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Richard Erdoes – extract from research

 "I am compelled to live this way that is not of my own choosing, because they [the Thunder Beings chose me…. My whole life is to do the bidding of the Thunder beings and of my people and to pay heed to what the Grandfathers tell me…..”

“I live in an age that has passed. I live as though it is fifty years ago, a hundred years ago. I like it that way. I want to live as humbly, as close to the earth as I can. Close to the plants, the weeds, the flowers that I use for medicine. The Great Spirit has seen to it that man can survive in this way, can live as he is meant to live. So my wife and I are dwelling in a little cabin - no electricity, no tap water, no plumbing, no road. This is what we want.

This simple log cabin knows peace. That's how we want to be for the rest of our lives. I want to exist apart from the modem world, get out, way out, in the sticks, and live much closer to nature, even closer than I am doing now…..

We live off nature, my wife and I; we hardly need anything. We will somehow live. The Great Spirit made the flowers, the streams, the pines, the cedars; he takes care of them. He lets a breeze go through there, makes them breathe it, waters them, makes them grow. Even the one that is down in the crags, in the rocks. He tends to that, too. He takes care of me, waters me, feeds me, makes me live with the plants and animals as one of them.

This is how I wish to remain - an Indian - all the days of my life.  This does not mean that I want to shut myself off. Somehow many people find their way to my cabin. I like that. I want to be in communication, reach out to people everywhere, impart a little of our Indian way, the spirit's way, to them.

At the same time, I want to withdraw farther and farther away from everything, to live like the ancient ones. On the highway you sometimes see a full-blooded Indian thumbing a ride. I never do that. When I walk the road, I expect to walk the whole way. That is deep down in me, a kind of pride.

Someday I'll move my cabin still farther into the hills, maybe do without a cabin altogether, become part of the woods.  There the spirit still has something for us to discover: an herb, a sprig, a flower, a very small flower, maybe. You can spend a long time in its contemplation, thinking about it. Not a rose, yellow, white, artificial, big. I hear they are breeding black roses. That's not natural. These things are against nature. They make us weak. I abhor them.

So as I get older, I burrow more and more into the hills. The Great Spirit made them for us, for me. I want to blend with them, shrink into them, and finally, disappear in them. As my brother Lame Deer has said, all of nature is in us, all of us is in nature.  That is as it should be”.