By David Graber
Illusory correlation. The phenomenon of seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even when no such relationship exists.
MetraPark destroyed by a tornado? Didn't you wonder? What's the meaning? Did God disapprove of the entertainment booked at the Metra Park Arena? I often hear an illusory correlation justified by the phrase, "These things don't just happen."
The tornado stayed in one spot for several minutes, right over the Metra, pounding and pulling until the roof tore apart. What an unusual tornado phenomenon! Add to this the rarity of a tornado in Montana, and there must be at least a divine role, if not a bona fide miraculous intervention in the weather.
Busby 1914-Back in the 1970's I was transporting Oliver Risingsun, then in his 80's, to the clinic in Lame Deer. He was into telling stories from his youth.
On an August afternoon in 1914 he was sent by his father to the pine hills nearby to bring home the horses for cattle work early the next morning. On the way back he noticed from his saddle a storm brewing. It got very dark and windy. He gathered the horses just below a pine ridge for protection from wind and hail, and watched as a funnel dipped down and churned right into the Busby Mennonite Church, a log structure built in the early 1900s. So much dust and debris flew he couldn't see the town. It kept churning until the entire structure was torn apart, logs, roof, and lumber strewn down the Rosebud valley. Then the funnel lifted. The house near the church was not touched. Nothing else was damaged in the town, or in the valley. The tornado focused on one building.
Several weeks before this event, so Oliver told me, a medicine man came to the Mennonite missionary* asking him to stop preaching against Indian religion. The minister refused. The medicine man warned him one more time, adding that he liked the missionary, and was concerned that something bad might happen to the church unless he stopped his criticism.
Then the medicine man went to the hills to fast and pray. While the medicine man was on his vision quest, the tornado destroyed the church.
The Christians of Busby, including Oliver, came to pick up the pieces. They found the pulpit tipped over, but still on the church floor. The hymnbooks were inside, none missing. The pulpit Bible was there, not a page missing. They found the reed organ, with damage to some wood carving, but otherwise ready to be used again. Nothing else was left of the church building except the floor.
To this day, Christians will say this is evidence God wants the Gospel preached and Cheyenne hymns sung in Cheyenne country. They believe that though a tornado struck the church, God preserved the hymnbooks, the pulpit Bible and the organ to show that the Christian faith has a place on the reservation.
Others, namely those who held to the indigenous religion, expressed the view that the Divine Spirit sent the tornado to destroy the church because He does not approve of divisive preaching against Native American religions, something the Christians had engaged in at that time.
In the end, the tornado caused something of a "coming together moment" as the two sides realized that railing against the religious beliefs of the other was ultimately unproductive.
After all, there is no objective proof to confirm either point of view. Illusory correlation?
Here on the back 40 this summer my family enjoys confronting my skepticism about correlations I call illusory. Sometimes they don't catch my little secret that I'm also skeptical of my skepticism. In fact, I love the fact of mystery, and that miracles happen. I don't mind either if someone believes it's all an illusion, this correlation of events with a possibly divine prerogative. My opinion is that the most important Divine Mystery is the Creator of All, who made it all so that sometimes, maybe often, stuff just happens.
For comments and previous columns: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/
* When the Reverend Linscheid arrived with his family in 1904 a log church was erected at Busby. This building was destroyed on August 14, 1914 by a tornado. It was replaced that year by the current frame church, now the chapel of White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church in Busby. The original pulpit and organ are still there.
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