“I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”

The University of Arizona, Tucson, 1997

 

Soft pink whispered across the silhouette

Of the Catalinas

Brushed by an artist of great ability

A single sweeping stroke

 

[California destruction, removal, and survival, c. 1850]

 

“I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”

 

She did not know how

or why her homeland belonged to nilladuwi (rootless people, wanderers, Americans).

She did not know how the strange and ferocious beings

            could claim earth, earth that had forever belonged to everyone, equally.

She did not know why the wanderers killed

the people of many villages

because, it was the wanderers who trespassed into the homeland

committing acts of war.

She did not know the crimes the little children committed,

            making “justice” a rifle ball through their little hearts.

A victim and a witness to high crimes,

            She wept in the night, frightened.

Yes, it was true, yala’li (evil spirit) swept through the land butchering entire villages,

            but why?

Yes, it was true

            Inalludiwi moved into the homeland

            claiming all that they wanted, even children,

But why? And how?  Who could be doing this great sinfulness?

Why must the people be assaulted again and again,

            damaged badly then marched away from the homeland

by horrible men on horses, the thousand men with shiny rifles?

And why to the west (Legends say that out in the salt waters to the west there is an island where dead people dwell). 

Why to the west but to enter the land of the no-longer-living?

Woman could not stop trembling.

 

It was snowing this November.  The regular army, the Pit River Rangers and Kibbie Guards rounded up the remnants of the people and, after collecting them at Fort Crook, force marched them over Hatchet Mountain.  There was a foot of snow and more falling.  Slowly moving up the mountain was a herd of cattle that belonged to the army.  Trudging along behind the cattle came the very mottled yet proud and independent people, some bound with rope, others with raw hide thongs.  Guarding the people rode the army and the Volunteers.  Their intentions were to remove the people beyond the west of California

Infants were sick and hungry, freezing to death in the arms of their weary  mothers.  Yet they were forced on.

            The trail at the summit was long and flat and snow drifted, rippling in little ridges by the whipping, biting wind, yet the cattle were forced on and the people shuffled behind.

            A young mother carried her frozen baby over the summit.  Somewhere behind she heard the report of a rifle.  Then the familiar SILENCE.  She was too filled with fear to stop and look.  Fearing to drop her frozen baby, she trudged through the snow because if yali’li knew they would take the baby from her and cast it in the snow, forcing her on by bayonet.

As they moved off the Sierras and down into the Sacramento Valley there was warmth and some of the people thought they might survive, even those bound.  They would have performed a ceremony and a dance but for the sadness wrapped around their helplessness, and the glistening rifles looking at their hearts.

            She carried the frozen baby to Fort Reading and buried it under the river rocks.  She had no ceremony but for the silent tears from a heart torn with agony.  Then she hurried and feathered back in with her people who were  fed like hogs in a pen, hogs without a trough

 

Following urgent messages from Washington, D.C., and grisly, inflammatory headlines from local newspapers, the soldiers marched the people south to Red Bluff and to another corral half-full of natives, natives scraped from the foothills of California.  Again there was no relief.  Again they were fed like hogs.

There, heaving upon the river water, huge cattle barges. 

At daybreak some of the people were herded onto the barge to float to Sacramento while others continued the march.  It seemed the people were condemned to death but had committed no crime.  The Army and Guards separated the men from the women and children, and in silent pain they shuffled onto the barges to settle among the cattle and swine and decaying carcasses.

There was a frightened yet defiant woman, child living in her womb.  She loved her man so much she would not be separated from him.

She forced her way past the guards and onto the barge screaming, “I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”  They met in the confusion of seeming human debris, him clinging to her, her clinging to a moment of forever, their child in her womb trembling.

At Sacramento all of the people were placed in the hold aboard ship.  When the ship was full it moved slowly towards Alcatraz Island then into the open Pacific, the scream of the defiant woman yet fresh in the wind.

When the ship was beyond sight of land the Captain ordered it to be spun around and around, expecting the natives to become disoriented, then he ordered the crew to throw the natives into the icy water.  There was fierce resistance to that command by the natives that academia has not yet put into words to mature as literature or history. 

A near mutiny by the weakened yet defiant people caused the Captain to put into port at Mendocino Station.  Later the remaining people were marched to Round Valley Reservation near Covelo.  Round Valley Reservation was a concentration camp waiting to be turned into an abbatoir.

Some people escaped the terrible higera and returned to our homeland and spawned our great-grandfathers and great grandmothers who gave birth to our grandfathers and grandmothers.  That generation created the mothers and fathers of those of us surviving today. 

It is said around the campfires in our homeland that some of the people were left on Alcatraz, and those not selected to be exiled to Quapa, Oklahoma, were marched across the Yolla Bolla Widerness Area to Round Valley, many perishing enroute.

Those destined for Oklahoma were placed on rail road flat cars and taken to Needles, California.  At Needles the train picked up more flat cars filled with peaceful Hopis who refused to bear arms for America.  Train lurched eastward.

It is whispered that some of those cast into the winter ocean somehow swam back to Treasure Island, encouraged and led by a bullet hawk “power” that came to them in their time of great need.

 

I often wonder about the people brutally torn from our homeland long ago.  They must have dreamed about returning and of somehow reversing the injury to our homeland and our little nation.

I often wonder who that woman was who defied the army guns, fought her way onto the barge at Red Bluff and proclaimed her love to all of the powers of the universe, to her mottled people huddled there, to all of the military, and to her husband.  I often dream that she was my relation, then I dream dreams proud and filled with love. 

And I often wonder if that young mother, who carried her frozen baby over the winter mountains and into the Sacramento Valley and heard the rifle report on top of the mountain but was afraid to stop and look back, ever dared to have children again.  Somehow I know she did and maybe I am a descendant from her.  Often this possibility makes me cry

Sometimes I, hear that single rifle report on the mountain, see the mother and infant bleeding in the snow, child shot through the head and mother shot through the heart, and thank her for having an older son, Niee Denicee, ten years old, who had a will and a spirit to live and, almost one-hundred years later, give us this oral narrative of his determination to survive.  Of such character are my people.

 

Sul’ma’ejote