The Dying Grass, page 13
But, o, her prices!
Mrs. Perry, just now your husband appears rather—
Thank you, Perry.
Yessir.
To make a point, he permits Perry to form up the garrison. At this a grim horseman cries loudly: Kaa náko haamankhnáawyanikh kaakíne hilkilíinenikh?
Mr. Whitman, what did that Indian say just now?
Begging your pardon, general, he said, why are they acting brave and milling around here?
I was just wondering the same about them. Look how they grin at his speech! The Dreamers have done their work well. Where’s Smohallie?
Over there, sir.
O, so he is. Keep an eye on him. Where’s the other one?
Perhaps we gave him a fright the other day.
Even so, were I a betting man I’d risk a silver dollar that Toohhoolhoolzote’s remained faithful to his principles. And how does Joseph appear to you, colonel?
Guarded, sir.
Doesn’t he always?
Yes, sir.
He rides gracefully.
Doesn’t he, though?
Best lookin’ Injun I ever come across.
You know, Whipple, before the war, when I was stationed in Maine, I used to train horses. I had a pure white Arabian named Mallach. Rather tall, but slender-legged. I used to gallop all over the country on his back.
Yes, sir.
Did I tell you this before?
Well, yes, sir.
But Joseph’s horse looks ideal.
I should say so, sir.
He’s watching us.
Yes, sir. Perhaps that skinny red’s coming too near . . .
And the other chiefs? You know them better than I, Mr. Monteith.
General, just now they grate unpleasantly on my mind. These Dreamers are notorious.
And that old fellow with the angry eyes, who’s he?
Never saw him before, sir.
What’s he saying?
Thief treaty.
No, Wilkinson. This note goes to Walla-Walla and that one to Portland. Now, Perry, who’s that one with the mirror around his neck?
They call him Looking-Glass, which was his father’s name for the same reason. A good Indian. He’s always signed everything.
I thought his father declined to sign the treaty.
So he did, sir, but the son is never saucy.
Why didn’t he introduce himself before?
Perhaps he’s a shy Indian, sir.
Thank you for that speculation, colonel. And what was the name of Joseph’s father?
Also Joseph.
Very dynastic, these Nez Perces. Mr. Whitman, I assume that with them property also descends through the male line?
I once asked them about it, and they answered: All our father’s uncles are our grandfathers and our mother’s aunts are our grandmothers.
That’s more than enough detail, I should say. Is it true that Old Joseph was present when the missionaries got murdered at Spalding?
I don’t think so, sir. But his wife was a Cayuse—
All right, let’s come to order. Stenographer, are you ready? Mr. Whitman, would you like some water? Tell them that we are ready to hear their decision. What does Joseph say?
He declines to speak just yet. Toohhoolhoolzote wishes to have his say.
By all means. No doubt he’ll take a leaf from Smohallie’s book.
He says, the land has always belonged to us. We came from the earth; she is our mother; our bodies must go back to her. The land must not be sold.
Mr. Monteith, tally their faces. How many would you say agree with him?
I would say all of them, general.
Then firmness will be needed. Mr. Whitman, ask Toohhoolhoolzote whether he has anything new to say.
He’s repeating himself, general. He’s going back to the beginning with the business about the earth.
Toohhoolhoolzote, you Nez Perces made an agreement with the United States Government. Your group might have been in opposition to the Indians who signed the treaty, but you are in the minority and so you will have to follow the majority.
We have never made any trade. Part of the Indians gave up their land. I never did. The earth is part of my body and I never gave up the earth.
I do not want to hear you say anything more like that. You have thirty days to move to the reservation. I am telling you.
You ask me to talk, then tell me to say no more. I am a chief! I ask no man to come and tell me what I must do.
Yes, you are a chief. All the same, I am telling you! You have thirty days.
Go back to your own country, General Howard. Tell them you are chief there. I am chief here,
the Indian’s eyes shining like the cinders which flitter from a steamboat’s stacks.
What person pretends to divide the land and put me on it?
I am the man. I had hoped that you Indians were sensible enough to make me your friend and not your enemy.
General, now even White Bird says that he would be ruled by white men if he had been taught to be ruled by white men, but as it is, he is ruled by the earth.
And when these other Indians say Aa, aaa, that signifies agreement with his words?
Correct.
Colonel Perry,
recollecting that time at Fort Sill when Stumbling Bear and Lone Wolf tried to murder General Sherman while he was arresting the Kiowas,
how do you read Looking-Glass’s face?
Well, sir, I suspect he feels as White Bird does.
And Joseph?
Closed in upon himself, sir.
I see how it is. Tell Toohhoolhoolzote the following: White Bird and Joseph appear to have good hearts, but yours is bad. You must go to the Indian Territory. I will send you there if it takes years and years. Chief Joseph and White Bird may come with me to choose reservation lands which suit them. But you will have to stay with Colonel Perry. Now, colonel, lead this dangerous Indian out of the council and put him in confinement. Mr. Whitman, what do these other Indians say now?
