Certain small ways and observances sometimes have connection with large and more profound ideas.

Silence is the Mother of Truth, for the silent man was ever to be trusted, while the man ever ready with speech was never taken seriously.

Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness'.

Certain small ways and observances sometimes have connection with large and more profound ideas.

The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.

For the Lakota there was no wilderness. Nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly.

The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.