Welcome to Roman's Road, the podcast of me, Eddie Roman. This is where we talk about evangelism and apologetics and all kinds of Christian stuff. Welcome to Part two. We are looking at the American Indian and particularly how we can witness to them. Last episode we talked to Matthew Monfore. We are back with him today. How are you doing, Matthew?

Great. Good to be with you again. Thanks for breakfast.

All right. We had our Ten Commandments loaf of bread, didn't we?

Yeah, it looked like communion.

Yeah. Very interesting looking piece of bread. Yeah. So today we are going to get more into the specifics of the Indian religion. And I'm talking American Indian as opposed to guy from India. We're going to be looking at what they believe and how we as Christians can speak to them concerning Jesus Christ. I was going to get right into it here. Yesterday we were hanging out with Ray Comfort and the other guys at Living Waters, Mark Spence and Brad Snow and Miguel and the gang. And at one point someone mentioned that Ray Comfort. No, he. I think he actually asked the questions about getting scalped or someone mentioned Ray needs to get scalped. I forget what it was.

I wish I was hoping that I wanted to pull a prank on him so somewhere I wanted to get a fake scalp and gift it to.

That's what it was. Yeah, he would have loved it. It would have been added to the endless collection of things that people give him. So that would have been a great thing. But yeah, the issue of getting scalped, if we've ever seen a movie, Indian, old Indian movie, a war movie or something, or even reading the history books, getting scalped is a crazy, gnarly, horrible thing that happens during war. But as I learn yesterday, there's actually a spiritual side of getting scalped. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so in the metaphysics of the American Indian, I just want to also qualify that a lot of American Indians don't believe what their ancestors believe. That's just a fact. So basically today when you're talking to an American Indian, it's basically 1970s Neo Pagan, New age hippie religion mixed with their Indian tradition. So they've lost a lot of what they believe.

So kind of like a legitimate reason to do drugs? Yes, for some. Okay.

Yes.

Yeah. I know a lot of guys here in California who basically believe that same.

Thing and be rebellious and anti establishment in a bad way.

Okay.

So the scalp scalping, I have not seen any news reports of someone being scalped lately. It's not to say it doesn't happen or couldn't happen. Maybe it will. I know I've been threatened with being scalped plenty of times that we're going to scalp you, et cetera. As you can see, it's toe my hair.

And that's for. Since you do mission work on an Indian reservation. So you've actually been threatened with being scalped?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, absolutely. And it's really interesting for such a peaceful tradition to be threatened with so much violence and vulgarity and just horrible things that are said. I also want to say, in the last episode we focused on the Dakota, the Lakota customs. A lot of these beliefs are throughout the whole entire continent. So we're talking 570 tribes. So what we were saying will be beneficial to you, not just for a specific tribe, because a lot of the customs are similar or adoption, as well as the way that they network and the education system being the way it is. It's really ironic for tribes that used to war and kill each other for so many years now. Now they're just all on the same team anyways.

Yeah. And another disclaimer, since we're throwing disclaimers in the mix, I'd like to throw one in, too. So on the last episode, we talked a lot about the persecution that Matthew's experienced. This episode where, you know, we started off with talking about getting scalped, I also want to just throw in there the disclaimer that a lot of the things we're talking about are in the context of Matthew's current situation. He's being persecuted. He's being fought against by. By a large group of people, including some very activist Indians who. Who basically hate the white man. And that goes way back for a lot of different reasons, but in the same way that we might go to a Muslim country and be very wary of people getting their heads chopped off, because that actually happens, and people persecuting Christians. The average person on the street that you will meet in Pakistan, let's say, and I've been there, they are very kind and gracious and hospitable, and they are just nice people. The average kind of person walking through life who needs a savior, that's the average person we meet. And so I don't want to paint this picture that Indians are all Indians are bad and that kind of thing. In the same way, we wouldn't say that about any group of people yet in the context of what we're talking about today, there's some pretty serious stuff that goes on. And so that's what we are talking about. Would you agree there?

Absolutely. And there's a lot of American Indians that are Christian. Yeah. And I also, you know, we focus on, like, the persecution. Like this has been a blessing as well, because I've had people reach out to me as well and want to come forward and confess Christ that are American Indian. So.

Yeah, yeah. So what's the spiritual side of getting scalped?

Yeah, so the scalp is also synonymous, associated with the scalp dance. And so in American Indian metaphysics, you know, understanding of the soul, the spirit, the body, and how that all relates to the life after is they believe that humans have multiple spirits. And now I say they believe that this is. Once again, we have the Bible as a canon. So we can go through all of our manuscripts and thousands and tens of thousands upon thousands of those and say, this is our canon. This is what we believe. Well, you don't have that with the American Indians.

They don't have a book. They don't have a book that they all agree on.

