What Native Warriors Can Teach the Internet Generation 💻
Cheyenne dog soldiers, rawhide ropes, and absolute spiritual conviction.
📍 Coordinates: Atlantis Room, The Nest. 🪺
📖 Reading Time: ~5 minutes.
🧉 Housekeeping:
"We Indians have an expression 'today is a good day to die'. It means that we should be ready to die on any given day. We should always be prepared to die, and have no regrets. That's why it's important to begin each day fresh, and not let past problems or present distractions cloud how God wants us to live.”
From the moment I caught whispers of it, to the day I discovered it, several months had passed…
For too long had I overheard dusty tales of Native Warriors who would stake themselves into the battlefield—the archaic equivalent of burning the boats—and with no way out, look into the eyes of their brothers beside them and exclaim, “Today is a good day to die!”
The level of conviction, courage, and raw soul force required to do that was inconceivable. Deep within, part of me dampened with sadness recognizing that I didn’t have that level of conviction about anything.
After many moons of Google sleuthing, I found it: the dog rope. It was real.
🪢 The Dog Rope
Known most to the Hotamétaneo’o—the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne Nation—the dog rope was reserved for the bravest warriors.
“The dog rope consisted of eight to twelve feet of rawhide around four inches wide. One end of the rope was tied to a picket pin by a string. The rope was usually carried wound over the right shoulder and under the left arm. It could also be hung from the belt by a string.”
If a warrior carried a dog rope, they were expected to use it if required. The dog rope is the origin of the phrase ‘driving a stake into the ground’:
“I have often used the phrase ‘drive a stake into the ground’ and had no idea of its origin. Some say it was for homesteaders who drove a stake in the ground to identify the land they were claiming. It turns out that is also seems to have been a battle strategy used by Native Americans who would tie a rope around their warriors' ankles, tie that rope to a stake, and then drive the stake in the ground. That meant the warriors fought in place and could not retreat; they were totally committed to the battle.”
This passage seems to imply that the tribe tied it around a Warrior. Make no mistake, this was a voluntary action by a bold individual.
A warrior could not remove his own dog rope from the ground. This meant one of two things: he died there on that spot that day, or a fellow warrior could unpin him later and symbolically chase him off the battlefield (showing they would never voluntarily retreat).
This is absolute conviction.
This is standing up and dying for what you believe in. Voting with your life for the world you want to exist.
👹 Lost Warriors
We live in paradoxical times.
It seems like each day a new Warrior Brotherhood, Spartan Deathrace, or American Ninja Warrior is born, and yet as a collective we’ve never been more lacking in true warrior spirit.
No less because we have a deeply misguided understanding of what the Warrior symbolizes.
Despite all the talks of discipline, of courage, of training, and of battle – there is one virtue of the Archetypal Warrior that far surpasses any of them: complete service to something greater than themselves.
Whether that is the King, the Kingdom, the Family, Truth, Goodness, or Honor itself – the true Warrior is known by his selfless service to higher ideals.
This is ubiquitous in every single Warrior and every single Warrior culture.
The true Warrior is willing to sacrifice his own life in service of greater aims.
🙏🏻 Peaceful, Non-Violent, Non-Compliance
Allow me to speak soberly for a second.
There is a real, distinct possibility that global human culture is heading towards either post-apocalyptic wasteland, or technocratic totalitarian dystopia.
These are not the only possibilities, but they are possibilities.
Sometimes there are watershed events where this drift of culture into chaos is overt, as was the case with the forced lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and medical tyranny of Covid-19.
But more often than not, it happens in slow, barely-perceptible increments, like water droplets eroding boulders.
Some loss of privacy here. Leniency for bank fraud there. Overmilitarization. Sweeping governmental overreach. Abdicating responsibility. Advertising to children.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The soul of humanity erodes before your eyes. Beautiful futures dithering in possibility. What are you going to do?
“Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything,” the saying goes.
There will be several key moments in the coming decades where you will have to make a choice: to put your head down and follow ethically dubious and morally repugnant commands, or stake yourself in the ground and say:
“You shall not pass. This is where I make my stand. If you want to go beyond me, you will have to go through me.”
And it is deeper than this.
For every moment, every breath, every action, every decision is a vote for the world you want to exist, to support, and to help flourish.
It is a battle for the heart and soul and dignity of humanity. Every movement of your being you are planting a stake in the ground for a kind of world you want to support – do you like what you’re supporting?
Do you have the conviction to stand up for the world you believe in? Will you fight to honour your brothers and sisters, and the rights and dignities of your parents and ancestors?
That time is coming.
Will you stand with us, alongside us, our hearts and feet in lockstep with one another, singing the sacred songs of worlds not yet born, and taking our stand united as one in service of the All.
I hope you’re carrying rope, amigo.
Today is a good day to die.
With love, EB. 💛
Inspiring post <3