The Medicine Man’s Apprentice

Indigenous cultures fascinated me from the time I was a small child. I began to hear stories about the traditional doctors among the various American Indian Tribes when I was fourteen. These doctors possessed special gifts and facilitated healing through their interaction with other forces or beings. I made the decision at that time, that if I was ever given the opportunity, that I would apprentice with one of the native doctors.

Before long, I opened a bank account, saved every dollar I could and started making plans to leave. I bought a car shortly after finishing my junior year of high school. Then one morning I loaded up the car and took off to Arizona. My car only made it as far as Oklahoma and I found myself living among a community of predominantly Kiowa Indians.

It was scary to be out on my own at seventeen. Alcoholism and violence were very prevalent among American Indian communities. I was very naïve and found myself in some very dangerous situations. Fortunately, I learned how to take care of myself by learning to recognize and avoid danger.

American Indians were severely persecuted for practicing any aspect of their own spirituality and many of the old traditional ceremonial practices had died out by that time. The parts of their spirituality that did survive had gone underground.

Peyote is a hallucinogenic cactus that has been used by some of the Northern Mexican tribes for centuries. Peyote was then introduced to the Comanche and Kiowa tribes sometime around the 1900’s. The old Kiowa doctors really understood how to work with the forces of nature. They were able to work with the peyote to effect healing in themselves and others.

I have a very sensitive stomach and initially had a very difficult time with the peyote. I would often start feeling nauseous and then throw up. I eventually learned to handle the peyote by ingesting small amounts earlier in the day to give my body time to acclimate.

Peyote meetings usually begin at sunset and continue through out the night. I began to attend the peyote meetings with one of the tribal elders. After some time I began to attend other meetings on my own. It was during the morning after one of the meetings that I was first introduced to my mentor Horace Daukei. Horace didn’t have much to say initially. He was often very quiet and reflective after the meetings.

Horace was scheduled to run a meeting at a friend’s house about a year later. The family had arranged for Horace to work with one of the grandsons who suffered from some type of blood disorder. I was so excited to get to actually see Horace work with someone. I was also afraid that Horace would refuse to allow me to attend the meeting since I’m white.

I was talking with my young friend just before the meeting while Horace spoke with the parents across the hall in the other bedroom. Horace was able to see me through the open door. He stopped for a moment and stared as if he knew something. That sent chills through me.

Horace began to "doctor" the grandson shortly after midnight. Horace, like many other native doctors, possessed paranormal abilities. He worked with various forces or beings and on occasion had animals help to facilitate the healing. Horace took a hot coal out of the fire, placed it in his mouth and began to blow on the patient. I then felt this intense power that had a very sharp piercing quality as I sat watching from the south side of the tipi. At one point, Horace reached down to pick up a live mole as it came out of the ground. Horace set the mole on the patient to assist him in his work.

There were only three doctors left among the Kiowa Tribe by the time I reached Oklahoma in 1980. Two of the three were very elderly and passed on shortly after my arrival.

There were many powerful doctors in years past. They understood how to work with the forces of nature and many possessed various gifts or powers that served a number of different purposes. Some individuals had the ability to call the rain or to cause a tornado to change course. Others had powers that protected them in battle. Many possessed profound gifts of healing.

These gifts and powers were often passed down through the generations. One had to go through the vision quest which involved fasting anywhere from two to seven days and night with out food and water to earn the right to work with these powers. There were also many instances in which an individual received these gifts during the vision quest.

Life has changed dramatically for the native people of the Americas over the past five centuries. Ninety something percent of the native people in the United States died as a result of disease or the genocide perpetrated against them by our government.

The survivors were herded onto reservations. Children were often taken away from their families and forced to attend schools hundreds and even thousands of miles away from home. These children were beaten for speaking their own native languages and taught to be ashamed of their culture. Alcoholism and Christian missionaries also began to take their toll on the native population. Many people within the younger generations just wanted to assimilate into the mainstream and had no interest in their traditional culture.

