Medicine Story
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From Ancient Voices, Current Affairs
The Legend of the Rainbow Warriors
By Steven McFadden
Medicine Story
Manitoquat, or Medicine Story, is the powwah, or spiritual leader, and the minatou, or keeper of the lore, for the Assonet band of the Wampanoag Nation. The ancestral land of his people is on the sea-coast of Massachusetts. They are the Indians who met the Pilgrims, and who have, since antiquity, been known as the People of the Morning Light.
Medicine Story has traveled the world to tell his stories, which offer insight about how to live at peace with each other and the natural world. One of his many adventures has been his involvement with a little-known social phenomenon that has happened every summer since the 1970, the Rainbow Gatherings. Manitonquat has told the story of the gatherings many times.
“In 1972, I went to my first Rainbow Gathering and my life turned all around. Early in that year I received word of a great gathering that was planned to be held in the summer in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Since it was to be people of all races, religions, nationalities, classes, and lifestyles, it was called a Gathering of the Rainbow Tribes. There was to be a walk, a pilgrimage to Table Mountain, a place sacred to the Arapaho. The people planned to fast and stay in silence all day on that mountain while praying for world peace and understanding.
“Now there are old prophecies that at the end of this world many people of many different nations and tribes would come together to seek a new word and a new way. This would be according to the vision the Creator placed in their hearts. Then, you know, seeing how sincerely they sought this, how deeply they desired it, the Great Spirit would hear the cries of their hearts and take pity on them. At that time, the prophecies said, the new world would be born in the midst of the old. This new world would be very small at first, like a newborn baby. But it would be full of life and learning and growth, full of trust and love, like a newborn. Because of this, the new world wouldn’t hate the dying old world, but instead learn how to survive and become strong within it. It was said that the sign the Creator would send of this new beginning would be a white buffalo.
“More than twenty thousand people came to that first gathering, and everyone was treated with respect. It was wonderful. One night it rained. The next day, when we came out in the meadow, we saw that a huge patch of white snow on the side of the mountain that faced us had been eaten away and carved into the perfect shape of a white buffalo. People began to cheer and sing, and many of them wept joyfully.
“Then, starting at midnight on the third of July, everybody began a walk over the eight miles to Table Mountain. All night long that line moved in silence, carrying candles and torches. At dawn, thousands of people stood still upon the mountain, people who had come from all over the world to be together and share that moment, to watch the sun rise on a new day, a new people, a new world.
“People stayed together all day on that mountain. We fasted and stayed in silence until, sometime after noon, someone started sining an Arapaho chant. All of us took up that chant to honor the traditional caretakers of that land. When we left that gathering, everyone had the feeling that something very important had happened, and was happening all over the world. No one could say exactly what it was, or knew what to do about it. So everyone went home and went on with their business. But the next summer a lot of the people decided the only way they cold learn what to do with this new energy was to gather again and keep on gathering until the spirit directed something different. That’s how it’s been ever since, the Rainbow World Family Gathering of the Tribes has been held during the first week of July.”
The dream of the Rainbow Gathering sprang from the cultural watershed of Woodstock when a commune named the Hog Farm and a clown named Wavy Gravy helped feed four hundred thousand people. That spiritual service was immensely inspiring to the founders of the Rainbow Gatherings.
The founders saw the rainbow as a sign of unity for all people in the universal family. As the fliers for the annual gathering proclaim, “The people who gather a a tribe not of blood but of spirit, for all are born into it. We are bound together by our desire to live in peace, to be in the cathedral of nature, and to heal ourselves through union with the earthly mother and the heavenly father. The Rainbow Gathering is an opportunity to celebrate human diversity, to venerate the Earth, to deepen connections, and to party – to share a community that is beyond the rules of violence, prejudice, and caste.” Each summer the gatherings move to a new state and sets up camp in one of the national forests. At the gatherings there is no exchange of money. The Rainbow Tribe relies on cooperation, respect, goodwill and equal rights. And for at least one week every summer, it works.
Medicine Story attended the first fifteen Rainbow Gatherings consecutively and is one of its grandfathers. He has also attended Rainbow Gatherings in Europe and the Arctic Circle. As he has matured, the gathering sand the vision they represent have been deeply important to him.
“One reason my life turned around,” he explains, “was this vision of twenty thousand people getting together on top of a mountain praying in silence for a new world to be ushered in. The whole thing was so powerful. I knew something was happening. I didn’t know what, or how but I knew I had to be a part of it. Also, I met a number of young Indians who, although they weren’t very traditional, came from people who were traditional and had their traditions together. They invited me to their reservation, to the Sun Dance and the sweat lodge and things like that. And so I opened up into a whole world of traditional l old ways that I knew nothing about. So those two things came together at the same time, this rainbow communal world vision, and the old ways, finding that there were still the old ways, and going to seek them out. I kept balancing those two things.
