FIVE HUNDRED YEARS DWELLING AMONG SAVAGES

September 17, 1990
U. C. Davis

Five Hundred Years Dwelling Among Savages was first scribbled when some of our tribe left the Shasta County Jail at Redding, California; Susanville jail; and Reno, Nevada jail chained to each other in sets of three. We were being transported to Sacramento Federal Court because of our October 26, 1970 confrontation at 4-corners with the U. S. Marshals, U. S. Forest Service, Shasta County Sheriff and Deputies, and the F. B. I. We were building a home in our ancestral homeland. They said we were trespassing on federal property but they refused to charge us with criminal trespass because the law knows that aboriginal land title still resides with the original tribal people, it has never been surrendered, transferred, exchanged or extinguished.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS DWELLING AMONG SAVAGES

Across the thundering white waters of eastern ocean, angry
Across the golden prairies of blue, soft mornings, angry
They came hungry
We fed them fruits of Mother Earth, still angry!

We did not know their greater hunger was to possess the land
To spill blood upon the world
To rape Mother Earth
To make sky grey with sick clouds where birds do not dare fly
To make stinking rivers where salmon cannot splash and curve and dive
To make our people their personal servants, expendable

Deep in their eyes something
something missing
something tormented

In their eyes also, the look of panic-caused pain
In their hearts an unknowable vastness of ugliness
given to them by a God made by their own hands
who writes upon stone with an iron finger

Loudly they came, bringing with them laws
that appear as a deep canyon filled with yala’li (demons)

Their laws and their God teach them to lie
to cheat
to steal
to worship false sayings
and to band together as a raw-hide knot
the money worshipers
and those whose possessions are of a greater value than all of life

They teach my weak and feeble people all of these things, also

Their laws are wrong upon wrong
piled like leaves of many autumns

In their talk they say:

“I am the challenger of this wild land
I will mould with my hands and blue blood a new nation
A new nation with liberty and justice for all people
I will protect all living things
Knowing adversity,
I will be peaceful to all people , forever. Amen”

After uttering this before our Council-of-Elders
in the presence of their God
and at the feet of their law, the Christians
Raped Mother Earth for gold
Burned and destroyed our villages on their path to possess the metal-that-makes-men-
crazy
Defiled the power-places of our ancients
Killed the terrorized children
with weapons made by the gnarled hands of an iron God
Destroyed the dreams of our Elders and
attempted to sever my people from our dance with destiny
as has been our duty from the moment
the stars were sprinkled in the darkness
and songs and dreams were placed within and without

They destroyed the vast, black rivers of buffalo
Made rock walls upon the rushing rivers
so spring salmon and that of autumn
cannot return to the people splashing in morning sun

In their hollow hearts a thought, as a metal ball in an aimed weapon:

“Kill the buffalo and the red nations die
Kill the salmon and the red nations perish
Kill the forest and the meadow
and the spirit of the nations vanish
Kill! Kill! Kill!”

In this season there is not much remaining to kill
But they stumble upon each other
To accomplish this dream of their angry God

The savages rage across earth
They are killing other nations
They are killing their own children in the vast cities
Thy have turned brothers upon sisters and tribes against nations

With a twisted heart that invading spirit smiles
when the red hand is raised against the red child
when the red nations tremble
when quivering voices sing songs from distant lands with strange meaning
shattering the melody of silence

For many seasons my people have survived waves of destruction
For five-hundred years we have dwelled among Christian savages,
invaders from beyond the rising sun

As we have been instructed
we must, yet, live with a good heart
For we must continue for the time eternity matures into forever
and forever into wisdom


My Grandfather spoke to me these words
Long ago as It Ajuma (Pit River),
rushed and rippled to the sea,
during a full autumn moon

With tears of bitterness dimming his clouded eyes
And he dreamed of once more dancing
Dis’wass’sa’wi (war dance)

Sul’ma’ejote
Autumn 1970
Manacled to my people