Thomas Hoevet Johnson

In September 1969, a pink wall phone hung in the home of Tom Wesaw. It rang several times a day, and when it rang, Tom answered. Tom was an "Indian Doctor," treating whole families of the Eastern Shoshone on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Tom, then 83, let young anthropologist Tom Johnson tag along with him. Johnson drove for him, cooked for him, pumped water and built fires for sweat lodges for eight months, from September to April 1969. The people of the Shoshone would call and the Two Toms would go to them. Tom wanted his students to share what they had learned from him. And in this book, that is what Johnson has done, passing on the lessons he recorded in his field book four decades ago. Like this conversation the two shared, driving back from a young woman's home. Tom had prayed over the woman and brushed eagle-feather fans over her. "My uncle taught me how to pray," Tom said. "His uncle before him taught him. These are old ways that have worked for many years for Indian people long before the white man came. Whites trust in pills. I always say prayers, too, and it is those prayers that heal ..." "How does it feel when you're brushed with those eagle fans?" I asked. "The eagle has the strength to fly higher than any other bird, closer to God than any animal. The fan is like an eagle swooping down and touching you. You feel different; you feel the eagle's power. It came from God. I can't tell you anything more. You just know that God's power is there."