An Indian Voice Heard Around the World

Tatanga Mani
Walking Buffalo of the Stonies
Copyright 1969 M.G. Hurtig Ltd.
208 pages.

After seeing thirteen European countries, Walking Buffalo returned to Morley and the relaxing air of the foothills. Friends estimated that his world travels to that point numbered some 18,000 miles. With this record, one might have supposed that he had had enough. But when asked how he felt about another journey, he replied, "Anytime!" And so at the beginning of March, 1960, he was off once again, this time traveling westward across the Pacific in the Company of Dave Crowchild of the Sacree and Joseph David of the Kootenay.

In New Zealand, their first welcome came from leaders of the native Maoris, a race thought to have inhabited the country for five or six centuries. At the Auckland airport, a group of Maoris performed one of their native dances, and the Canadian Indians reciprocated. The only sour note occurred when a customs officer insisted that the old man's famous buffalo staff, a symbol of spiritual messengership, be held for fumigation. Wrapped with buffalo hide grown brittle with age and decorated with a pair of mountain goat horns and the dew claw of a deer, the staff had been passed by officers in other countries without question, but the New Zealand officer found something in his instruction manual which said that items containing animal hide or horn had to be retained for fumigation.

Walking Buffalo protested gently, but the official had his way. Displaying his ready sense of humor, the onld Indian whispered to one of his friends, "I wonder why they let me in without a bath and a haircut when they won't admit an old buffalo skin. And how did that fellow miss the deerskin clothes and feathered headpieces in the bags?"

Australia, land of the rabbits, kangaroos, parakeets, dingoes, lyre birds, and a relatively small human population, brought another round of warm welcomes. Then came South Africa, where the travelers arrived just a few weeks after the most shocking racial clash in a generation had erupted in Sharpeville on March 21, 1960, when police guns killed a reported total of sixty-seven African people and wounded nearly two hundred more. The tragedy of that day marked the culmination of an uneasy situation in which only three million of a total population of fifteen million were white. The history of the strife went back almost to the founding of the first permanent settlement of white men at Capetown in 1652. March 21 was the day designated by native leaders for a mass demonstration of defiance against the passbook law. Negroes were to go out that day without the hated passbooks but also without weapons. Thus they would invite arrest and fill the jails.

The native people followed instructions, and at Sharpeville, twenty thousand turned out. According to police records, the Africans started the shooting, but it was fairly clear that the natives had no guns. Their only act of aggression consisted of throwing some stones at an armoured car. Police, thereupon, seized one African. A scuffle ensued. Seconds later the police opened fire with revolvers and rifles.

South Africa was still reeling in the midst of this tragedy when Walking Buffalo and his group arrived. Owing to the unrest, the party was asked to remain not more than forty-eight hours, but at the end of that time, the Indians were told that they might stay as long as they wished. The man from Morley preached once again that in an age of atomic weapons, mankind could not risk entertaining hatreds.

From South Africa, the Canadian Indians visited Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Uganda, then Italy and Switzerland, arriving back at Calgary on June 20, 1960, having added another 42,000 miles to Walking Buffalo's travel record. There was a warm homecoming for the Indian personalities Calgarians now knew so well. The party had a police escort from the airport to city hall, where a regular meeting of the council was interrupted for the reading of telegrams and cables of appreciation from many parts of the world. Wearing his familiar horns and buckskin and displaying no fatigue from the long journey, the old chief addressed the city aldermen, asking them to remember that Indians have hearts and souls as well as bodies, just as do white people.

Replying to the chief's remarks, the mayor commented, "They tell me a hundred million people on four continents have heard your message. You and your friends have been true ambassadors for Canada."