The Dying Grass, page 1
ALSO BY WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN
You Bright and Risen Angels (1987)
The Rainbow Stories (1989)
The Ice-Shirt (1990)
Whores for Gloria (1991)
Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs (1991)
An Afghanistan Picture Show (1992)
Fathers and Crows (1992)
Butterfly Stories (1993)
The Rifles (1994)
The Atlas (1996)
The Royal Family (2000)
Argall (2001)
Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means (2003)
Europe Central (2005)
Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006)
Poor People (2007)
Riding Toward Everywhere (2008)
Imperial (2009)
Imperial: A Book of Photographs (2009)
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Feminity in Japanese Noh Theater (2010)
The Book of Dolores (2013)
Last Stories and Other Stories (2014)
SEVEN DREAMS
ABOUT OUR CONTINENT
IN THE DAYS OF
INDIAN SERVICE
Whose Scouts and Cavalrymen
(Commanded by Generals Howard, Gibbon, Sturgis and Miles)
Gave the Nez Perces, Umatillas, Flatheads & Bannocks
No LESS than
the ***OREGON DREAMERS***
(Protected by the Government of our United States)
Determined that
They Deserved
and no MORE than
I Feed My
DEAD BUFFALO
Because You Can’t AMERICANIZE
sweet
WALLOWA
nor throw down the plank at
* Big Hole *
without
TEACHING INDIANS
*** the Constitution ***
by means of wholesome compulsion. Someday they’ll learn that
THE AMERICANS ARE THEIR FRIENDS!
As Inferred From
CAMPAIGN MEMOIRS,
then Bowdlerized for All Sensibilities
by
WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN
(Nicknamed by Better Shots
“WILLIAM THE BLIND”)
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2015 by William T. Vollmann
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Maps and illustrations by the author
ISBN 978-0-698-13549-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Also by William T. Vollmann
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author Note
List of Maps
Grass-Texts: A Speech and a Report (1877–78)
GRASS-TEXT I
GRASS-TEXT II
The Dying Grass
I Indian Service (1805–77) 11
AND THE WATER AND THE GRASS
NESPELEM
PLENTY OF INDIANS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY
PLENTY OF INDIANS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY (CONTINUED)
PRINTS FROM COMPARTMENT FOUR
WHERE YOU WANT TO BE
WALLOWA
EXTRACTS, OR, HOW THE NEZ PERCE GOT CIVILIZED AND IMPROVED
THEIR HEARTS HAVE CHANGED
AND THE WORLD KEEPS GETTING WIDER AND WIDER
AND BLACK BIRDS ON THE LAKE
THE TIME HAS PASSED
SOME KIND OF PEACE
JUST FOR AWHILE
WELL, COLONEL, THIS MEANS BUSINESS
SHOULD BE A PLEASURABLE FIGHT
NEWS
II Edisto (1862–74)
A GOOD MAN IN A HIGH PLACE
WON AND FORTIFIED
GENERAL CROOK’S ASSESSMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
III The Burial of Lieutenant Theller (June 1877)
WE HAVE NOW SEEN HIS DEEDS
SO THIS WAS JOSEPH’S PLAN
GRACE’S BIRTHDAY
ALASKA SOUNDS FINE AND COOL
BATTLE WITHOUT MUSIC
A HAPPY RECOLLECTION OF THE “EAST WOODS”
BURIAL
SALMON CROSSING
CLEANING OUT WALLOWA
IV I Am Flying Up (June–July 1877)
HERE AT THIS DANCE
WHERE THE ENEMY RIVER GOES
V The Rest of My Days (July–August 1877)
WE GAVE LOOKING-GLASS AN OPPORTUNITY
THE BLACK ARABIAN
TAKING THE SHORTEST LINE (A TRIUMPH OF EMPIRICAL GEOMETRY)
FOURTH OF JULY
HE COULD HAVE MADE MONEY ANYWHERE
MISERY HILL
WHEN HE HEARS THE WHISPER
I DON’T EXPECT THIS TO DRAG ON
WE RODE AWAY EXACTLY WHEN WE WISHED
KAMIAH
IT NOW BECOMES MY DUTY TO CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF MY OPERATIONS
THE BERRIES WILL NOW BE TURNING RED
FAMILY REUNION
ADVICE FROM A MILITARY GENIUS
AMERICAN SECRETS
PERTAINING TO MRS. THELLER’S BONNET
THEY CALLED ME DREAMER
ACCIDENTS DO HAPPEN, SIR
AND PERRY CONTEMPLATES THE MOUNTAINS
WHENEVER A CHILD SLIPS
FAIRLY RELIABLE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH
PEACE TREATY
LOOKING-GLASS’S DREAM
GIBBON AT MISSOULA
SOON WE SHALL BE RIDING THROUGH THE GOLDEN GRASS
LIEUTENANT BRADLEY SCOUTS AHEAD
WHAT ICICLES SAY
AT LEAST IDAHO AND OREGON ARE SAFE
OBSEQUIES
LOOKING-GLASS IS SILENT
VI Very Beautiful and Almost Automatic (August–September 1877)
SKINNER MEADOWS
RED SALMON SEASON
THE GREEN LIGHT
HIS FATHER’S GRAVE
BANNOCK CITY
SO MUCH WASTE
CAMAS MEADOWS
HENRY’S LAKE
GOD HELP ME
WHATEVER LIGHT THERE IS
THE LAND OF WONDERS
THEY ARE THE ONES WHO DID WRONG THINGS
AND THEN I CAN WRITE A PLEASING ARTICLE
WHAT NEXT?