Many of the doctors were getting old and wanted desperately to pass their gifts on to the younger generations, but very few were receptive. Many of the old doctors took these powers to the grave with them and now many of these gifts have been lost.

Horace’s father and grand father were doctors. Horace received some of his father’s powers during his adolescence. Soon thereafter, he was shipped off to Europe where he fought in world war two. Horace still had pieces of shrapnel in his back from German artillery.

My grades were starting to drop during my sophomore year of college and I felt that I wasn’t doing what I needed to be doing with my life. I spoke with a friend about the matter and then decided to approach Horace and ask him if he would teach me.

Horace lived out on the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico and came back to Oklahoma on occasion. It took me some time and effort to track Horace down. I learned that he was staying with a cousin. I stopped by the cousin’s house on several occasions and the cousin just blew me off. But I was persistent and kept stopping by.

I finally met with Horace on a Friday afternoon and asked if I could speak with him for a while. I was physically shaking as Horace came out to sit in my car because I was so afraid that he would decline my offer to apprentice with him. I said very awkwardly "…Will you teach me to do the work you’re doing?"

Horace then asked me "...What are you doing this weekend …can you start fasting?" I responded by saying "yeah, sure".

Horace then had me drive down to the Wichita Mountains, where I sat in my car for two days fasting without food or water. Nothing really happened during that time. Horace was just testing me to see if I was really serious. We spoke again a few days later and he asked me to come and stay with him once I finished my current semester. Within two months, I had packed up all my belongings and headed out to New Mexico.

From the very beginning, Horace took me along when ever he went to work with people. It was amazing to watch Horace work. He would often start by placing a black silk handkerchief over the person’s head and then push his thumbs into the person’s carotid arteries. The person would momentarily pass out. Horace was able to get an instant read on the patient during that time, to determine the nature of the illness and gather any other pertinent information.

There were other times when Horace draped the black handkerchief over part of the person’s body. He would then scan the body and observe what was happening. Horace had very little formal education, but he was able to look into a person’s body and describe the underlying pathology in very intricate detail.

Horace would take a piece of hot coal out of the fire, place it in his mouth and then direct that power into his patients by blowing on them. There were also times when he used his mouth or the end of a buffalo horn to apply suction to draw toxins out of the body. In some instances he was able to extract the fluid from the lungs of a person suffering from pneumonia.

There are also people among the American Indian Tribes who use power in very destructive ways. The Navajo Indians refer to individuals who use negative forces to cause sickness, death or harm as "skin walkers". The Navajo say that some of the skin walkers have the ability to transform into an animal such as a coyote as they do their work.

Horace was called on many occasions to intervene on behalf of those who were attacked by the skin walkers. There were a number of instances when I watched Horace spread live charcoal on the ground. Horace would stare into the coals for some time and then begin to describe the features of the person perpetrating the attack. The person who had been attacked would often recognize the attacker from Horace’s description.

There were other occasions where Horace walked out into a person’s yard and dug up fetishes with some kind of destructive power, that were placed near someone’s home to cause harm. Horace would then use his power to stop the attack. The destructive force would then travel back up the line of transmission to its source. In some instances it would disable or possibly kill the attacker.

Horace sometimes used certain medicinal plants to supplement his work. He had this extrasensory ability to determine the medicinal value of plants. He would then invoke the spirit of the plant to greatly amplify it’s healing capacity.

There was one instance when we were driving through the middle of the desert in Nevada and Horace told me to pull over. Horace began to describe the features of a particular plant and then told me to walk out in a certain direction till I found it. I found a plant matching his description, picked a handful and returned to the truck asking him "…is this what you wanted?" He then packed the plants away in his briefcase and then headed on down the road.

There were a lot of very unusual occurrences around Horace. But I was often amazed at the way the eagles would appear when I was with him. On one occasion an eagle swooped down as we drove into the College of Santa Fe. There was another instance where we were cruising along the back roads through the Nevada desert and we pulled up along side of an eagle eating its prey. Horace slid open the side door of the van and we sat within ten feet of the eagle as it devoured its prey. The eagle looked up at us momentarily and then went on about its business.