Yeah, they don't. Except for Christianity. Bad. And so you have to. How do you determine what's official for them? Because they have a right called the vision quest. And they can basically go and fast and cry out to God and God will give them a new insight or ritual or ceremony to do or a new way to do it. So there's no end to this canon, for lack of a better term, of theirs. And you have 570 tribes, officially recognized tribes, and then you divide that into each individual medicine man or witch doctor, however you want to use the term. So when I'm talking about the scalp dance, like, where am I getting this? There are basically five main authors that I'm going to refer to. So if you want to go fact check me if I'm well studied or telling the truth, and they are American Indians that were taught to read and write, American Indians had no way of reading and writing. I think this is important to understand this context of, you know, is what I'm saying, actually something that was done.

What year are we talking here?

We're talking the 1800s primarily when, especially for the Midwestern Indians, when they were reading and writing and what we call the transition period, which would be like 1880 to the 1920s. This transition period from where a lot of these customs and beliefs were strongly held to at large to becoming more assimilated Christian or educated. We use the term civilized, and those are good words. So the main authors are Black Elk. That's very popular. If you go to college in America today and you're taking a class on American Indian studies, Probably read his book, very popular, Black Elk Speaks. And then there's also Dr. Charles Eastman's books. Written quite a few books. The most famous one called the Soul of an Indian. And then you've got White Bull and Luther, Standing Bear. And that is not naked, as someone was joking the other day. Standing Bear is an animal. And Ella DeLaurier, who's a Dakota, who Very, very prominent in the linguistic world.

So these are people who were Indians and they learned English, and now they kind of laid down the beliefs in books over the years.

Yeah, yeah. And we can basically take what they've written and also the interviews that someone like James Walker recorded. Dr. James Walker, who's a doctor in Pine, Virginia, reservation, and would interview people. So we look back at these and we say, okay, this is a polytheistic culture. They also are writing down their traditions as they're speaking to the American Indians, or the American Indians wrote these testimonies themselves. Dakota author. I'll give you a source. Last name, Bush Otter. I don't really remember Bush Otter, if that was his first or his last name, but Bush Otter is how we know him as. And he's written a manuscript, and he details the beliefs. So the practice of the scalping was that the American Indians believed that people had more than one spirit, and one of those spirits existed in the hair. And obviously Eddie has no soul.

So I have no soul. I was really sad. I looked over at Ray, and he's got a full head of hair. And I thought, man, I am sore soulless. So if they're going after your soul, they're going to scalp you. Is that kind of what it is?

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And we're using the term soul and spirit synonymously here. And I don't know where Eddie stands on this issue, but I believe in scripture that they're synonymous. I know people try to divide. There's the spirit and the soul, and then you can get super sanctified if you yield your soul. But you got God's spirit. I just. I think scripture is very clear.

Yeah. I don't divide them. And I'm glad that no one's trying to divide them off my head.

Yeah.

As well. But it doesn't matter to me, obviously, because I don't have any hair. I have no soul. All right, so. So the practice of scalping isn't just a mean thing that people did. There was actually a spiritual belief behind it.

You're taking. Taking someone's soul.

Taking someone's soul. And so obviously we don't have to do an apologetic for that today, fortunately, because no one's trying to scalp us. But let's. Let's get back into a couple of things we mentioned in the last episode. The Sundance. What is the Sundance? And why do all these California hippies go to Sun Dances now whenever they get a chance?

Yes. So once again, the modern day that it's done is not going to be the exact same way that it was done hundreds of years ago. And so I'm going to point to Dr. Eastman if someone's challenging me in what I'm saying. And he will say that because people come at me for the term Takashevila. Takashevila is the name that's used for God. It's used for spirits. Black Elk spoke of the six grandfathers, the spirits, one for each direction. Northeast, west, south, up and down. Basically, that would be the directions. And then the spirits can represent different directions. I'll put it that way. So with the Sun Dance, Dr. Charles Eastman said that we call the Sun Grandfather, which is the Dakota word is tukashila.

Again, sun, meaning ball of fire in the sky.

Ball of fire in the sky.

Son of God. So it's the sun.

Absolutely. And this is one of their oldest traditions, particularly in the Midwest, practiced amongst the Plain Indians. I'm not going to say that every tribe in America practices the Sun Dance. And so over time, it's gone from a pole that's erected, and you hung from that with your bare flesh with the eagle claw and rope could be some kind of tissue that was used for. From an animal, or even some kind of rope today, hemp rope or something.

So you're talking about there's a pole. It's a big pole, and then tied to that pole is a rope of some kind. On the end of that rope, there's an eagle claw, basically a hook. They take this hook, this claw, and they stick it into their skin and, you know, like, let's say it's on their chest, and then they lean backwards and basically just hang from it. So now they are hanging by a big hook. Is that correct?