BARGAIN WITH FLETCH
NOW IS THE TIME FOR STEELHEAD TO DIE
JOSEPH’S GOOSE IS FINALLY COOKED
WHEN THE THISTLES ARE BLOOMING PURPLE
VICTORY
THE OPTIMISTIC SCOUT
I WOULD GIVE A THOUSAND DOLLARS
NOT TRUE!
AND QUICKLY RIDING TO SOME FARTHER PLACE
CLOSE ACTION
FINGERNAIL NOISES
ANOTHER REUNION
IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT OUR GRANDFATHER STILL LOVES US
MOST EXTRAORDINARY AND PRAISEWORTHY EFFORTS
NOW PERHAPS IT IS TOO LATE
AS GOOD AS A CIRCUS
EVEN IF I MUST FORGO THE CREDIT
THAT OFFICER WILL GET PROMOTED
BESSIE’S BIRTHDAY
RIVER SEASON
IT CERTAINLY IS A LOVELY STREAM
A MIGHTY INTERESTING WOMAN I HAVE TO SAY
RELATIVE TO ABSTRACT “N”
THE FIRES
VII Detached Pictures (September–October 1877)
A CALL AGAINST THE WIND
LEAN ELK AND THE LUCKY MAN
ROSETTE PORTRAITS
WILKINSON WAITS
BACK IN TIME
SO NEAR THE MEDICINE LINE
IT CANNOT SEEM RIGHT
I SEE YOU’VE STUDIED GEOGRAPHY
OUR DREAD OF THIS DAY
HOW TO EARN A STAR
I SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF GENERAL SHERMAN CHANGED HIS MIND
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
VIII I Raised My Eyes (1877–78)
WISHING FOR A HACKNEY
JUST DESERTS
IX The Americans Are Your Friends (1877–1904)
THE MEDICINE LINE
THE AMERICANS ARE YOUR FRIENDS
INDIAN TERRITORY
CONGRESS SOLVES OUR INDIAN PROBLEM
GENERAL HOWARD EXPLAINS
PHOTO BY BOWMAN
LATE AUGUST 1900
NESPELEM
NOT EVEN A HOR N SPOON
Dinosaurs and Cycads (1878–2013)
CHRONOLOGY, GLOSSARIES, SOURCES
A Chronology of the Seven Ages of Wineland: V. The Age of Dying Grass
Glossaries
1 Glossary of Personal Names
2 Glossary of Orders, Isms, Nations, Professions, Hierarchies, Divisions, Races, Shamans, Tribes and Monsters
3 Glossary of Places
4 Glossary of Texts
5 Glossary of Calendars, Currencies, Forms, Legalisms and Measures
6 General Glossary
Orthographic Notes
Sources [and a Few Notes]
Captions
Acknowledgments
For Teresa
For the most part, a civilized white man can discover but very few points of sympathy between his own nature and that of an Indian. With every disposition to do justice to their good qualities, he must be conscious that an impassable gulf lies between him and his red brethren of the prairie. Nay, so alien to himself do they appear, that having breathed for a few months or a few weeks the air of this region, he begins to look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast, and if expedient, he could shoot them with as little compunction as they themselves would experience after performing the same office upon him.
PARKMAN, The Oregon Trail (1849)
The reader is encouraged to use the Chronology and Glossaries only as needed while reading Seven Dreams. The first gives context to characters and events in the text. The second define and sometimes give the origin of words which might be unfamiliar. Glossary 1 summarizes how and why specific characters have been fictionalized. In Glossary 2, the table of brevet ranks might help readers who wonder why Captain Perry is addressed as “colonel.” As for the Source-Notes, they can be ignored or skimmed; their function is to record my starting points, which may interest travellers in other directions.
