1/18/2023 0 Comments Bobok frog yaqui tribe![]() ![]() ![]() gazed at me for a time without answering. “Why is the fire burning, Don B.? It's hot in here.”ĭon B. about the fire, for was markedly hot in the room. We were sitting crosslegged on the floor of Don B.'s apartment facing each other, with the fire, which was kept going even in summer, between us. This I have done, and I urge the reader to do so also. In dealing with any system of world‐interpretation different from our own, it Is necessary to make use of the technique of suspended judgment. The following material, reproduced from my field notes, has been edited somewhat to eliminate the dull parts, but in the main reflects accurately what took place during the period when I was Son B.'s apprentice. invited me to be seated, and we had the first of what proved to be a long series of conversations. Throwing a few more books on the fire, Don B. In the center of the room a small fire was blazing brightly. He showed me into a small but poorly furnished apartment containing hundreds of books stacked randomly about. He then led me into the building against which he had been leaning. assured him that I was ready and was not ticklish, or not overmuch. Was I willing, he asked, to endure the pain, elation, shock, terror and boredom of such an experience? Was I, for example, ticklish? I. Yankee culture was a fearsome thing, he told me, and not to be entered into lightly, but only with a prepared heart. ![]() He stared at me for a long time and then said, “Yes.” But, he warned me, states of nonordinary reality could not be attained by just anybody, and if just anybody did, by accident, blunder into a state of nonordinary reality, the anybody might bloody well regret it. Again I asked him if he would consider taking me under instruction. His torpor was now something very close to outright gloom, but he greeted me civilly enough. I returned in the summer of 1968 and found Don B. Then he closed his again, and I left him. In the meantime, he would think about my proposal. He simply stared at me without replying, and then said, “No.” However, taking note of the dismay which must have been plain on my face, he said that I might return, if I wished, in two years. I expressed a wish to learn what he knew and asked if I might talk with him about the subject. After we had been introduced, by a mutual acquaintance, I explained to him that I had been told he knew the secrets of certain hallucinogenic substances peculiar to Yankee culture and in which I was professionally interested. He was a tallish man with an unconvincing beard and was dressed, in the fashion of the Village, in jeans and a blue work shirt. I found him leaning against a building in a profound torpor-perhaps the profoundest torpor I have ever seen. In a strange twist of history, even the romanticized stature of native Americans became a source of victimization.While doing anthropological field work in Manhattan some years ago I met, on West 11th Street, a male Yankee of indeterminate age whose name, I was told, was Don B. Indian mounds across the country were pillaged by grave robbers and circus promoters hoping to unearth the next giant sensation. Two of the greatest hoaxes were the Cardiff Giant (see previous post on this fascinating scandal) in 1869 and the San Diego Mummy in 1895. Throughout the entire century, countless newspapers across the nation, from California to New York, claimed giant skeletons were being dug up. One recurring theme was that the Biblical giants, the Nephilim, referred to in Genesis 6:4-some claimed Goliath was a Nephilim-actually lived in North America in ancient times. In part because of the greater height of Native Americans and the towering legends of some Indian chiefs who were depicted as giants, a strange series of hoaxes sprung up throughout the 1800s of ancient indigenous tribes of giants being unearthed across the United States. ![]()
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