Ochwiay Biano

C. G. Jung, in his book "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", recalls a conversation he had with an American Indian, one Ochwiay Biano an elder of the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. [Mr. Biano is also known by the English name "Chief Mountain Lake."] Ochwiay Biano said,

“How cruel the whites are: their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by holes. Their eyes have a staring expression. They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something, they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want, we do not understand them, we think that they are mad.” I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad. “They say they think with their heads,” he replied.

“Why, of course. What do you think with?” I asked him in surprise.

“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

Later in the 1925 visit, he learned from the Chief that his people, like the Elongyi tribe of Kenya, rose in the morning and spit in their palms, thereby presenting their soul-stuff to the sun to welcome it in an expression of sympathetic magic. Jung marveled that the people of the pueblo knew why they were there.^[1]

Notes

1. ^ Hollis, James. The Archetypal Imagination, p. 15, Texas A&M University Press.