Yeah. And what you do is you stare at the sun and you have an eagle bone whistle, and you blow that and you basically just kind of move around and dance. And you can go as long as you want until your skin breaks. You can have many piercings or a few piercings. That's why you see the. Like you were saying, the scars on the chest.

Yeah. When we were at the Indian reservation, I actually met some guys and they were showing me Their scars. And it was like a. Check this one out. They were bragging. The staring at the sun thing, that is extremely interesting because I met what I believe to be a demon possessed homeless woman at Huntington beach six months ago or so, and she was staring right at the sun for long periods of time. And I was asking her while she was staring at the sun, doesn't that hurt your eyes? And she said, no, I know how to do was insane. But wow. So you're saying that there's actually a ritual. People do that on purpose? Don't they go blind?

You would think so. Maybe there is some kind of subconscious way, you know, like people walking on fire. I don't know, I've never tried it. But I remember reading somebody's take on it. There's a modern author named Thomas Males, I believe. And I'm thinking he's from California, but he did a book on Rosebud in the Sundance and he actually, it's interesting, he did talk about somebody who appeared to get demon possessed from the or like told him that he was demon possessed from doing the Sundance. But the far as staring at the sun, that they would until you see blue or green. And like, I'm just like, well, anybody could do that. If you start the sun, like, you know, you kind of squint your eyes, you kind of. That light does something to your eyes when you close your eyes or you see this blue or green tint or whatever. And I'm just like, well, that's just. That's just common knowledge. And that was supposed to be a vision or holy or something like that. So. So this is done to appease Tukashila for blessing. A lot of times, a lot of times on the reservation, I mean, I actually, I remember we'd go door to door, knocking on a door, and a guy's like, we were trying to witness to him and he's like. He was kind cordial with us. He's like, I can't, I can't. I sold my soul to the devil. What do you mean? He's like, well, I did the ritual. And so, yeah, there's the sun dance. They'll tie themselves to that. And then also in conjunction with that, there's piercing yourself and then dragging buffalo skulls. And so you can drag as many buffalo skulls as you want from a.

Hook of some kind that's attached to the rope. And then you're literally dragging skulls behind you or in front of you or whatever direction you're going, I guess.

Yeah. Yes. And this is usually done to get like, you know, maybe to heal somebody in the family or to get a blessing. And it's very common when you talk to people that have done that or even family members that have done that, that they actually, like, there's a temporary blessing, like they got what they wanted, but then, like, they're cursed. Like, people die in their family and they all think that it stems from doing the Sundance. They believe in cursing each other, magic, et cetera. I also want to put this resource in there for people that are listening. If you go to YouTube and look up William Redbear and Adolphus Kootenay. One's a former medicine man. He was Nakota, just north of North Dakota, Canadian. And then William Redbeard was Dakota from a tribe in South Dakota. They've Both since died 15 years ago, but they go and tell you what it was like to come out of that stuff.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so, boy, how would you do apologetics to tell someone not to drag a buffalo skull behind them with a hook hanging out of their chest? I mean, it sounds like basically they're doing these things in order to get some kind of respect, power or forgiveness from their God, which is Tikanchala. Is that what this is?

Yeah, yeah. So it's very, you know, works righteousness based, as everything without Christ is. It's to, yes, get power from the demons, the spirits. And it's also, you know, the way that it's conducted just kind of in even a secular thinking amongst them is you wanna. Are you Indian? Like, you really think you're Indian? You've done the Sun Dance, you know, like, are you really a part of your people? Are you really traditional? Are you really Lakota?

And it's like a peer pressure kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. And that goes for a lot of their traditions, a lot of peer pressure. Like, do you know your language? You've been taking language skills. You're not really Indian. You know, like, it's a badge of like, approval, like a coming of age type thing.

It's like me when I was a teenager. You really think you're Californian? Let's see you jump your BMX bike over this car, huh? Same thing.

I bet you did it, though.

I did, yeah. Yeah. But okay, so a lot of these things are cultural in nature and there's a peer pressure, but at the same time, there's a very spiritual element. The sweat lodge, that's another. What would you call it? A ritual.

Yeah, ritual. Ritual is a good word. The book by Black Elk. So he did a couple black Elk Speaks and with John Neihardt and then he did one with Joseph Epps Brown. And this one details the sacred rites of the Dakota. And I also want to say a really good resource. Maybe Eddie uses this. I use archive.org a lot. You can get books that have been published. Some. Some as far as recent. It's. It's legal. It's. I thinking it's a government website. Are connected to. Gets funding from our government. But it's really good resource. Library of Congress, I want to say.

Yeah, I use it all the time. No, I'm just kidding.

Oh, okay.

But I will if I need to.