LIST OF MAPS
Locator Map of Wallowa
Military Departments, Western U.S.A. / Northeast Corner of Indian Territory
Some Places Where the People Lived . . . and How the Bostons Mapped Them
The Progress of Americanization (June–July 1877)
The People’s Trail Away (July–October 1877)
How Cut Arm Saw It (July–October 1877)
The Howards in Leeds, ca. 1873
Cut Arm’s Last Chance (September–October 1877)
In the People’s Eyes (September–October 1877)
The Shrinking Reservation (1855, 1863)
Some Indian Languages and Language Families (simplified)
GRASS-TEXT I
AN INAUGURAL SPEECH
1877
The President-elect advances into the Senate chamber and delivers his inaugural address (a saddlebag full of salt pork): The permanent pacification of the country upon such principles and by such measures as will secure the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their constitutional rights is now the one subject in our public affairs, which all thoughtful and patriotic citizens regard as of supreme importance.
LORDY LORD, what could have transpired in our Republic, to render her citizens so unprotected?—Indian troubles, Mexican perils, our vast ocean front, the Silver Panic?— Well, I happened by Walt Whitman voting last November, and he’d thought it through; he wrote his ballot for free enjoyment, all right. They call him original, unusual, unsound, SATANic, a true American. That means he’s fixing to die. He’s still revising his poem “Old War-Dreams.” If you’ve ever seen him scribbling away with his superannuated hands, you’ll know our nineteenth century’s nearly gone. The twentieth’s going to be twice as good. That’s why I wish Walt could wake up from his war-dreams, which are grey and disappointingly dark, like so much Wyoming jade: Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields, but no more of that, where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen; no more, a solid dozen years after we’ve saved our Union, why not keep facing forward? Let us comb away the relics from Walt’s fields, fill in his trenches with marble monuments, and enshroud those faces (skeleton-visages all) with the thick white juice of Indian hemp. Long have they pass’d; so let them. Walt’s sadness may have grown as long as his white beard, but he fights it; he votes straight Optimism ticket; as for me, I’d wish all sadness away, because our Republic’s now superior to a hundred years old! In the next generation we’ll annex Canada, I’ll bet.
The retired colonel beside me would rather finish the job in Mexico first. Also, he’s mortified about Little Big Horn. That’s why he wants to enlarge the Army.—So sorry; it’s going the other way.— I can see myself in each of the metal buttons of his drab-hued vest. And before us all the President-elect shines white-linened at wrist, neck and breast! His long narrow white face, eminently suited for being printed on paper money, his tapering beard, sunken eyes, bushy brows, distinguished temples and cliff-like forehead make of him such a statesman of the drum-corps that I cannot begrudge him either of his inaugurations (the first took place secretly just last Sunday). Up behind him broods his majestic wife—Lemonade Lucy, they call her; her dream is to outlaw booze and cleavage at the White House. She’s as shiny, solid, heavy and comforting as a Colt Model 1873. O, and who could miss Dan Sickles? He’s the one-legged general with the scowl and the moustache whose telegrams to four Southern states gained our candidate the victory even after he’d conceded. May the best trickster win! Long have they pass’d, so why can’t we finally count ourselves permanently pacified? They say he’s going to pull our troops out of the South. I say a standing army’s un-American. The colonel’s old enough to believe anything; I won’t pick on him—but let the fools out West take care of themselves. We took care of our own Indians. We did what we had to and went home.— Howbeit, our President-elect, who’s ever more grandly put together by the instant, I do confess, swore so sweetly upon his Bible just now that I fell in love with Government all over again! He’s a walking compromise, by GOD; he won two days ago by a single electoral vote.
It might have been the most American campaign ever. The dark horse from Ohio came in at an easy canter on the homestretch, beating the favorite of the field by a full length and a half. I read that in the Louisville Courier-Journal last June. And now that dark horse is President! Praise the LORD and Dan Sickles. I’ll never forget how the dark horse (a dark brown hackney, let’s say) glared warily above his long beard, while William Wheeler, his Vice President, looked ever so sad, sulky and handsome. As for the opponents, Tilden was a chubby-cheeked, glib smiler, and his Vice President, Hendricks, appeared to be a Puritan with a secret. Even though Tilden’s machine harvested two hundred and fifty-one thousand more votes than ours, long have they pass’d, because after the dark horse cantered sadly back to his paddock where Lemonade Lucy waited with the currying-brush, Dan Sickles, expert in gelding thoroughbreds, sent a basketful of late-night telegrams, with horse-racing tips attached. Republicans in South Carolina kept out the Democrats by force and refused to tally the returns of two counties. Hurrah! Louisiana would have gone for Hayes anyhow, I hear. Florida would have gone for Tilden. Had Oregon recognized her one Democratic elector, Tilden would have nibbled up that vote. But then I guess we might have annexed more Indians and turned them Republican! If this is too complicated for you, just remember a dark horse from Ohio, then the Electoral Commission’s decision to let sleeping dogs lie, followed by the Democratic filibuster, the recess, Stevens’s midnight call upon Bradley, who then decided not to count the Democratic votes, although Stevens might never have visited Bradley, who likewise might not have sold his influence, since some events do occur purely as a result of prayer; and we all lived happily ever after, thanks to the equivocal “Wormley Agreements.” Land of the Pilgrims’ pride, land where wet greenbacks dried; from every mountain side let freedom ring.