Now their hearts have changed, general, and they stand ready to obey the Government.
5
What should they have done, after all? What the cattle do. Or, in Cicero’s Latin, idem quod pecudes.
He feels for them, of course. He disapproves not only of our national Indian policy, but also of Wallowa’s heedless seizure. But Washington has given instructions, and there must be an end.
Once when he was a boy, two men murdered another. One of the killers was hanged and the other went to prison. Troubled by the discrepancy, he said: Father, it seems unfair.
The law’s not about fairness, Otis.
Then what’s it about?
His father smiled kindly. Finality, he said.
He has never forgotten this. Fairness would have been best, to be sure. But at least we can achieve finality. Once the Indians are safely settled, and the remaining lands opened for settlement, then—
Sir, Joseph and Looking-Glass wish to see you.
Send them in. Where’s Mr. Whitman?
Here, sir.
The door opens,
illustrating the way that on Joseph’s red-ochered cheekbones lamplight can give way to shadow along an almost horizontal slanting boundary as distinct as a hand’s edge
and his narrow-lidded eyes, whose dark caution is peculiarly reminiscent of Lizzie’s
and I smell Lieutenant Theller’s pomade.
Shall I invite them to sit down, sir?
Tell them that General Howard is listening.
They beseech you to release Toohhoolhoolzote. They will stand surety for his behavior with their own lives.
All right. Let him go. Anything else, Mr. Whitman?
They thank you with all their hearts, general. They say that they can see now that you are a kind man,
the old Dreamer shambling out, grimacing, staring quickly and crookedly down at the ground, clasping his blanket tight around his waist (with GOD’s help, he won’t be so saucy in future!),
Looking-Glass wooden-faced beneath that peculiar hat of his,
and then Joseph, whose dark neck shines white from that gorget of bearteeth he so often wears,
and Joseph
(Looking-Glass is a better known quantity, awed and loyal, like White Bird who hides behind his eagle feather, unable to meet my gaze)—
Tell them that I am a sincere friend of all Indians who obey the Government.
I told them, sir.
And what did they say?
They’re ready to ride with you and select their reservations, general.
Tell them that I have been praying for this result with all my heart, and that this is one of the happiest days of my life. Tell them that I mean only their good—
They say they know, sir.
Gentlemen, what do you think of this?
Congratulations, general! It’s going to be smooth sailing now!
I concur with that, sir.
Wilkinson, I’ll need my horse at once.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Monteith, Mr. Whitman, will you join us?
Of course, general.
Tell them that we’ll ride together in a quarter-hour to look at the land.
They’re joyful to ride with you, sir. They want to know if you’ll race with them.
By GOD, I will! Will you look at that interesting horse-hobble! Just a rock with a hole in it—
Our native basalt, general.
I wonder what those other Nez Perces are up to over there by the river?
I’d say they’re holding some kind of powwow.
They’re Looking-Glass’s Indians?
Joseph’s, sir, and I think that buck there is one of Toohhoolhoolzote’s.
I’ve never looked upon a livelier scene. Gentlemen, this should be an adventure. May I see Joseph’s saddle?
He offers to present it to you.
Well, that’s kind! Too kind. No, I can’t accept. Colonel, are our horses ready?
Yes, sir.
What’s their word for horse?
Ah, general, that’s not so simple. There is one word for a palomino, and another for a roan. There is a word for a horse with a black streak running down the middle of its face—
Never mind. Let’s all gallop together across this inviting plain of golden grass . . .
6
And in a cut between the goldenhaired hills, a flock of starlings like living shadows passes over the riders, their darkness frosting the grass into deeper pallor to the very horizon of this wide, wide land.
AND THE WORLD KEEPS GETTING WIDER AND WIDER
MAY 31–JUNE 9
1
In the dying dark, Springtime rolls away, she who once slept so sweetly in his arms. The dogs are barking: Good Woman and Sound Of Running Feet have gone down to the creek. Once he awoke before others, but since the council at Butterfly Place* some rain has darkened his way, even to that kind of sleep which is clotted red like birds’ eyes. Like Springtime, he feels heavy, but for the only other cause: He sees death coming.
Flying out of dreams that resemble skulls in a circle in an old tale, he lays his hand on her buttock; while she, the widening one who remains as delicious as a sego lily’s root, wearily begins to sit up. She is pulling her bleached buckskin dress down over her belly, she who used to be lonely for him even when she was menstruating; he can hear the hissing of the deerhide across her skin, and the faintest rattle of the beads. Very slowly she breathes. He is still lying on his back. Clasping his hands, he watches the last stars through the smokehole, thankful that she has suppressed her weeping in order to make herself brave:
It is on the verge of ending,
now when cous season is nearly over:
two moons too early to net salmon at Wallowa Lake,
and Springtime is decorating herself for the day. Now she is painting her face red.
