Ancient American: Articles Issue 26 page 1

Ancient American Magazine Logo

ANCIENT AMERICAN * ISSUE #26

Christ in North America? ©
by Wayne May

raditions of a mys- terious, bearded visitor from overseas have been current across our continent since pre-Columbian times. The universal image of this man, depicted as an influential religious leader, has fascinated me for twenty years, during which time I conducted my investigations among every Native American willing to discuss his or her tribal history with me. Through them I learned that the mythic memory of this light-skinned (often referred to as white-skinned), robed man occurs in ancient myth among numerous Indian peoples.

But his story is found most frequently in North American legends, which reveal more infor- mation about his appearance and the nature of his arrival. In Middle and South America, he was known respectively, as the "Feathered Serpent" (the Mayas' Kukulcan and Aztec Quetzalcoatl), and "Sea Foam", Kon-Tiki- Viracocha, to the Incas. North of the Rio Grande River, he is generally referred to as East Star Man, Peace Maker, Pale One, Dawn Star, etc.

Native accounts tell of his arrival from the direction of the rising sun, after which he set up a priest- hood among his followers, known as the "Wau-pa-nu" (the spelling is phonetic). They were said to have healed the sick and instituted new laws. Blood sacrifice was for- bidden and replaced by the use of tobacco, today an important element in all traditional Native American ceremonies. Among many eastern tribes, East Star Man is regarded as the son of the Great Spirit, the Creator.

I first learned of this Son of the Great Spirit from Ricardo Baeza, an Ojibwa medicine man in Golden Valley, Minnesota. He approached me after my lecture about the Michigan Plates. Collectively, they were associated with Daniel Soper and Father Savage, early preservers of a large group of cop- per artifacts and stone tablets unearthed from numerous mounds throughout the state of Michigan, beginning in the late 1800s. The objects, today scattered across the United States and Canada in mostly private collections, feature portrayals of familiar scenes from

Michigan Christ

Michigan Tablet depicting Christ's crucifixion. Tablet is made of a clay material, fired or sun dried, in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. Photograph ©, courtesy of David A. Deal.

mostly the Old Testament and three or more, undeciphered, written scripts, together with depictions of what appear to be persons from Europe or the Near East in hostile interaction with Native Americans.

Although condemned out of hand as fraudulent by the archaeologists, the so-called "Michigan Plates" or "Soper Savage Collections" continue to intrigue independent antiquarians, who believe the artifacts were made by an Old World religious community in the upper Midwest during the 4th Century A.D or

earlier. In the 1950s, Henrietta Mertz was the first researcher to identify the "tribal mark or mystic symbol" which commonly appears throughout the collection.

ollowing my Golden Valley slide presentation of the Michigan Plates, Mr. Baeza told me that he could actually read some of the glyphs that appeared on the Soper-Savage tablets, explaining that their symbolic meaning was part of his tribe's sacred tradition. He added that the so-called "mystic symbol" represented the name

Christ... Page 2

Home | Subscribe | Current Issue | Back Issues | Book Store
Exclusive Articles and Photos | Related Sites | Contact Us

Subscribe!!

Back Issues

Articles and Photos

Book Store

Related Sites

Articles
and Photos