A lot of the books that I've like mentioned you can. You can find online there. A lot of them are on Kindle. There's a couple. Few that aren't, especially the older ones. So, you know, in regards to the sweat lodge. So this is one of the. So the word that's used in that book with Black Elk and Josephus Brown is right. R, I T E. You know, rites, ritual, ceremonies, same thing. And that there's seven main ones. And the sweat lodge, or inipi is what it's called, is one of those. And this, the sweat and the peace pipe are. The pipe are used pretty much in most tribes in America. 570 federally recognized tribes. And the sweat lodge is basically. You get like willow branches or some kind of branches, and then you cover that with animal skin and it's dark.

And so it's basically like a big tent made out of natural things.

Yes, yes. And a lot of these ceremonies overlap. So like when you're having the Sundance, they're going to do a nipi, they're going to do sweat lodge, they're going to do the pipe. A lot of them overlap each other as far as use. And when they're doing them, then you will have basically some steaming hot rocks in there. You build a fire in there. And the official canon of the American Indian religion, Bo Schodder, the Dakota man, wrote that they would actually take a rock and paint it red. So they were polytheists. Nowadays, it's like I said, It's 1970s hippie religion. So it's just one God. Pantheism. Pantheism, like one God that is over all and is in all and is above all. And we're one with the God, like in Pocahontas. Right.

Everything is God as opposed to we're worshiping something else outside of us.

Yeah. Okay, so Dr. Charles Eastman even has written, like, we really don't know what we believe. So I point to him as an authority who went through that Dakota who embraced Christianity at one point and then basically left it. So this is, this is a guy who's not necessarily sympathetic to Christians. And so they, as I'm talking about the sweat lodge, they had many, many gods. And one of them was called Inyan. It was a rock God. And they also had the tankuskanskan, which was a rock that basically was of God that lived in a rock. And so these traditions with the sweat lodge, like I could be talking to somebody that is a modern day considers themselves traditional. Because that's why when you're on the reservation, you ask them, are you Christian or are you traditional? Traditional refers to the Indian religion. And they'll say, well, I'm both. A lot of times you'll hear that that's why I felt the burden of the Lord to just as far as giving honor to the Lord, that there needs to be a distinction drawn. In the same way that you go as a missionary to Iran and people are advocating for mixing Christianity with Islam. So the sweat lodge, they would bring this rock in and they would pray to the rock. The rock would help them find things, the rock would help them in regards to war. And they'd paint it red and then maybe put feathers on it. I could go more in depth in the language, but I won't. But so the sweat lodge then is. Some people would say, like a purification ceremony. Kids are sweating, etc. But you're basically going to meet with the spirits. And I have a testimony here, if you don't mind. And it's the testimony of a Dakota who grew up that way. And this is from the 1800s. So do you mind if I just read his testimony?

Go right ahead.

So this is chief Eli spotted bear. And I'll just show you. That's him right there. Got a picture of him even.

Yep, there he is.

And so this is from the late 1870s and so the 1800s. Just to set context for this, I think it's really interesting to Eddie and everyone listening, the 1800s are considered the golden age of missions. That was Hudson Taylor Adoniram Judson, the first American missionary to be sent out. William Carey, the father of modern missions, late 1700s. This whole missions movement for 100 years. This is before modernization and colonization and David Livingston and c. T Stud and you were just in Hawaii. We were talking about the Binghams and Titus Cohen and where they're going out there. And people have volcano priests and Amy Carmichael, 1800s, she was saving those girls out of temple prostitution. Like, it was so much more obvious that when you were going out to proclaim the gospel, that there was a clear delineation between what Christ offered and what they don't. Now, it's like I said, of course, prophetically, we're headed for one world religion. I think that's pretty much accepted in eschatology amongst people. And now it's just all getting blended into one big thing, right? That as long as you don't say something that's exclusive to Christ, it's okay to say it. So you could go on a reservation, like you're saying, you know, and get along with people and. But you're not going to bring someone to Christ, you know. So this is Chief Eli Spotted Bear. And he had been converted through the Riggs family, which was basically the founding missionaries of upper Midwest, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, all that territory up there, the first church in the upper Midwest. He starts off this testimony saying, quote, I am Dakota. I. I was born a Dakota. And as the Dakota live, I live. So he's saying, I'm a genuine one. You want to challenge my Indian ness? I was a real Indian, right? I was taught as they are taught and dressed as they dressed in blanket, leggings, moccasins, and the breech cloth, my hair grew long and was braided and. Right. They do that because the soles and the hair, the scalp lock on top of my head and the two side braids were wrapped with otter fur, bright red cloth, and the part of my hair was painted red. And we're going to get into the. He's going to talk about the sweat bath, but he's just kind of set in the face that I did it all painted red, and my face was also painted. I was taught to pray as Dakota boys are taught to those things regarded sacred. When nicely dressed, the boy is taken to where the offering is uplifted on a pole and is told to say, have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon me. I pray. And this is still the way of our people. They also have the sweatbath worship. A house is made of willows, bent over and covered with blankets. Many stones are collected and heated, one man picking up stones and another bringing wood for the fire. When all is prepared, the men go inside and sit down naked while one watches outside. The leader takes water and pours it upon the hot stones in the middle. And as the steam arises and covers them all, he prays to whatever spirit he wishes. Then all join each man praying as he chooses and crying and groaning terribly. And to this day, this is the custom of the people. Had I not heard the good news and of Jesus, I too would pray and worship. Thus, some of us now know the better way. Many, however, have not yet heard of it. And there's no one to tell them. We look to you, who know it so well. We pray that you would help us to teach our children more wisely than our fathers taught us.

