By Evelyn Eaton (1902 – 1983).

212 Pages | A Quest Original 1982 | Softcover | Quest Books, U.S.A. | ISBN: 0835605612.

This is the personal logbook of Mahad’yuni (Evelyn Eaton), a woman of white and Indian ancestry. Evelyn is a Metis Medicine Woman of the Bear Medicine Tribe and the Deer Tribe, who received her Pipe from an Arapaho Medicine Man, and much of her eighteen year long training from the Paiute Medicine Man in the Owens Valley, who also made the Pipe for her and blessed it. This first person account of Amerindian healing rituals includes her personal triumphs over physical affliction. It is the story of a Sweat Lodge, a Medicine Wheel, Shamans, the Grandfathers, and ‘close to Mother Earth’ people. It is a story of deep compassion. It is a story of tenderness. It is a story of power – the power of extraordinary healing capacities that are available to every human being.

She subsequently immersed herself in study of Native American spiritual traditions. Her many books include:

• Snowy Earth Comes Gliding
• I Send A Voice
• Go Ask The River
• The Trees And The Fields Went The Other Way.
•  Joy of Night – The Last Years of Evelyn Eaton, written by her daughter Terry Eaton.

From page 173:

” The Wiyag Wachipipi (dance looking at the Sun) is one of our greatest rites and was first held many, many winters after our people received the sacred Pipe from the White Buffalo Cow Woman. It is held each year during the Moon of Fattening (June) or the Moon of Cherries Blackening (July) always at the same time when the moon is full, for the growing and dying of the moon reminds us of our ignorance, which comes and goes; but when the moon is full it is as if the eternal light of the Great Spirit were upon the whole world. “

By Terry Eaton.

158 Pages | A Quest Original 1988 | Softcover | Quest Books, U.S.A. | ISBN: 0835606341.

The Last Years of American Indian Writer Evelyn Eaton.

Many tribes, including the Nova Scotia Micmacs (from whom author Evelyn Eaton claimed descent) views crows and ravens as ‘little black messengers of the Great Spirit or Author of Mankind’. Evelyn Eaton was known as Grandmother, to others as prolific writer, poet, world traveler, lecturer, and teacher. At age eight, she published her first poem in the Montreal Star. She became an American citizen in 1944 and served as war correspondent. She taught at Columba University, Mary Washington University, Sweet Briar College, Ohio State, Pershing College, and Deep Spring College. She first encountered Paiute and Arapaho medicine people in 1962. She subsequently immersed herself in study of Native American spiritual traditions. Her many books include:

• Snowy Earth Comes Gliding
• I Send A Voice
• The Shaman And The Medicine Wheel
• Go Ask The River
• The Trees And The Fields Went The Other Way.

From Chapter III (p. 27 & 28):

” Four times think before you cross,
behind your elders or before –
for the grass springs back
more sweetly in their wake.

Oh my mother. Grandmother to my four.
I watch your stately march to that place of surrender –
the gold-west hill, still warm in the hint of a fading star.

I see you – at my distance – painted stick in hand
The hem of your dress feathers the ground
as you move in rhythm, to the ancient tunes.

And the lonely heart beats time,
drums its rune of love
for the grasses where those feet have danced.

For the places of young light,
for the cliffs of greener songs.
For the crater of strong winds,
Summer lightning. Storms.

All pilgrim paths and waterways from which you’ve spun:
North, East and South to West, my mother
Rainbow to my suns. “

By Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton (1902 – 1983).

178 Pages | First Quest Book edition 1978, 5th printing 1990 | Softcover | Quest Books, U.S.A. | ISBN: 0835605116.

A FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT of the consciousness expanding, transforming rites of an Amerindian Sweat Lodge.

Evelyn Eaton writes of her compelling determination to become worthy of participating in a Sweat Lodge healing ritual. Later, after undergoing ordeals inside and outside the Lodge, she dared to ask Power Man for a Pipe. I Send a Voice provides an unusually authentic picture of the Amerindian during one of his most sacred and esoteric rites. With Evelyn, we live through the deep drama of numerous experiences of physical and spiritual healings: grow to love, admire, and respect the powerful Grandfathers.

From page 36:

” Sharing was the point. Someone gathered and brought the tule reeds. Someone brought the rocks and the wood for the fire. Someone drew the water and carried it in pails. Many hands must have built the Sweat Lodge, cutting and trimming the willow trees, planting them in the ground, bending them symmetrically together to support the roof. In the old days someone would have cured the deerskin or the buffalo hide to stretch on the framework. Then there would be a ritual to bless it, in which everyone concerned would take part.

The description of such a ritual was in Chapter III of Brown’s The Sacred Pipe. There was a diagram showing the Inipi, the purification lodge. The Sweat Lodge here was made by another tribe, but the principle was the same. I thought of the circle, in all its symbolism, from a glyph of the Creator, that Point within the Circle, whose center is everywhere, to its representative, the sun, source of light, life and spiritual illumination. From there, I went to meditation on the Medicine Wheel, a mandala of concentric depths and intricate designs, where everything in the universe has its appropriate place. “