Remembering how she used to sing when she bathed in the Enemy River, and what she sometimes whispers in his arms, he smiles at her, but she does not see. He sits up. She turns toward him. He pulls on his deerskin shirt,
Black Mane-Stripe, Brown One and Spotted Head whickering outside
(Good Woman must now be riding Ocher One)
and the bad dreams go.
Someone is cooking outside. He smells smoke and soup.
Now he is listening to Springtime’s belly, while she caresses his head. The baby makes a noise inside: shlal, shlal.
He hears Ollokot’s wives going to the river with the little boy, and just down the meadow from their lodge, Welweyas the half-woman is untying the flap of the tipi she shares with her mother, old Agate Woman, whose husband was killed by Lice-Eaters two winters since. White Thunder must have already gone hunting. Someone coughs. The last stars have set.
2
Springtime begins to braid his hair, although Good Woman will certainly be jealous. She rolls up their buffalo robe. Now she is blowing on the fire. Soon the women will be pounding roots, and the reckless young men will recommence to beat their untanned elkskin, singing songs of killing. He cannot decide how to straighten their hearts.
He longs to keep listening to the baby. Springtime’s hair is showering him as if she were shaking apart a cluster of berries. Her lap smells like smoke, sweat and bunchgrass.
3
She should be sleeping in the women’s house. White Thunder and Good Woman are making themselves angry; exactly now she ought not to be too much near men. But she has told him in terror: My dear husband, I have Dreamed that some good Helper of mine is turning away!
—by which she meant that her WYAKIN will abandon her!—
an evil Dream indeed;
and since all things are ending in any case, he will not drive away his youngest wife whose heart sometimes gets scared like a child’s.
4
Must we certainly go?
Síikstiwaa,* I am speaking to you from the root of my heart. Shall our People be killed?
No, husband, but you told me we have never sold our country . . .
So I have said, and I spoke straight. But, síikstiwaa, now we are becoming tame. We must keep ourselves quiet forever.
And never come back here?
Cut Arm has said that we may ask for a paper whenever we wish to come out from our painted land.* But we must not bring too many horses, in case the Bostons dislike it.
He will never let us out!
No. We leave here forever,
as dawn comes suddenly, spraying golden rays as if a SKY PALOMINO had swished his tail, the long bright hairs of it fanning out:
lightning more slender than cracks in a rock
and mosquitoes on the lake, and their reflections;
curtain of orange in the sky,
then two rainbows,
the river high, puddles in the grass
(thunder again),
the world cool and wet, rapidly brightening
and frog songs at dawn there north of the lake
when she says: The land has always belonged to us.
—Be silent now. I shall not unsay my words to Cut Arm,
although in everyone’s hearing I promised my father never to sell our country.
5
Springtime, whom some falsely say he loves the most, was once a woman who liked to speak at night. Since the council at Butterfly Place
(where we once had a village)
she has become quiet.
But now, knowing that he will never beat her, she begins showing her heart too much, crying out (her cheeks shimmering with tears): The Bostons unsay everything!
—or unsing what we once knew
(Cut Arm glaring, the Bostons cheering as at a Scalp Dance,
our doom as faithful as the gleam of Looking-Glass’s mirror),
for just as in old tales a man who urinates in the same spot where a woman did can make her pregnant, so this thief treaty to which we never put our mark has magically conveyed away the remnants of our country:
Wallowa,
and Eel Place, where Looking-Glass’s People used to live,
Sunflower Place, which we lost long ago,
Sparse-Snowed* Place: White Bird’s country,
Chinook Salmon Mountains: Toohhoolhoolsote’s place,
Shale-Rock Mountain,
Split Rock: the camas meadow where we now ride to meet our relations for the last time,
Imnaha
and all our pretty rivers of beaver and salmon,
wintering places, horse prairies, pitch-gathering groves;
the places where we used to cut lodgepoles,
and the hills, forests, caves, ridges and bunchgrass of our home:
Thief treaty!
Now she has finished decorating his hair, so, thanking her, he rises, putting on his brass bracelets, affixing his collar of otterskin, and wrapping himself in the King George blanket which Looking-Glass gave him last fall at Eel Place. The morning brightens further. Outside the tipi, Good Woman has begun to spread blankets on the dewy grass, laying out cous-roots to dry a little more before she pounds them.
Springtime goes to the sweathouse. Then she will bathe in the cold river, to make her baby strong.
6
Again she murmurs: Thief treaty!
Smiling carefully, hoping to spare her from understanding why he has obeyed Cut Arm,
old Cut Arm, mangier than a buffalo in spring,
who humiliated us by showing the rifle, shrilling like the mother in the stories who becomes so angry that she gains the Power to fly away,
Cut Arm, who handled Toohhoolhoolsote like an animal,
he remarks: Each time, they become less human than before. Now we shall see how it ends.
Then he paints his face red and yellow.
7
Ollokot and White Thunder are speaking outside. He hears Ollokot say: Then tell the young men . . .
