When I Was Little I Was An Indian. Fact.

When I was little we had a tree in our backyard that we called 'the naked tree.' It was so dubbed because occasionally we would get some heavy gusts of wind, and every time we would get some wind this tree would drop branches. 

It was slowly becoming naked.

We collected the branches from the naked tree and made a wikiup. A wikiup is a Native American form of housing, like a teepee but made from the branches of a tree. We were really proud of ourselves for knowing this,  and consequently played 'Indians' in the backyard because we weren't interested in being politically correct. 

In the corner of the yard there was a current berry bush, and in the summertime it was always full of little red sour berries. They weren't that great to eat on their own, but crush them up and douse them in sugar and you have some fine jam.

Steal a few slices of bread on a Warrior Indian Raid and you have yourself a meal.

And also, cool names were a must. I remember coming up with things like "Blooming Flower" or "Purple Lilac" or "White Wolf" etc, etc. There was always a Chief who had to have a Squaw because we were equal opportunity tribe leaders.

This is code for the simple fact we got to be 'in a relationship' with our secret neighborhood crushes without making it awkward. 

But sometimes tribe members would get too rowdy. Naturally we were forced to exile them. The rebels would congregate in the corner of the yard opposite the current berry bush so that they would have to pass our tribe in order to forage for food.

This allowed for us to attack them for entering our territory. Some people would be wounded and some people would die. But the dead ones just came back as other warriors, so no one was really damaged. 

We would play this game a lot, pretending to be Indians. Especially when I was in 4th grade because that's when you learn about Idaho history and Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea.

And you know, it was either that or baseball in the front yard. But we always played with a tennis ball that got lost in the prickly bushes until one of us went and found it and the pitcher always sucked.