Wow. So here is an Indian, and he's saying, I used to be like this and believe all these things and go along with my Indian heritage, but now I follow Jesus and it's two different things.

Yep.

Yeah.

And I have testimony after testimony of that.

You know, what's amazing is it's so funny. I start doing this episode and I'm thinking, okay, we're going to learn apologetics and all this stuff. And now I'm just realizing it's pretty simple. It's Romans, chapter one. With all these things, with all of these different rituals and beliefs, it really just comes down to these people are worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. They're involved in pagan ritual. I mean, it really doesn't get any more basic than this. The sweat lodge, going into this room and getting really sweaty. And same with smoking the pipe. All these things just really have to do with. They're worshiping a different God. And then nowadays, people are basically worshiping themselves, but adding all these experiences and rituals into the mix. But there's really not a whole lot to this other than it's. It's very basic. The issue really is, are you going to follow Christ or not? You know, pretty simple. What would the average American Indian believe about the afterlife? What happens after a person dies from their worldview?

So the commonly accepted, and it seems to be pretty broad, is that you're going to join the ancestors. And then the terminology of the Dakota and the happy hunting grounds. And so you take a journey on the Milky Way to get there. And there is. There is talk, I have found talk of there being. It doesn't use the word hell, of course, but two things. One is that if you were a bad person, your spirit is just going to roam the earth. And so there's actually a ritual which is one of the seven sacred rites, and it's called the keeping of the Spirit. I've gone pretty in depth in this. I've done series online and things like that. But the keeping the spirit, basically you take the hair, because the spirit's in the hair. And it's common to put the Bodies on a scaffold or just bury them in a ravine.

So this is after someone dies.

After someone dies, this is what they're.

Doing to their body in order to give them a good afterlife experience.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep. This body, if it's on a scaffold, will probably be eaten by birds and things like that, which is really. I just got to say this because is there's this big thing about graves at boarding schools. And I'm just going to. And this is important to understand. Like, in Canada, they said that they found 200 bodies in a residential school graveyard. And residential schools are considered, like, primacy of evil. Like, you colonized us, assimilated, took away our ways. Right. And I could go on, on and on about how it's just residential school.

Being a school on an Indian reservation that's made by the hosting country, government. Whether it's Canada or America, these are schools that the government's put in place and say, here, you're gonna. You're gonna learn at our schools? Basically, yeah.

Our churches. And so, like President Grant, the money actually used to be given to churches to do run these schools, and they were Protestant and Catholic, you know, both sides. So I say all this to say. So that was. That was a totally false story. And the chief, who's actually a woman up there in the TECM loops in Canada, she actually retracted and said, well, I shouldn't have said bodies. I should have said we think that there is or something. Anyway, New York Post did an investigation on it. The Federalist reported on it, and Rebel News, which is the main pretty good news source out of Canada, and they did a documentary called the Buried Truth. Well, anyway, the churches were burned over this. Vandalized. The Prime Minister of Canada, Trudeau, and the Pope, like, just denounced Christianity, you know, evil, evil people. And so I say all that to say that it's really ironic. And so, like, if you go to any graveyard, and this is really important because when you talk to American Indian, you talk about graves and death and burial, and they're going to bring this up. Like, you go to any grave site in America, even white ones, like old ones, you can't read the stones, and they're probably sunken in the dirt. It doesn't matter what color of skin you are. It doesn't matter if they're kids or if they're 80 years old. I mean, I've gone to these graveyards. Sometimes people do research and they write. Well, this whole line here is, like, kids that died of, like, tuberculosis and they're white. Kids. So they have this whole narrative that, you know, evil white man was taking kids and killing them at boarding schools, which is just. That's really popular belief among them, which is totally false. So when we talk about the burial customs, they didn't even bury him with graves. They would. They would like, put them in a ravine and never see them again. You know, that's all modern stuff. Or put him on a scaffold where they'd be eaten by birds. So anyways, then the hare was taken and that's where the spirit was. And that was kept. And, you know, the term is used scalp lock. And that hair was kept. And it could be like a period of months really. And all these ceremonies are performed, like offerings are made to this and to aid it in the afterlife. And after a certain amount of ceremonies are done and the pipe is smoked, and like I said, a lot of these ceremonies overlap, you can release that spirit into heaven. So that's the understanding of, you know, it's all man. There's no savior. And so I. I would say this, I say this in my track. Is that the best white man, the best American Indian, the best black man. You line them all up before God and they all fall short. They're all. They're all going to go to hell without Christ. So God, right, obviously God came to earth in flesh. John 1. He's very clearly God in the flesh and lived this perfect life. He is greater than Sitting Bull. He is greater than Crazy Horse. He's greater than George Washington, greater than all the missionaries. And he took the wrath of God as our substitute for all of our sin. That the law clearly demonstrates is our sins against him. And he was crucified on a Roman cross, was buried and rose again from the dead. And he's the only one that has power over death, not us doing a ceremony with hair, you know.

