Po Pai Mo: A Search for White Buffalo Woman

Description

From a Nazi prison camp to the rocky mesas of Hopi, Arizona, Robert boissiere takes the reader on a literary and spiritual vogage of the first magnitude. A Frenchman, dispossessed of his land in the Second World War, the author arrives in America homeless, and finds a permanent place among two different Indian tribes in the American Southwest. The Hopis accept him as one of them because — in spirit — he is one of them, even when he is breaking a rule he knows nothing about:

“Leslie, ‘ I began impatiently, as everyone silently dipped their fingers in the bowl of rabbit stew. A long silence followed. I imagined my relationship with my Hopi family ruined by the audacity of my mouth. A sacrilege, I though, speaking when I am not supposed to. Then, Leslie and his family burst into a loud unrestrained laugh”.

While living, and learning, at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico (the first white man to do so) Boissiere finds his second home and his great love, Po Pai Mo, the woman he marries. His search for White Buffalo Woman over, his life as an Indian — begun at Hopi — now matures as his new wife teaches him the ways of her people. The gift of knowledge she gives him in this enchanting tale completes the journey of the man without a country. Rooted at last, secure in his life with Po Pai Mo, Robert boissiere learns how to live, how to love, and how to die.