In Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his journey from Florida to the Pacific, between the years 1528 and 1536, he tells how the Indians came to him and  his companions asking them to cure the sick.  The two white men were themselves half starved, lost and filled with blank despair but the Indians felt that being white (as white was a sacred power to the natives), they had superhuman power and could use it if the wanted to.  Cabeza de Vaca felt that they had no such power.  “But we had to heal them or die,” he wrote.  “So we prayed for strength.  We prayed on bended knees and in an agony of hunger.”  Then they blessed each ailing Indian, and saw that the sick were being healed!  “Truly it was to our amazement that the ailing said they were well.  Being Europeans, we thought we had given away to doctors and priests our ability to heal.  But here it was, still in our possession…It was ours after all; we were more than we thought we were…To be more than I thought I was–a sensation utterly new to me.”

From More Than We Are, by Margueritte Harmon Bro