I Will See You When the Eagles Fly Again

Opinion

The first Indian I ever saw was a plastic action figure of … Winnetou.

This resulted in a vicious fight with my slightly younger sister who had been given the Old Shatterhand figurine which I fancied much more. He had much nicer fake leather clothes, and I generally disliked Winnetou’s feminine hair at the time, especially as his plastic snakeskin headband constantly fell off while we were playing. Also his famous rifle ‘Silberbüchse’ looked too fancy for my taste. But his horse was great.

So I asserted my brotherly rights by force and ended up playing with the blonde German cowboy riding on the noble charcoal black Apache steed … until our parents brokered a deal to calm my enraged sibling, and we became blood brother and sister. Soon after we ditched the puppets for real ponies which we were lucky to have as the village where we lived had almost no people but plenty of animals and free country – and for many years to come we rode together.

Of course, I read the books and watched the films. Winnetou 3 was actually the second film we kids were taken to the cinema for (yes, I cried when Winnetou did his Christus stunt at the end), the first was Bambi (today I despise all things Disney). But the whole Indian scene did not grab me as a kid. I was much more into Greek and German mythology and heroes, and I idolized Prinz Eisenherz and all things Arthurian.

But the Red Man would not stay down. In 1981 I attended boarding school at the Sacre Coeur where they had a tradition of inviting interesting individuals to inspire the students.

We listened to artists, scientists, of course clergymen … and: Mr. Yellow Hair (representative of the Lakota Sioux on lecture circuit around Europe).

Each hour of that school day a couple of classes, around 80 kids at a time, were taken to a makeshift auditorium in the lobby where they competed in noisemaking and chaos production. Until this man entered the room and started to speak. He was huge, and had an imposing belly (a real beer belly the likes of which I would not encounter again until moving to Bohemia where it appears to be a traditional male style. I am currently working on one.) that stuck out from under a tight t-shirt worn over faded jeans. He wore his hair long and open, rather unkempt, grey streaks interwoven with raven black ones.

To be honest, I can hardly remember anything he said to us. As it was a culturally mixed high school, some of us spoke English, and all had English lessons, but a teacher needed to translate as especially the younger children (I was 11 at the time) did not understand much.

I remember a noble sadness, a distant strength and beauty, the feeling of a faraway place and time. I remember feeling entranced by the circular pattern of speech, words, phrases, repeated like a slow spoken song.

Most of the young people lost interest pretty quickly, and the room was vibrating with suppressed nervous energy. It was clear from the barely veiled whispers that there was some disappointment about this Indian not fitting into the Karl May mould. There was no aristocratic savage romanticism. Yellow Hair did not notice, or did not care whether he satisfied any image. He continued to say what he had to say, attempted a joke here and there, and shrugged with a little smile as it fell on deaf ears. When the school bell that ended the session rang, the crowd rushed out, passed the man who stood stoically.

I remained behind, dazed and confused. Although I had not understood all that much, I felt like in a trance; I felt as if something had touched me that was denser, more real than what we usually heard lecturers speak about.

I was ashamed about my classmates’ behaviour, and my inability to understand all that had been said about great nations, freely roaming the land, manifest destiny, annihilated cultures, deprived living situations, the white buffalo, the “white mind” and the “red mind”… I was the last child to leave and, as I was slowly walking past the big man, I turned and attempted a greeting, an apology, a meaningful expression of respect, but it all came out in a garbled sentence in a nonsensical language of an embarrassed child.

He listened, his hair falling forward and framing a dark brown, full moon round face with almost black, slightly slanted eyes that filled with tears a little. His head nodded slowly, and the wide mouth broke into a gentle grin. “I will see you when the eagles fly again,” he said, touching his heart.

Shortly afterwards puberty struck hard. Due to “philosophical” clashes with the resident priest, I was asked to leave early morning mass ministry service. Thus ended my career as an altar boy and a life of more pagan orientation officially began. I left Catholic boarding school altogether and my focus of interest moved to more earthly sensual matters.

As there lived no young people of my age in our neighborhood, and the company of fresh baby brothers, sheep, birds and trees eventually lost some of its fascination, my sister and I enrolled at the riding school in the village across the hill. So, on six days a week, we walked several miles through the woods and across fields to reach the horses.

This is but the first part of a series of articles, with a further 15 parts to follow. I would value your company on my journey from childhood to manhood.

Credits

Image	Title	Author	License
	Cover-amazing-eagle	gokulmyphoto	CC BY-SA 2.0

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