.
The concept of stealing a horse and learning its secret name which in this case is Flight offers an image from the tribal past and the idea of the horse, which obviously runs faster than a man, offers the concept of freedom or escape. .
Regarding the fictions that seem harmful to the Natives the idea of using a drug to see visions as well as the idea of stealing a horse are both adding to the stockpile of already confusing and degrading myths of the drunken Indian or the criminal Indian as well as the childlike Indian who thinks drugs lead to enlightenment rather than the scientific facts involving the chemical effect on the brain. However, This seemingly contradictory approach to the idea of shamanic or nature based religious experience in literature and film makes the Native fictions a little hard to follow. .
The shamanic myth in fictions involving Indians but written by whites while he identifies with Native beliefs, culture, and practices as acceptable in fictions written by Native Americans. The romantic view seems to be the actual issue as writings indicate that whites have romanticized the Indian as a shamanic figure while the Native American themselves include the shamanic or religious scenes as simply a part of daily living. In the case of A Drug Called Tradition the use of a hallucinogenic substance for a vision is labeled by Thomas-Builds-The-Fire who says "Although it is the twentieth century and planes are passing overhead, the Indian boys have decided to be real Indians tonight. They all want to have their vision, to receive their true names, their adult names" (Brown & Ling 392). This statement places the action of taking a drug for the purpose of this vision into the category of a tribal rite of passage which is simply a cultural ritual that is being carried out despite the changes over time that have altered the tribe's way of life.
In essence this is a way to preserve tradition as the title of the tale implies.