We made so many road trips through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and then we traveled back and forth to Oklahoma. Horace was well know in some areas and he had to hide his vehicle in a garage or behind the house, because people would start to line up for healing sessions once they realized he was in town. Sometimes the demand was so great and it was more than he could physically handle. He then had to care for his own needs by taking time to rest.

Horace would often rest at home and make the ceremonial fans that are used for peyote meetings from eagle, scissortail or wood pecker feathers between road trips. He rarely ever let people know where he lived or he would never have any time to himself. Horace wasn’t able to keep a telephone. He tried on several occasions, but his number would get out and the phone would then be ringing off the hook with people asking for his help.

Horace could be very harsh at times and training under him was often very difficult. He had me dispose of most of my possessions, with the exception of some clothing soon after I arrived. That was to be symbolic of a new beginning. He continually pushed me to extremes to see how far I could go. The belief among many of the native elders was that you had to really sacrifice if you wanted these gifts. I felt that Horace was always testing me to see how much I wanted it. Horace was also very careful about who he shared his gifts with. He wanted to make sure that anyone he took on as an apprentice was capable of handling these powers and using them appropriately.

There were times when Horace would transfer parts of his own powers to me. He often did this at times when he had me fasting out in the desert without food or water. Many native people who possessed these powers were known to physically project objects into other people’s bodies. Horace would occasionally cut the end off certain types of feathers and then seed them with his power. He would then stand in front of me and physically project these objects into my body. I felt the impact of this tremendous force when ever he did this and I would momentarily go unconscious.

Horace then started to have me assist him in his work with people. Sometimes he had me take the live coals in my mouth as he did and direct that force into the person I was working with. At other times he had me use my mouth to apply suction to remove blood clots or toxins from the body.

Horace then started encouraging me to begin to work on my own. I was very hesitant in the beginning. I wasn’t initially convinced that I really had anything to work with. I didn’t yet feel that I really knew what I was doing and I also feared that I could possibly harm someone.

Horace continued to encourage me. I kept asking him questions about what I should do, but he told me "…I can’t tell you how to do everything, because these powers will work differently for you then they do for me …you have it …just start working with people and these gifts will reveal themselves to you".

Horace also expected me to live by my instincts and to know how to survive. At one point he dropped me off in the middle of the Hopi Indian Reservation with thirty dollars, my back pack and instructions to hitchhike to Las Vegas, Nevada to find work and make it the best I could.

I let Horace know where I was after I got situated in Vegas. He stopped in to check on my one time, then a few months later he showed up and said "…ready to go" and then we were back on the road.

Horace liked to do a lot of his work in the sweat lodge and there were times where we would "sweat" on a daily basis. I built so many sweat lodges during those years that I traveled around with Horace.

Rocks are heated in the fire until they’re glowing red and then shoveled into a pit that is dug in the center of the sweat lodge. The steam generated from the water poured over these rocks can be extremely hot. Horace made the sweat lodges excruciatingly hot when it was just the two of us to toughen me up. Horace sometimes picked up the rocks that were used to heat the sweat lodge as he worked with people. Then there were some instances when he brought the spirit of the buffalo into the sweat lodge and I felt this tremendously powerful presence filling the space.

Horace had no pretense about him. He didn’t try to be spiritual. He had no need to impress anyone and he didn’t really care what anyone thought. Horace had very little in terms of material possessions. Horace also had a tremendous love for his children even though he didn’t always know how to care for them.

Horace stood about 5 foot 6inches tall and had a large pot belly. He served as a tribal police officer in his younger years and I saw him use bruit force on a few occasions. I have never seen anyone else in their 60’s who was so exceptionally strong. Horace could be a real hard ass at times, but he could also show tremendous compassion.

Horace had no difficulty making money and he was sometimes bored because he felt that there was no challenge involved in what he was doing. Sometimes we would take off on a road trip with twenty dollars which he usually blew within a few hours. We would then find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere with no gas or money. But Horace would somehow come up with gas, food and money to get us to our destination.