Well, that would count me out anyway.

Yeah. We couldn't bury you properly. We could never get you across the Milky Way.

That's true. That's true.

Be stuck.

I am holding in my hand one of the largest gospel tracts I've ever seen. I love it. On the back of it it says jesusiskingmission.com. that's your website. And so just want to point that out. You can get more on Matthew and the work he's doing among the American Indians. Jesusiskingmission.com but this is a track. This is the track that got you into a lot of trouble.

Isn't.

Says Jesus and then parentheses, Hebrew, not white. And of course you're always getting blamed for bringing in the white man's religion, but it's actually based on Hebrew. And then it says greater than tinkasala. That's the name of. How do you pronounce it?

Okay, so the N is kind of a nasal, so tun, and then kash, and that S is a sh. They have two S's in their language. I didn't put the little mark above it, but the S is a sh, so it's tun. Kashila.

Okay. All right. And so I'm going to go and let you say that. Not even try. But yeah. So this is the track that got you into. Into trouble. But as I'm looking through this, it's really just a basic. Here's the false God, and then here's how you get away from the false God by believing in the true God. Okay, so here's a very interesting thing that we haven't kind of touched on yet. The white buffalo calf woman. All right, and so what is the white buffalo calf woman? Who is that among the Indians?

Part of the Antichrist system, in short. But I'll go in more in depth. So first, John. And John's letters tell us that the spirit of the Antichrist is already in the world. There's many Antichrists. And so I do believe that this seems to be more of a recent belief, and I'm not the only one that thinks that. And of course, I developed that opinion in reading books about the American Indian religions. And so it seems to be from the 1700s. And so what it is is basically, they believe that a white buffalo calf came and she's a woman.

Okay.

And appeared to two hunters. One of them died because he had sinful thoughts or lustful thoughts about her, and the other one lived, and she gave them their sacred rights. That would include. So we were talking about this. We were talking about the Sundance, the Inipi, the sweat lodge, the Canupa, which is the pipe you got, the vision quest you've got. It's like a game, the throwing of the ball, which actually kind of came later. And how many were at five or six. And then you've got the making of a woman ceremony, which is like coming of age for a woman. And I'm trying to think if I missed one.

Well, that's a lot. Yeah, so far.

So.

So all these different rituals came from the white buffalo calf woman. She's the one who brought this information to these people.

Yeah, a lot of the. A lot of the rituals.

And so she was a spiritual being or A spirit.

Yeah. Yeah. So. And she's. Yeah. And then she disappeared, and then she's supposed to come back. So you can kind of see the. I believe that it was just ripped off from Christianity.

So she's. She's their version of a savior. Yeah, it sounds like. Okay.

Yeah. And. And so this is really ironic because I was just play out like, in the modern world, how do they view this? So it's like every year, like, yellow Yellowstone has buffalo. The buffalo man. We could go on to the buffalo. So for those of you that think that, like, the white men are to blame for the decimation of the buffalo, I got a. I got some news for you. And this is where we're going to talk about the white buffalo calf woman, too. In America, you can Google this. Look up buffalo jumps. Buffalo jump sites. In South Dakota, we have the vorp.

Jump, as in jump.

J U M P what I do.

On my BMX bike. Buffalo jump sites.

Yes. Yes. You ride the buffaloes off of a jump. No. So where we live, the most popular one's called the Vore buffalo jump. And it's basically a pit where the American Indians would huddle hundreds of bison off of cliffs. So if you're coming here thinking like, well, the American Indian's just into conservation and preservation and, you know, poor, evil white. Poor them. Evil white Christians came and killed all the buffalo. It just doesn't stack up archaeologically.

So you're saying that they used to make buffaloes jump or walk off a cliff and die?

Yes.

And why would they do that?

For food, primarily and probably clothing.

Oh, basically get a bunch of them all at once and just get it over with.

