It’s currently believed that as human beings developed weapons – spears – they changed from being scavengers to being hunters. Humans, after all, aren’t endowed with fangs or claws, and before the invention of the stone spearhead, our ancestors had to rely on lions and leopards to do their killing for them. Once the animal who made the kill had eaten its fill, humans could fight off hyenas and vultures for whatever was left. But once the spear was invented, everything changed. Humans became predators.

Still, it wasn’t easy to make a kill. Spears have limited range so a hunter had to get close to an animal to have any hope of killing it. And animals aren’t easy to sneak up on. So while ambushes along game trails probably worked some of the time, humans often had no choice but to chase after the animal they wanted to eat.

Which raised another problem: prey animals can run a lot faster than people. Predators, like lions and especially cheetahs, can run very fast, but only for short distances. This enables them to kill the slower members of a herd while the other members sprint to safety. But though prey animals have to run fast, they don’t have to run very far. And this presented an opportunity for humans – instead of outrunning an ibex like a lion would, humans could simply keep chasing it.

Since prey animals had evolved to be sprinters, they would outrun humans and then slow down. But unlike lions or cheetahs, the humans would keep coming, forcing these animals to run away again and again. In time, the animals being so relentlessly pursued would tire and stop, and the humans could make their kill.

And so it is that while we can’t run as fast as most other creatures, we can run farther. And though evidence suggests that we, too, need to rest periodically, our ability to run and run and run sets us apart in the animal kingdom.

Well, some of us anyway. I could run fast as a kid but not very far. And I know a lot of people who don’t seem to have the distance runner gene. But there are some who do, and one of the best places to find them is on a cross country team.

Our local girls Cross Country team just accomplished an incredible feat by winning the State Class C Cross Country meet in Kearney last Friday – the first state cross country championship for either boys or girls in Boone Central history. Since our son, Thomas, is a member of the boys team (and though our boys team didn’t make it to state this year, two of its members did qualify individually), Lori and I have watched a lot of cross country meets over the past few years.

It never ceases to amaze us how hard these young runners work. To hear Thomas tell it, long distance running is as much a mental battle as it is physical. It requires enormous discipline to keep going and going and going. And while our long-ago ancestors were motivated by the need to eat what they were chasing, instead of freshly-killed gazelle all we offer our runners today are bananas and Gatorade.

So kudos to everyone who runs cross country – whether you run at the front of the pack, somewhere in the middle, or at the end — for your strength, stamina and dogged determination to do what humans do so well and yet what comes so hard – running and running and then running some more.

Not all that many years ago, as the leaves began to turn and the nights grew longer, the Pawnee Indians who once lived here would hold an “opera” along the banks of the Beaver Creek. “Opera” was, of course, a word the whites gave to these performances in an attempt to capture the drama of these yearly events. But these native performances didn’t feature singers on a stage; instead they highlighted the powers of the Pawnee medicine men. Medicine men would take turns injuring people so they could demonstrate their prowess by then healing their victims.

The whites who witnessed these operas, including the venerable North brothers, Frank and Luther, who led the famed Pawnee Scouts, could only attribute these deeds to psychological manipulation – they thought the Pawnee must have somehow hypnotized the spectators, tricking them into believing they’d seen what they saw. But they had no idea how the Pawnee might have done this.

One can understand why they’d seek such an explanation – though it raised as many questions as it answered, it was still better than believing what they’d seen was real. Because what they reported they saw defied belief. Men would be shot dead and then brought back to life. Others would have their livers cut out (and eaten) and then likewise resurrected.

And while the gun used to shoot these people could have been loaded with blanks and the extraction of a liver could have been sleight-of-hand, some “tricks” were harder to explain.

For example, dirt would be gathered from the bare earthlodge floor and placed in a shallow pan. A kernel of corn would then be planted in the dust, but no water would be added. A doctor would then sing “See the corn, it is growing/See the corn, watch it grow” over and over again. Witnesses reported that in about 20 minutes time a full stalk of corn would grow from the pan and produce an ear.

Though they took great pains to find alternative explanations, in reading their reports one cannot escape the impression that, underneath it all, these white observers believed they’d witnessed genuinely magical acts.

One of the most incredible accounts the North brothers recorded didn’t even happen at an opera. One day while crossing the prairie with the Pawnee Scouts – Indians who helped the Army track hostile tribes – the group stopped by a small stream to water their horses. During this time a Pawnee picked up a handful of mud and fashioned it into the shape of a turtle. He then held it close to his mouth and breathed on it. The turtle immediately came to life. The Pawnee set it down and it crawled along the stream. (Luther North asked what would happen to the turtle. The Pawnee said it would die soon. Luther actually circled back later in the day and found the turtle dead not far from where they’d left it.)

It’s as difficult for us today to believe such things could happen as it was for the whites who actually witnessed them. But to Native Americans such magical acts were taken for granted. In a world without modern medicine, magical healing abilities were held in high regard. Such powers could be obtained through vision quests, passed down through families and even purchased with horses. No magic, though, could stop the onslaught of whites or cure the diseases they spread. And so, like so much of Native American culture, the Pawnee’s October Operas live on only in tales preserved by baffled whites.