, in
another powerful dream, I had seen the energy shape of an ally, and the watchful figure of a true
gray. Not coincidentally, the cherry tree there had been struck by lightning three times. I'd also been
standing there one winter looking up at stars and had seen a blue star where none should be. I
watched, thinking it must be a satellite, and it flashed three times as three smaller lights split off from
it. One of them came streaking down directly towards me, vanishing somewhere high above, and then
the star itself was gone. Lots of things had happened in that spot, so I had plenty to ponder. Then the
owl came.

I only felt it behind me, three huge slow wingbeats in passing, close enough to feel the wind from it
and hear the feathers moving through the air. When I looked for it, I saw nothing. I got a chill up my
back and I went in the house. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened, and the owls in
the hills nearby were doing odd things, making owl sounds that were familiar and making weird
laughing sounds that I'd never known owls to make.

Soon after that I went to Joe C's sweat lodge to help him pray. I made him uncomfortable by talking
about my dreams and the people I was looking for because of them. Well, I made him uncomfortable
in a lot of ways--while everyone else was writhing around on the ground to get away from the steam I
was sitting in full lotus drinking in the heat, and I saw him look up at me with a strange expression.
Next round I got down on the ground and groaned and howled along with the rest of them, but it was
too late to be fitting in. After the sweat ceremony was over, I asked him about the owl. He told me this
story.

When his boys were just kids they'd all been living on the reservation land in Montana, with time to
do a lot of hunting. This particular day they'd been working the river bottoms, the boys scouting for
game while he carried the rifle. After a couple of hours he noticed a white owl sitting on the top branch
of a dead snag, watching them, and he decided he'd shoot it for the feathers. He took a couple of shots
at it, and nothing happened. Hmm. He took a couple more shots, and nothing happened. He was a
good shot with that rifle, and he didn't see how he could miss that owl. He and his boys stalked closer
and the owl flew off to a more distant tree, watching them come close. At short range now, he shot the
owl again and saw the feathers on its chest puff up from the bullet. He waited for it to fall, but it only
swiveled its head to stare at him. He shot it again, sure that he'd hit it, and again it flew away to a still
more distant tree, landed and turned to watch them. Joe got a bad feeling, rounded up his boys and
went back to his truck. When he got home, the owl was waiting in a tree at the edge of his yard.

Joe called up one of his Elders on his phone and told him what had happened. "You got to be careful,"
the old man said, "You got to stay awake now, for three days and three nights, and not go outside
your house. That owl will try to get you to come out and follow it, but don't go. If you do, the little
people will catch you and put something on you."

Joe paid attention to that. The first night he sat up in their living room with his rifle on his knees while
outside in the tree the owl made owl sounds, and sounds that owls aren't supposed to make, like
laughing. He didn't go out. The second night he heard a dog barking and got up to see what was
going on, then caught himself as he put his hand on the door and remembered he shouldn't go out.
He looked through the window and saw the owl in the tree, waiting. It barked at him.

The third night was the worst. You get spooky tired after being up that long, and there's not a lot to do
to keep you awake. When it got dark, his mind started to go dark along with it, groggy and tired, and
then he heard a baby crying outside. He got up to go look and opened the screen door and was almost
out when he saw the owl, sitting in that same tree, watching him and making the sound of a baby
crying. Joe went back inside, held onto his rifle and stayed awake, and at dawn the owl flew away. It
never came back.

Owl isn't a good thing, to his people. You can get kicked out of powwows for wearing owl feathers, he
said. I've always wondered why it was he wanted them. Probably a lot he didn't tell me. I never went
to his sweat lodge again; had the feeling they didn't really want me around. When I see white animals,
or white birds, I follow them. Always have, even when I was a little kid. Sometimes good things
happen, and sometimes things so strange you can't really explain them. And sometimes it's like Joe's
Elder said.

Sometimes the little people catch you, and they put something on you.