Abstract

For more than 20 years Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a professor at Montana State University (now emeritus), has interviewed American Indians (her preferred term) and recorded accounts of their experiences with UFOs. She prefaced her book with an explanation that "Star People" belong to widespread Indian traditions, some that identify the stars as the home of native peoples, others that tell of "little people" and celestial visitors that continue to interact with Indians and sometimes help them. But she intended to study modern encounters rather than folklore or "ancient astronauts." In her travels around the country, she collected more than 1,000 UFO stories that Indian people had to tell, and now recounts a sample of firsthand narratives for readers of this book. The cases include several close encounters by police officers, a report of a UFO hovering over a missile silo, and an ex-soldier's account of a UFO descending on a military base and shining a harmful beam of light on a guard who drew too near. An aged man recalled the crash of a UFO, several tall aliens that survived the accident, and a second spaceship that came to their rescue. A couple came upon several mutilated cattle by the side of a road, then experienced missing time after a lighted cylindrical UFO approached. Afterward, the husband found that the barrel of his pistol had melted. Several people reported classic abduction cases with small, insect-like aliens and physical examinations, also other people held captive aboard the craft. In several cases the narrators encountered reports of apparent hybrids or Men-in-Black-like beings. Some contactee-like stories include an account of traveling to other planets, warnings that the earth was damaged, and promises that the Star People would rescue Indians and carry them to a better planet when the time of cataclysm arrived. Even stranger accounts appear-of a man who shot an alien for attempting to steal his dog, of a boy who gave his favorite marble to an alien as a gift, and of a snowplow driver in an Alaskan blizzard who gave a ride to an odd-looking being that later left the truck for a UFO hovering over the road. Some aliens disappeared into a mountainside, others were shapeshifters, passed through walls, or prevented guns from working.