Yeah. Hunting. Yeah. And so, like, where I live in South Dakota, there's the Vore buffalo jump. It's just right across the border in Wyoming. It's a great site to go visit. If you're ever in South Dakota, go. Or Wyoming close by, go visit it. Driving in the Midwest is different than driving in la, Right? So a little bit. So we have these archaeological digs there, and we can say by looking at the Atlas bone, which is a bone that the American Indians didn't really have a use for. We can see by the layers how many buffalo per jump. And it's like 200 some.

So this is the buffalo bone you're looking at?

Yeah.

Okay.

The Atlas bone. And there's all kinds of other bones, which apparently the whole American Indians are so spiritual that they used every single thing of the buffalo. Didn't weigh anything. Is a lie. That's that's one thing. The other thing too is this. Those of you that are listening, you find this really interesting. So like there's actually more than one species of buffalo. And if you look into the history of preserving the buffalo in America, it actually goes, it's a modern thing to get that amount of data to that kind of system to preserve buffalo, which we have done today because the buffalo aren't extinct. But the buffalo are holy, the buffalo are relatives, the buffalo are spiritual. And so you hear this in the talk of the buffalo people things, right? That is a modern day blessing of Christianity's influence on the world to conserve a species. Because before the evil white man showed up, there were two other species. There was a longhorn buffalo and there was a, I'm trying to think of the Latin term bison antiquas and maybe three actually. And they're all extinct. They were gone long before the white man got here. We also, the mammoths are extinct, saber toothed tigers extinct. So I use this not for like racial racist reasons, but I do this to show the absurdity of, of asserting that the American Indian religion was responsible for a paradise before Christians and missionaries showed up. Because they weren't, they weren't preserving these other species that are gone. They weren't preserving mammoths, they weren't preserving saber toothed tigers. Nowadays, because we live it is a Christian value, right? Proverbs talks about caring for animals, right? Caring for your pet, not being a harsh, evil man. This is all a result of as broken and as fallen as the world is this, this Christianized world that we live in that we would preserve even animals.

So you don't think that before an Indian hunter killed a buffalo it would like put its forehead on that forehead and look into its eyes and say, thank you my brother, for giving me life and all these things. You don't think that happens?

No, I don't. I don't. Yeah. Then I'm going to hurl.

You think they did it right before they were throwing him off a cliff?

No, no, absolutely. Absolutely not. So all that to say, let's see, we went into the white buffalo calf woman. So there are parks in America because of evil Christianization, colonization allegedly that preserves these bison. And there's one near where I live called Wind Cave, there's one big one in Oklahoma, there's Yellowstone. And so we can keep track of these white buffalo calves that are born. And it's actually, it's rarer, more rare than a normal colored buffalo, but it happens pretty frequently. So there was A. If you look up on Google, like recently some people were saying, oh, a white buffalo calf has been born in Yellowstone and the prophecy has been fulfilled. And people got all riled up, like, she's back.

Wow.

And it's like. And then I'm digging into this. Well, actually there's several born every year, so. So it really defeats their whole take on that man.

And I've never even thought of a buffalo calf woman until I met you.

So now you know a bunch about buffalo.

I do, yeah. And it's funny. And even going just back, you know, as we. As we leave this buffalo subject, sounds like if we didn't have the evil white man preserving buffalo, they'd be all gone at this point.

Yep.

So interesting stuff. Again, this isn't to slight the average Indian. This is just to say there's a whole lot of narrative and government stuff and all kinds of junk that's just not true in one way or another. But when it comes down to it, an American Indian is just like every other kind of American. They are a sinner in need of a savior. They have a whole lot of information based on their culture, their society that makes it confusing. To understand why they need a savior, they have a lot of counterfeit saviors. But when it all comes down to it, Jesus is king and he is over all, including the American Indian. And so if we are going to witness to them, we just need to explain the gospel to them just like anyone else. And yet there will be some obstacles based on the things they already know. And I thank you so much for continuing to strive with the American Indian out there in South Dakota and now Oklahoma or wherever you might end up. Anything else you want to add as far as the belief system of the American Indian? Anything we haven't touched on? That's just kind of a big, obvious kind of thing that could be an obstacle if you're trying to talk to someone about Christ.

Yeah. So Christian missionaries, the language, let's address boarding schools. Okay. So we got the gospel, we got the law, we got the gospel. Someone agrees with that. It's like the way that Living Waters will has spent a lot of time, and rightly so, focusing on addressing evolution. I know that. I'm so proud of you guys. You guys printed a tract specifically for Roman Catholics. Ray's got in his books. He has apologetics for dealing with different religions. And it can be helpful. These things are an issue of morality, like moral justification, like, can I trust this God and Jesus, who I believe is the worst thing that ever Happened to the world. That's really how they view it. So you're gonna. You're gonna have to deal with. I call them like the. I gotta deal with the anti holidays. Fourth of July. Come around Christmas, we have something called the Wounded Knee ride. And that has to do with the largest execution.

