Interviewing Native Americans across the United States and Canada, professional speaker, television personality and master storyteller Cheewa James--enrolled with the Modoc tribe of Oklahoma--culled these insightful and powerful stories of Indian people. The KVIE-Public Television, Sacramento, California, television special "American Indian Circles of Wisdom," featuring Cheewa, highlights many of these tales.

Included are interviews with Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills, Lakota Sioux; U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Cheyenne; stateswoman Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee; and prominent political leader Ada Deer, Menominee, along with many other proud Native Americans.

Here's your chance to applaud the fortitude, humor and resourcefulness of the human spirit. This book extends to you a unique opportunity to explore the lives of Native Americans--their culture, challenges, pains and triumphs. It will live as a testimonial to the period of history that brought great change to a people whose roots are deep in America and Canada.

Told to Willie Pink, who told it to Cheewa, who tells it to you

There's a story about a group of older women who went into the roundhouse to gamble one evening. They divided into two teams and went about their business. It seems that this same evening, a young white man looked like what some people call a hippie was wandering by, heard all the noise and decided to see what all those Indians in there were doing. It would have been more polite if he'd knocked on the door. It sure would have been better for him if he'd taken that route.

What he did do was climb up on the roof. He saw an opening in the center with smoke comin' out and crawled over to it. He peeked through the hole and saw an open fire cracklin' away below him. Then, just like the trickster coyote might have done, he fell through the hole straight into the fire. He must have been one surprised, scared hippie. But he was no more surprised and scared than the women down below.

He jumped left and right, tryin' to get out of the fire, but the women were convinced he was an evil spirit, and every time he'd about make it out of those hot flames lickin' at his heels, these women, screamin' and yellin' at the top of their lungs, would push him back with their canes and clapper sticks. Now, I'm pretty sure there's a good ending to this, because there was never any tell of a man roasted to death in a round house. That hippie must have finally bounced right out of there.

Like any good coyote story, it has a moral. Mind your manners and always use the door.

¬1995. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Catch the Whisper of the Wind by Cheewa James. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.