Christians have long credited the pagan poet Virgil, in his fourth eclogue, with prophesying Christ. In Chesterton’s day that view was becoming unfashionable, but he defended the interpretation. “Virgil… stand[s] for all that saner heathenism that had overthrown the insane heathenism of human sacrifice.” But whereas the case that Virgil anticipated Christ is disputable, and still looked upon with skepticism, the case that North American Indians anticipated Christianity is on much firmer ground. Nicholas Black Elk, whose Lakota wisdom is this continent’s analogue to Platonism, did not find that wisdom to be sufficient. He famously converted to Catholicism, brought hundreds to the same faith in his role as Catechist, and is up for sainthood. But that is only the most famous example. Chief Joseph River Wind claims that the entire Sundance ritual is itself a prophecy of the crucifixion, which — it turns out — is a rather common observation in Indigenous Christian communities. Indigenous encounters with Christ during the ecstatic ritual of the Ghost Dance, well documented in Louis Warren’s God’s Red Son, were common enough to frustrate white Christian missionaries who wanted natives to come to faith on their own terms.
A wonderful essay on Chesterton, cave art, America and Americans, the varieties of paganism, and … well, all the stuff you see in the remarkable paragraph just quoted.