The Nation: Fine for Feathers

Turkey feathers may serve well enough for Boy Scouts in summer-camp loincloth dances, but not for authentic Indians. To Wisconsin's Winnebago tribe, the wingspan of the soaring eagle symbolizes a canopy of protection sent down by a great benefactor in the sky.

Such was the argument advanced by the attorney for Max Funmaker, an improbably named Winnebago from Black River Falls, who was charged by federal authorities with the illegal possession of two dead bald eagles, a species even more endangered than the buffalo ever was. Funmaker conceded that he had shot the eagles down—presumably with spiritual intent. It was a somehow unlikely collision of the white man's belated ecological law with an Indian lore that for centuries has taken nature to be sacred. The judge let Funmaker off with a $100 fine.