The article I chose out of our COPIES NOW material to write my response to, is Deer Hunting by James Paytiamo. All of the articles were interesting, but this article caught my attention the most. The main reason is there are many points in this article, where it feels like the articles brings the reader into the actual hunt. There were three symbols that I noticed first in this article. The first being the colors of the paint they used to paint their face and body. The second was the circle they drew on the ground for the altar. The third and last symbolic act I learned from this article was how highly they think of animals in Native American culture. The colors of the paint they used on their body has many symbols in Native American culture. First thing I realized about the colors which were red, black, blue, yellow, and white, is that these are the colors Native Americans use for direction. The second thing I noticed about the colors is what each color symbolizes and what they may have meant for the hunt. The black paint they…show more content… At one point in the article it states they even pray to mountain lions, eagles, hawks, wolves, and other wild beasts. Another example is even when an Indian kills a deer he doesn’t just carry it off. He first brushes the deer off with a small tree branch. He also takes his flint animals and places them on the deer to feed them and give back the power they gave him. Further the hunter also takes pollen he received from flowers he picked up, and drops a little on the deer’s mouth, then brings it to his own breath, then makes a sign towards the hunter’s camp. Which is supposed to direct the deer’s spirit to the camp.
The hunter even talks to the dead creature and his flint animals. Even when the hunter is taking out the inside of the deer he takes the spleen of the deer and places it on a twig nearby to feed a