When U.S. astronauts first touched down on the moon, they told the world, "The Eagle has landed."
When John Herrington of the current Endeavour space crew returns to Earth, he can say, "The Eagle has arrived."
Herrington, the first American Indian astronaut, has already brought a heady dose of mystery and religion to the dry science of space travel. Right now, he's whirling through space carrying an eagle feather, a braid of sweetgrass, two arrowheads, two flutes, some pottery and a sacred stone.
Spiritually, you could say he's loaded for bear.
Most of the items, you'll note, are things that "soar." The smoke from sweet grass rises like a prayer. The eagle carries messages between the Creator and Earth. Arrowheads zip through the sky and flute music wafts on the air currents.
My friend Rios Pacheco, a Shoshone artist, loves the spiritual tone of all this. Not since an astronaut read the Bible out loud while looking at the big, blue Earth has the shuttle crew gotten so close to God.
But then for most American Indians, life is seldom about grand achievements. It's almost always about harmony, balance and reverence for the Creator.
Life itself is a spiritual vision.
"My father was Pueblo," Pacheco says. "Long ago the elders of the tribe said that Native people would one day walk around on the moon. Everyone laughed at them."
With Herrington on high, no one is laughing now.
Pacheco says that a great many of his people's visions sound like the stuff of fantasy, but that's because we don't know how to interpret them. He says the visions are really no different from passages found in Bible books like Revelation and Isaiah.
"It's all very similar," he says. "I think all of us, at one time, were given the same things."
Herrington is a member of the Chicasaw tribe, though the spiritual tokens he's toting are the same for tribes everywhere. The eagle is especially holy. Since it soars so high, the bird is seen as a courier between God and man. In other words, eagles are the American Indians version of angels. Today, the eagle has become so rare that only American Indians are permitted to possess their feathers. If any other astronaut besides Herrington had climbed on the shuttle with an eagle feather, he'd have been busted.
Herrington says he also wanted to take along some tobacco — a plant sacred to many tribes. But NASA has a "no tobacco" rule. (I picture a shuttle with a "no smoking" sign in it that the captain can never turn off).
Herrington got his "sacred stone" from Bear Butte in South Dakota. The pottery was fashioned by a Hopi artist in Arizona.
In short, not since the rebellion at Wounded Knee have so many American tribes been joined so closely.
Neil Armstrong may have taken a "giant leap for mankind," but John Herrington has taken a leap for Indian people.
He's a hero.
And Pacheco, especially, is looking forward to his return.
"I've heard he plans to travel around and talk about his experiences when he gets back," Pacheco says. "Maybe we can get him to Utah."
If so, it would be a real feather in the cap for Utah.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com