A few days ago, Sharon and I were at a “trading post” in East Glacier, Montana, and I was waiting to order some huckleberry ice cream, which was big up that way. I was second in line behind a man about my age, and we got to talking as we waited. He introduced himself as Roy Old Person of the Blackfeet tribe, a native of this area. When I said I was from Tennessee, he said he’d been there once, running track in a UT meet in Knoxville. As the conversation unfolded, I learned that he’d first gone to Haskell (now designated an “Indian Nations University”), where he won the national junior college title in cross country before gaining a scholarship to Wichita State, where he was twice named all-conference. (The Lawrence Journal World covered his Haskell exploits in 1965, and Indian Country Today announced his election to the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012).

I brought up the name of Billy Mills, who won the 1964 Olympic gold medal in Tokyo for the 10,000 meters. He’d gone to Haskell as well, as had Jim Thorpe, who later went to Carlisle. Roy knew Mills, and he brought up another Kansas runner of that era, Jim Ryun of KU, who broke the world’s record in the 1,500 meters. (BTW, I saw Ryan on campus one summer at Wheaton; he, a Christian, was there for a runners camp.) 

Yes, I know ‘Indian’ is a trigger word for some people, though I’ve heard a fair number of “Native Americans” or “First Nation People” use it in reference to themselves. Indeed, it’s in the Haskell school name. And, given all the huffiness over it the word in some circles, I was surprised to see the National Museum of the American Indian in the Smithsonian chain along the National Mall in DC. Inside, when I asked one of the staff if it was tricky to go with the name they’d chosen, I was told that ‘Native American’ wasn’t a real improvement since that expression also used the term ‘American,’ which itself had European roots. Instead, they preferred the tribal names, such as Cherokee, Sioux, and Ojibwa (which we’ve corrupted to Chippewa). 

The next morning, we took a tour up through Glacier National Park on “Going-to-the-Sun Road” with a guide who was, like Roy, a member of the Blackfeet tribe. (Actually there are several associated Blackfeet groups, running from Montana up into Canada and also extending east across an area roughly the size of the national park, on whose territory it sits); and actually, our guide, Jack Gladstone, had a German dad and an Indian mom, but close enough for tribal identity.) Jack told me that ‘Old Person’ was a prominent name among his people and that, yes, my ice-cream loving acquaintance, Roy, had had that surname from his infancy. We realized Blackfeet authority when we read that, according to their directions, we’d have to wear our masks inside the local businesses, including the Glacier Park Lodge, where we were staying. (We got some respite when we rented a car to visit an old Arkansas friend now living in Whitefish, off the reservation.)

Jack, our guide, took out his guitar at several scenic stops and performed songs he’d composed and recorded on CD. He’s quite the artist, though you might not have guessed it years ago when he was an offensive guard on the University of Washington football team (quarterbacked by Warren Moon) that defeated the University of Michigan team (quarterbacked by Rick Leach) in the 1978 Rose Bowl. His songs, which have won him honors, cover history, Indian myth, and environmentalism, and his www.jackgladstone.com, proclaims him, with good cause, “Montanas’s Troubador.” One song talks of the way that a group of little animals retrieved the Chinook wind after a grizzly bear stole it; another (Hudson Bay Blues) notes that Canada’s Hudson Bay Company introduced Indians to “shopping,” an activity heretofore unknown to them, one that began with knives and blankets and has continued to facility with Visa and Mastercard.

At his site, Jack posts lyrics to many of the songs he records, including one penned by Montana State English professor Greg Keeler, the Lewis and Clark Rag. A sampling:

We boldly go where no one dares 


We fight off mosquitoes and grizzly bears 


“We’re really somethin’”, though we don’t mean to brag 


We made friends with all kind'a tribes 


By offering vermillion and beads for bribes 


We’re the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery 


We’ll open up the West! Wouldn’t it be loverly?

On our six-hour drive up through the stunning heights, Jack tutored us on a range of topics—the composition of pemmican; the revolutionary shift from pedestrian to equestrian warfare; the genetic intermingling of tribes (“If You’re not an outbreed, you’re an inbreed”); the two etymological theories on ‘Blackfeet,” i.e., re charcoal-smudged moccasins after a planned, prairie burn off, or the tribe’s heavy identification with the Bison, which had black feet; a papal bull which entitled explorers to claim land not occupied by Christians; the themes of “trickster” and “hero” among Indians, the former as self-indulgent and treacherous; the three adjacent water basins within the park that, drain, respectively, toward Hudson Bay, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.

When I was at MBTS, we were beginning to take a fresh interest in the Indians of the Upper Midwest, including the Missouri River Valley and its headwaters in the Dakotas. In that connection, I found myself up their way on a number of occasions—on a faculty retreat bus trip up through the Pine Ridge reservation (with, yes, a visit to Wounded Knee) to the Crazy Horse mountain-sized sculpture near Rapid City; at an Indian gathering in Custer; and at another Indian gathering in Minot (one of whose slogans is “Minot. Why Not?”). At this North Dakota meeting, I heard the testimony of an Indian named Joe Osage, who, curiously, was not of the Osage people.

He was missing an arm, and he told us it was the result of a drunken wreck he’d been involved in before his salvation. As a new Christian, he was much alive to the power and graciousness of God, and he put that conviction to the test right away. He’d locked his keys in the car, and he ran back into the house to see if he had a spare. No luck, but he remembered he could ask his Heavenly Father for what he needed. So he prayed that a house key would work. Sure enough, it slid into the lock and did the trick. 

I have no way to verify the miracle, but I believe it. I think God can do and does do things like that in answer to prayer, and Joe’s disarming and humble demeanor shouted sincerity. It convicted me that I was a slacker in prayer, too often asking for things within the realm of reasonableness. Joe hadn’t thrown himself off the Temple to make God catch him. He’d just done the sort of dumb thing we all do, but didn’t know enough not to call on God for help with great specificity. As they say, the new convert has to backslide to have fellowship with the rest of the congregation, those who’ve lost some of the luster of their first faith.

BTW, my son Jedidiah has just finished a very fine book, 21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time, stemming from life experiences and a series he preached at our Redemption City Church. Harvest House comes out with it in January, but it’s up on Amazon for pre-order now. I can testify that, following his lead, I asked for something specific and unlikely, and God said Yes. He didn’t need to, of course, but at least I would have known that my not having the thing would not be for lack of asking.

I may not be Joe Osage. But I am Mark Old Person.