Messenger of the past
‘We dance because we feel good, because we are thankful'

If you ask Edward Wiley Yellowfish, he will tell you he's an Indian gourd dancer, a straight dancer and a traditional dancer.

He'll tell you he's the production manager of Hobby Lobby Manufacturing-Greco Frame.

He'll tell you he's an artist and woodcraftsman who makes cedar boxes.

But soon enough, on your own, you'll figure out that Yellowfish is a messenger, both in word and action.

One day at a powwow, a then-14-year-old boy told his father and other members of the Comanche Little Pony Dance Society that he wanted to dance. They quickly provided him with a gourd and a fan and had a song sung for him in the traditional way.

That day, he danced for the same reason his father, Edward Koassachony Yellowfish, danced. That day, he danced for what he hopes is the same reason he and his wife Sydna's three sons Edson Wiley Yellowfish, 29, Easton Wade Yellowfish, 22, and Edward Wiley Yellowfish Jr., 11, dance.

That day, he became a messenger of the past to the future.

"We dance because we feel good, because we are thankful for whom God has made us," he said. "When I dance, I try to dance as hard as I can. A lot of the songs are prayer songs, talking to God and a lot of times I'll feel their spirit."

Yellowfish works out of an office where to his right on the wall is a painting of an eagle flying over a glass-surfaced lake, a little more to his left is a desktop computer and across the room is a display of about 400 frame molding samples.

I was sitting just across the desk from Yellowfish because of his involvement in dances, but also because November is Native American Heritage Month.

But rather than just see him and speak in general terms, I wanted to understand this 49-year-old man with salt and pepper hair who was dressed in a blue and white checked button-down dress shirt and his father's Zuni Pueblo bolo tie.

To understand him, you have to do a little traveling — back in time.

Yellowfish's great-great-grandfather Hoyunny was on a war journey with other Comanche warriors in what is today south Texas. His wife Mahsutigh, who was pregnant with Yellowfish's great-grandfather, was along on the trip, which they sometimes did if the situation permitted, according to the Yellowfish family.

As Yellowfish's father, the late Edward Koassachony Yellowfish, told it, Hoyunny came upon a clear mountain stream and saw a yellow fish swimming in it. "He thought to himself that that would be the way he would want his son to be: To live a good life in a clean environment after he was born. So he named his son ‘Yellowfish' and prayed to The Great Spirit to bless his son with that name and that way of life."

Family chronicles say that child, Yellowfish's great-grandfather, did enjoy a good life, and found himself in a historic battle when he rode with Quanah Parker at the Battle of Adobe Walls, Texas, near Stinnett in the Texas Panhandle.

Now we'll fast forward to Yellowfish, who was born in Pirmasens, Germany, because his father was in the military. It was after his father retired from the Army that he became involved in the Indian dance society around the Lawton area.

Yellowfish said he was close to his father, who was from Apache, as well as his mother, the late Cornelia DeRoin, who was from the Red Rock area in Oklahoma. She was a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe. But it was the Comanche Nation of his father's side that he spent the most time around.

One powwow he remembers in particular has ties to a significant event in the 1970s. One year, the Comanches and the Southern Utes decided to make peace.

"So the chiefs gathered in a teepee in Walters, Oklahoma, at the Comanche Homecoming and smoked a peace pipe," said Yellowfish, who was in his teens at the time.

The next year, the Southern Utes invited the Comanches to come to Ignacio, Colo., for a powwow, and he went with his father and the other elders.

"They loved to dance; it was their form of expression," he said. "They dance because they were happy to be alive. From a young age, I liked talking to our elders, and I hope th