@Smokin Joe
My grandmother was a full-blooded Tuscarora,and one of the scariest-looking women I have ever seen a photo of.
The women I have talked with that knew her all claimed she was the smartest woman any of them ever met,and she lived amongst the whites with her white husband with no racial problems at all.
I haven't had any problems, but my wife's people were hunters for the fur traders, and were armed early. They remain proficient with firearms, and there are many skilled hunters in the family. My wife is a crack shot (keeps me honest
), but I bought a rifle for her as one of the first gifts I got her. She may not have the formal education I do, but she is smart, and knows things I do not. Had her Aunt not died before she had the opportunity to learn the herbal pharmacopia, she'd have all that, too,but did not want to become a Medicine Woman, because there are spiritual aspects to that that many whites scoff at, but can be downright dangerous.
Shakespeare did get one thing right:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And even as a reasonably level headed scientist, yep, there are phenomena I can't explain with orthodox scientific means. Having experienced some of that, I am far less skeptical of things which ordinary science often summarily dismisses because it does not comply with dogmatic orthodoxy.
But then, maybe some day.
In the past speaking with someone miles away through a box would have been similarly dismissed, or considered cause to burn someone at the stake--now we do it all the time.
Anyhow, it has been a good union.