Horace was often silent and we could ride for hours without saying a word. He would sometimes just acknowledge a question I asked him, but months could pass before he actually answered my question. Every now and then he would seemly come out of no where and hit me with some really profound statement.

Horace had this very primal quality and immense power emanating from him. He had these deeply penetrating eyes and you knew that he could see right through you. I initially felt like I lost myself in his presence. But Horace confronted me by saying I wasn’t fit to work with these powers if I was so easily influenced.

I got use to the intensity and grew stronger as the months passed. That allowed me to maintain my own sense of self in his presence. I also began to recognize Horace’s contradictions. I argued with Horace at times, but he invariably knew what I was thinking and would often rebut my argument before I could get it out of my mouth.

Many people recovered from serious illnesses as a result of Horace’s intervention. But it can be very stressful to continually have to deal with the suffering of others. He often cracked jokes and that was a means for him to lighten things up.

Horace, like everyone else was human and he had his weaknesses. I’ve seen many healers from around the world, and to this day, I still feel that Horace was the most powerful and that he could assist people with a much wider range of health concerns. But Horace didn’t really know how to work with his own emotions or to address his own personal issues. That understanding wasn’t available in the culture in which he lived. Horace was also way up there on his own. He had no peers and no one to turn to for guidance.

Horace also had the same biological predisposition to alcoholism that many other American Indians struggle with. He went on occasional binges, but he stayed sober the majority of the time that I was around him. Those binges increased in frequency toward the end of the time I spent with him.

It was very scary to be around him at during a drinking binge, because the power coming out of him felt very chaotic and destructive. Horace eventually became very destructive and began to abuse his power. Some of the things he did really hurt people and many of his own Kiowa people became afraid of him. Some of the surviving Kiowa elders confronted Horace, told him that what he was doing was inappropriate and that he would pay for it. Horace didn’t listen. No one could really get through to him. Finally, I looked at Horace one day and said "…sometimes I think you’re a real asshole".

Horace was changing and it was definitely for the worse. It felt like everything was falling apart around Horace. He just wasn’t the same person. That power left Horace and he could no longer serve people the way he did.

I could see it all happening and I didn’t know what to do about it. But after speaking with a friend, I decided I had gone as far as I could with Horace.

Horace got into trouble for the same reasons as so many other highly developed spiritual teachers. Many of these highly gifted people have so much to offer. But they are still human and they experience the same kinds of internal processes that everyone else does. Thoughts, feelings, emotions and life experiences have to be digested. Conflict and issues have to be addressed and brought to some kind of resolution. A master or guru can only push these internal conflicts into the background for so long. That power is impartial and it eventually will flow through all parts of the self.

This is why I place so much emphasis on learning to work constructively with our emotions. Many people are so resistant to this aspect of their spiritual development. Digesting our emotions and resolve issues helps to create a healthy foundation that will enable us to open up to and manage greater power.

I was so disillusioned when Horace fell from grace. I felt that my dream had come crashing down and I questioned my whole experience with Horace. I put myself back into college and took the next two years to complete a degree and reassemble myself.

Friends on several occasions asked me if I could assist them with some of their issues or health challenges. I felt greatly encouraged as they told me about the improvements they experienced in their health. They also said that it helped them to resolve many of their personal issues. Two of my friends at that time were clairvoyant and they described how they saw various beings working through me to facilitate the healing.

That started to build my confidence and helped me to realize that I received something of tremendous value from Horace.

I felt incomplete with Horace for the longest time and I never found another person who could pick up where he left off. I gradually started to work with people. After some time I started going to the mountains in Southwestern Oklahoma to do my vision quests. This is the same place where so many of the Kiowa doctors had gone in years past. That’s when my work really took off.

I still miss Horace at times. I saw him at a distance on a few occasions when I was back in Oklahoma. A friend came to check on me while I was on the mountain during a vision quest some years ago. He told me that Horace had recently died somewhere out in Arizona. The circumstances of his death were not clear. But the Navajo Reservation is like so many third world countries and you never really know what happened.

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