Going through the old Black Mountain Journals and found this one from Story, planning to leave for the gathering on the 4th in the Grand Tetons.
Taken from the Black Mountain Journal
By Medicine Story
Tuesday – So Happy to be home!
But where is everybody? I’ve been walking around digging the place, watered the garden and my plants. My friend Captain Knees is by my side – no one in the world ever so glad to see me as the Caps, must be love. Wish there were people here though, I miss everyone, seems I’ve been away so long, and I’m going again this weekend to the big gathering in the Grand Tetons over the 4th. Hope I’m back for the birth. Thank you Barbara for feeding my pal, and Vickie for watering my plants – can I impose again, next week for the same? I haven’t yet found
I hitch-hiked along the coast stopping to romp at 4 beaches S.F, Devils Slide, and San Gregorio. Beautiful day!
Patty – I met the boys who want the billy (goat), hitchhiking and they said to tell you they want him for sure.
Sorry I missed the meeting. Did Court and Rip pay rent for June?
I Love you all,
S
Heres a couple more from the journal
From the Black Mountain Journals: New Years 1973
Medicine Story writes a letter to Vickie
I wish you peace of soul, I wish you all the joy of freedom, I wish you wonder and mystery and surprise, I wish this new year to be the golden door to a new world of higher dreams, of expansion and creativity, I wish you the tantra of the profoundest sense of meaning which binds the total energy which is you, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and directs that energy in harmony with the universe, ever unfolding and bring forth more of your potential in the unique way that is you and you alone.
If you look into me you will see your beauty and vitality in the mirror of my love. It makes me want to sing, to play music with you, for you, to watch you dance…sometimes to dance with you.
Medicine Story writes his New Years wish in the journal -
I wish you the strength and wisdom to become a positive energy force that lifts the hearts and minds and spirits of all, the wisdom to gain that strength with and by others energies, whether positive or negative, to respond to the needs of others in the most efficient and effective way consistent with my skill and my growing. Last New years ended the bleakest most disastrous year of my life with a premonition of hope - 1972 brought us up a long way to here. It is up to us, as always to get ourselves higher, more together and I believe we will. Look out 1973, here we come.
Medicine Story
Medicine Story lived on Black Mountain during the time he went to his first Rainbow Gathering in 1972, where they saw the White Buffalo in the snowFrom Ancient Voices, Current Affairs
The Legend of the Rainbow Warriors
By Steven McFadden
Medicine Story
Manitoquat, or Medicine Story, is the powwah, or spiritual leader, and the minatou, or keeper of the lore, for the Assonet band of the Wampanoag Nation. The ancestral land of his people is on the sea-coast of Massachusetts. They are the Indians who met the Pilgrims, and who have, since antiquity, been known as the People of the Morning Light.
Medicine Story has traveled the world to tell his stories, which offer insight about how to live at peace with each other and the natural world. One of his many adventures has been his involvement with a little-known social phenomenon that has happened every summer since the 1970, the Rainbow Gatherings. Manitonquat has told the story of the gatherings many times.
“In 1972, I went to my first Rainbow Gathering and my life turned all around. Early in that year I received word of a great gathering that was planned to be held in the summer in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Since it was to be people of all races, religions, nationalities, classes, and lifestyles, it was called a Gathering of the Rainbow Tribes. There was to be a walk, a pilgrimage to Table Mountain, a place sacred to the Arapaho. The people planned to fast and stay in silence all day on that mountain while praying for world peace and understanding.
“Now there are old prophecies that at the end of this world many people of many different nations and tribes would come together to seek a new word and a new way. This would be according to the vision the Creator placed in their hearts. Then, you know, seeing how sincerely they sought this, how deeply they desired it, the Great Spirit would hear the cries of their hearts and take pity on them. At that time, the prophecies said, the new world would be born in the midst of the old. This new world would be very small at first, like a newborn baby. But it would be full of life and learning and growth, full of trust and love, like a newborn. Because of this, the new world wouldn’t hate the dying old world, but instead learn how to survive and become strong within it. It was said that the sign the Creator would send of this new beginning would be a white buffalo.
“More than twenty thousand people came to that first gathering, and everyone was treated with respect. It was wonderful. One night it rained. The next day, when we came out in the meadow, we saw that a huge patch of white snow on the side of the mountain that faced us had been eaten away and carved into the perfect shape of a white buffalo. People began to cheer and sing, and many of them wept joyfully.
“Then, starting at midnight on the third of July, everybody began a walk over the eight miles to Table Mountain. All night long that line moved in silence, carrying candles and torches. At dawn, thousands of people stood still upon the mountain, people who had come from all over the world to be together and share that moment, to watch the sun rise on a new day, a new people, a new world.