And don’t say freedom comes free. The Texas & Pacific Railroad expects a handout now. Tennessee had better get the Postmaster Generalship. The South will endure another Republican administration, but no more Northern despotism, if you please! That’s why they made the dark horse whinny out a promise to bring our soldiers home from Louisiana and South Carolina; you can wager your last dollar he won’t stop there. And you know what, brother? It’s all the same to me how they do things in Louisiana. We won the war and now let’s go home.*
Our President-elect surely is a treat. Last year he was as green as a soldier’s coffee beans. Now I can almost remember his name: Rutherford B. Hayes.— Another wounded war hero!— He’s going to be a one-termer, because compromisers can’t please anybody. How could he ever approach Dan Sickles, who’s so famous that he once granted himself the privilege of donating a bone from his amputated leg to a museum? All the same, I enjoy him. He makes sad allusion to the two distinct races whose peculiar relations to each other have brought upon us the deplorable complications and perplexities which exist in these States. The retired colonel shakes his weary head at that, and I throw him a wink, for we both know exactly what complications and which perplexities. Now he and I have something in common! For what do we care about that other race? Didn’t we bleed enough for them? I lost my son at Chancellorsville. Yes, sir. I keep his tintype right here in my pocket. That’s Elias when he was sixteen. His chin takes after mine, but his eyes favor his mother’s. He’s one of thousands who paid for General Howard’s negligence. My wife’s never been the same. Some folks blame Hooker, but I say Howard should have done more than send out a handful of GODd—— d pickets. And now the man’s a brigadier general. I used to get apopletic on the subject of Howard, but, you know, long have they pass’d, so let ’em rot alone in their unmarked graves. Actually, I guess they mean to give them decent monuments now, or so I’ve heard. I rode out there in ’67, just to try to understand that battle with my eyes, and a one-legged fellow said to me: Here’s where the Secceshes came bursting through. We had no warning until dozens of deer rushed out from the trees. Our boys were stretched out along the Plank Road and the Orange Turnpike, down there . . .— Well, then we got friendly. I showed him Elias’s tintype and he showed me his stump. We agreed: Nobody could have held that line. Stonewall Jackson took his fatal wound just past that ruined chimney, they say. I wish I could have seen that villain go down! And Howard’s tent was up there, and him with his nose in a hymnal most likely. He faced most of our guns south—as if the enemy couldn’t go around! That wasn’t enough; he also gave away a brigade to Dan Sickles. They should have court-martialed him. I understand he retreated to that cemetery on the hill. Nobody can say where Elias fell, of course. I couldn’t find any of his comrades. He kept to himself, that boy; he didn’t make friends easily, not that people had anything against him, either. He was two days short of his nineteenth birthday. I guarantee that he didn’t have much use for our Christian General. In one letter he wrote us, he put down that in Howard’s hearing you couldn’t say a word against the niggers. The way I look at it, when the Government calls on you to shed your blood, you’ve earned the right to speak your mind. And when you’re forbidden to call a man tyrant, doesn’t that make him one? Elias saw an officer drummed right out of the Army just for disagreeing with the idea of Emancipation. Don’t mistake me; I wouldn’t oppose it myself; I just don’t trouble my appetite about it. Let the President-elect take care of his two distinct races; niggers are citizens now in all thirty-eight states of this Union; well, that’s hardly my lookout; I don’t see many niggers in Connecticut. (Just the other day, that old Walt Whitman remarked to me: I can myself almost remember negro slaves in New York State, as my grandfather and great-grandfather own’d a number.) Well, that General Howard’s just crazy for darkies, apparently. Now it’s come out that he embezzled Government funds on their behalf. And there’s the real reason I’m in favor of shrinking down the Army: I want Howard cashiered. That won’t bring Elias back, but perhaps it’ll give me satisfaction. And Rutherford B. Hayes stands (if he stands for anything) for convivial contraction. To hell with war-dreams new and old; out with Howard! Just as in the Buffalo Country, so I hear, Crows will pull Dakota corpses off their tree-platforms and explode their guns right up against them, so I aim to blow up all my old sadnesses if I can, and live forever free from corpses. Therefore, my fellow Americans, even though I was a Tilden man, and Tilden got robbed, I’ll sit here grinning and clapping all the way to the evening adjournment, the Congressmen flashing away on their dark horses, the dome of the Capitol shining overhead like a half-moon.
