The priest sat ready to receive the sacrament, and the chief, with a long wooden spoon, fed it to him. It was not the Eucharist, but bison meat. Father Jacques Marquette's long Jesuit cloak was gathered about him on the Iowa soil. It was 1673, and he was the first European ever to come down the river. For the Peoria tribe of that time, feeding a visitor bison meat was indeed a sacred ritual ?" a sign of communion and welcome. This meeting was one of comity, though the encounters between European settlers and native people would, of course, be fraught and violent in the coming centuries. For now, with the sharing of bison meat and the calumet, there was friendship and peace. It was Father Marquette who first put down a description of the American bison in writing, calling it a "wild ox." As this anecdote suggests, the bison has traditionally held a special place in the spirituality of the native people who have shared its ranges over the centuries. The animal was historically