“People stayed together all day on that mountain. We fasted and stayed in silence until, sometime after noon, someone started sining an Arapaho chant. All of us took up that chant to honor the traditional caretakers of that land. When we left that gathering, everyone had the feeling that something very important had happened, and was happening all over the world. No one could say exactly what it was, or knew what to do about it. So everyone went home and went on with their business. But the next summer a lot of the people decided the only way they cold learn what to do with this new energy was to gather again and keep on gathering until the spirit directed something different. That’s how it’s been ever since, the Rainbow World Family Gathering of the Tribes has been held during the first week of July.”
The dream of the Rainbow Gathering sprang from the cultural watershed of Woodstock when a commune named the Hog Farm and a clown named Wavy Gravy helped feed four hundred thousand people. That spiritual service was immensely inspiring to the founders of the Rainbow Gatherings.
The founders saw the rainbow as a sign of unity for all people in the universal family. As the fliers for the annual gathering proclaim, “The people who gather a a tribe not of blood but of spirit, for all are born into it. We are bound together by our desire to live in peace, to be in the cathedral of nature, and to heal ourselves through union with the earthly mother and the heavenly father. The Rainbow Gathering is an opportunity to celebrate human diversity, to venerate the Earth, to deepen connections, and to party – to share a community that is beyond the rules of violence, prejudice, and caste.” Each summer the gatherings move to a new state and sets up camp in one of the national forests. At the gatherings there is no exchange of money. The Rainbow Tribe relies on cooperation, respect, goodwill and equal rights. And for at least one week every summer, it works.
Medicine Story attended the first fifteen Rainbow Gatherings consecutively and is one of its grandfathers. He has also attended Rainbow Gatherings in Europe and the Arctic Circle. As he has matured, the gathering sand the vision they represent have been deeply important to him.
“One reason my life turned around,” he explains, “was this vision of twenty thousand people getting together on top of a mountain praying in silence for a new world to be ushered in. The whole thing was so powerful. I knew something was happening. I didn’t know what, or how but I knew I had to be a part of it. Also, I met a number of young Indians who, although they weren’t very traditional, came from people who were traditional and had their traditions together. They invited me to their reservation, to the Sun Dance and the sweat lodge and things like that. And so I opened up into a whole world of traditional l old ways that I knew nothing about. So those two things came together at the same time, this rainbow communal world vision, and the old ways, finding that there were still the old ways, and going to seek them out. I kept balancing those two things.
Going through the old Black Mountain Journals and found this one from Story, planning to leave for the gathering on the 4th in the Grand Tetons.
Taken from the Black Mountain Journal
By Medicine Story
Tuesday – So Happy to be home!
But where is everybody? I’ve been walking around digging the place, watered the garden and my plants. My friend Captain Knees is by my side – no one in the world ever so glad to see me as the Caps, must be love. Wish there were people here though, I miss everyone, seems I’ve been away so long, and I’m going again this weekend to the big gathering in the Grand Tetons over the 4th. Hope I’m back for the birth. Thank you Barbara for feeding my pal, and Vickie for watering my plants – can I impose again, next week for the same? I haven’t yet found
- The keys to my car (urgent)
- My 5 gal. plastic water jugs
I hitch-hiked along the coast stopping to romp at 4 beaches S.F, Devils Slide, and San Gregorio. Beautiful day!
Patty – I met the boys who want the billy (goat), hitchhiking and they said to tell you they want him for sure.
Sorry I missed the meeting. Did Court and Rip pay rent for June?
I Love you all,
S
Heres a couple more from the journal
From the Black Mountain Journals: New Years 1973
Medicine Story writes a letter to Vickie
I wish you peace of soul, I wish you all the joy of freedom, I wish you wonder and mystery and surprise, I wish this new year to be the golden door to a new world of higher dreams, of expansion and creativity, I wish you the tantra of the profoundest sense of meaning which binds the total energy which is you, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and directs that energy in harmony with the universe, ever unfolding and bring forth more of your potential in the unique way that is you and you alone.
If you look into me you will see your beauty and vitality in the mirror of my love. It makes me want to sing, to play music with you, for you, to watch you dance…sometimes to dance with you.
Medicine Story writes his New Years wish in the journal -
I wish you the strength and wisdom to become a positive energy force that lifts the hearts and minds and spirits of all, the wisdom to gain that strength with and by others energies, whether positive or negative, to respond to the needs of others in the most efficient and effective way consistent with my skill and my growing. Last New years ended the bleakest most disastrous year of my life with a premonition of hope - 1972 brought us up a long way to here. It is up to us, as always to get ourselves higher, more together and I believe we will. Look out 1973, here we come.