Two minutes.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So anyway, so what? Okay, I don't have enough. I'll share this account. True account. Anecdotally, Sitting Bull is the most famous American Indian in the world. And the reason I can say that and do say that is because there was a man named Buffalo Bill. And the Wild. Wild West Show.

Yes.

And many people for Garden Ben Mesa, they've heard about this. Late 1800s, Buffalo Bill took this Wild west show where they had horse riding. It was basically the start of rodeos. Rodeos. They had shooting guns. They did reenactments of battles with American Indians. And actually it's really fascinating because Buffalo Bill had a godly sister and he actually came to Christ toward the end of his life and he writes some pretty cool stuff. Not a lot of people know that, actually. I don't know hardly anybody that knows that.

Is her name Buffalo Betty by any chance?

I doubt it, but. So he paid Sitting Bull to travel with him. And just so you know, like a lot of the animosity today from 1960s to today is right on. It's right on the heels purposely of very, very anti Christian leftist ideology has been put before the 1960s, 1970s, it was a lot. The relationships were a lot better between American Indians and whites. Even going back to the fur trading days, intermarriages between whites and American Indians. And so it was just. Things have really. There's been a huge paradigm shift in a lot of ways.

So Sitting Bull made. Or Buffalo Bill made Sitting Bull famous.

Yeah, it's famous. So Sitting Bull, he was a traditionalist and he also pushed the ghost dance that was. There was a Paiute messiah in Idaho that basically claimed to be Jesus. Wovoka was what he was called. You can look this up. And he said that if they would do the ghost dance. And he like showed them the scars in his hands and feet apparently, and said that the buffalo will come back, the white man will disappear, and you'll be reunited with your relatives. So this was a big frenzy and it led to Wounded Knee. So it claimed to be false. Christ led them astray and Sitting Bull was a proponent of this. Sitting Bull had a child that was ill and they would. The medicine men would basically shake rattles and try to they thought every disease was a, was a spirit, was an evil spirit. So he. None of that worked. They would even shoot off guns, try to scare the spirit away. He brings the spirit or the baby? The baby. To the missionary Mary Collins. She was the first, first missionary. And this is Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. This is in like this would be like 150 years ago. She's like, oh, it's got infection in its mouth. Let me, you know, take care of that. She blanches. It cures the child. Sitting Bull's like, wow, your God must be so amazing and powerful and just this. Understand that Christianity has done so much good in the world to imagine the world without it. As far as medicine, education, etc. Government, rule of law, that although we're in a fallen world is far better than we can point to countries that have embraced that. Versus let's go point to India, let's go point to someplace in South America or in Iran where Christianity has not, although they do not, as a country, honor Christ as King, Jesus as Lord, that there's no Christian presence as far as worldview goes. So here she cures the child and Sitting Bull is like, your God must be awesome. Would you come and teach my people to read? That's entirely different than you guys came in by force and by gun and forced us to read and all this stuff. Not only that, the accusations that missionaries in America destroyed their language. There was no written language. And in fact the only reason that we have, like the Dakota, and this is the case for a lot of their American Indian languages is because the missionaries would actually write dictionaries, syntax, grammar, because they wrote the entire Bible and especially in the case of the Dakota, the entire Bible. Like some people don't ever read the entire Bible in their lifetime. Like wrote the entire Bible in the Dakota language because they loved them and wanted them to come to Christ. That's completely different narrative than pretty much everything else you hear, man.

Boy. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for the brief, ever so brief education on the beliefs of the American Indian. And over the years I've heard of people even in my area who go onto Indian reservations and do some kind of mission witnessing. And man, such a need and something most of us in our day to day lives don't even think about. We spend a ton of money to go on mission trips to all kinds of countries when so often there's a person right in our area, definitely on an Indian reservation. And for many of us that's within driving distance to where we can Go and minister there. If you want more information on Matthew and his mission, you need to go to jesuskingmission.com I would encourage you to do that. If anything, pray for him, support this brother who is in, in the midst of the the battle, just doing what he can do to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and and man, this is such an interesting subject. I definitely would encourage you guys to contact Matthew, ask him what book do I need to get, what stuff do I need to know to to think more about this? And again, if you're into any kind of new age apologetics, anything like that, this really is the root of where so many of those beliefs come from. Just the Indian beliefs and man, we could do like 10 more podcasts on this, but unfortunately we're out of time. That's jesuskingmission.com Matthew, thanks again so much for coming on the show and just going to be looking forward to what the Lord's going to continue doing in your life.

Thank you brother. Appreciate you. And no flattery. You're the best of the best. Keep going. It's a long race, we both know that. And let's keep looking to Him.

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That's livingwaters.com thanks for listening to Romans Road. If you want to learn how to evangelize, check out my book Search and Rescue, available@eddyroman.com on my website. You'll also find videos and other things to encourage you to preach the gospel to your friends and family. That's eddieroman.com See you next time.