Only by Blood and Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom

by LaVoy Finicum

  Chapter 15

  JUSTICE

  Woe unto them … that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

  —Isaiah 5: 20

  February 13th

  Sometime in the early morning hours, I heard the woman stirring. She stepped past my bed and opened the door. A rush of cold air swept inside and then the door closed behind her as she left. The kerosene lamp had been lit and I arose to find my shirt and Under Armor clean and dry. I dressed and then sat at the table with the lamp.

  It was quiet as the baby and Cat were still sleeping. From my saddlebags I took a small Bible. Keeping with tradition and routine, I read silently. I was in the Book of Isaiah on the 24th chapter.

  Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof…The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled….The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate.

  I was no minister, but it looked like our country had just plunged head long into this scripture.

  I was still reading when Sandy came back in with fresh meat. She was dressed in her wrangler jeans. Jeans or a dress, it didn’t matter, she was beautiful. I stopped and watched her as she made breakfast. She cut the meat in small pieces and, while they fried on the stove, she made fry bread dough. Taking a piece of dough, she began flipping it back and forth from hand to hand. The dough quickly flattened out into a round piece ready to be fried.

  I was hungry and my body craved food that was solid and full of calories. The cooking food smelled good and Cathy stirred from her sleep.

  Sandy spoke to me, “Cowboy, you have some nice looking horses but they’ve been ridden hard. They need rest and feed.”

  She was right. I had pushed them hard over the last fourteen days trying to reach my family. The pack horse had been loaded mostly with grain mixed with vegetable oil. It was the most potent feed I could carry for them. It was now gone and they were gaunt and tired. They did need rest and feed.

  “I have some grain and a little hay,” Sandy said. “You may have it. You should let your horses rest a few days.”

  “What about your sheep?” I asked

  She shrugged, “I don’t need it anymore.”

  I looked at the fresh mutton frying in the pan and kicked myself for being slow to make the connection. She had no more sheep.

  “Where is your family?” I asked. Then, thinking of the new graves outside, I kicked myself again.

  “My brother and sister live in Tuba City. My mother and father were killed three days ago. Young men, acting like ‘mighty warriors,’ came riding in here on horses all painted in war paint. They demanded our horse and our sheep. When Father said no, they shot him and Mother.”

  “It doesn’t look like they did all the shooting.” I said looking towards the bullet holes in the door.

  She shrugged again. “I could not stop them. My parents are dead and they took all our livestock. For two days I looked and found only one sheep that they missed.” Then she launched a diatribe against what she saw as the fundamental problem:

  They have no honor, no respect for the old ways. Our people used to be completely self-reliant in the old days before the government came to ‘help us.’ They said we needed to become educated. When my father and grandfather were children they gave the families no choice. They came and took the children to boarding schools for nine months out of every year. Over the years the government became our provider. They gave us free education from head start to college. They gave us free health care from cradle to grave. We used to live in our clans scattered across the reservation. We raised sheep, goats, and cows. We made quality Navajo rugs and silver jewelry. We were not a rich people but our families were strong and we asked help from no one. My grandparents hid my father from the BIA1 agents and did not let them ship my father off to the boarding schools. The old ways stayed strong in our family.

  Putting another piece of fry bread in the pan, she continued, “Our tribe has good and strong people still, but so many look to the government for so much. As a people we still vote for politicians that promise to continue the free housing, food and education. It is hard not to take it. They even tell us it’s our right, it’s owed to us. They say because we were a people that were wronged and stolen from that it is only fair that we be given this stuff. It sounds good, but it makes us dependent and weaker as a people.” With a tinge of sadness she concluded:

  Those men, had they been like the old warriors, they would never have robbed their own. They would not have taken from the old and the women. But, because they were hungry and could not care for themselves, they pretended they were great warriors and, like cowards, they stole from the weaker.

  I sat listening. Seldom did I hear a person speak the way I felt. Her physical beauty was enhanced by the quality of the spirit within her. She was strong. She had values and believed in freedom. So many today did not understand what real freedom was anymore. They did not know that one who depends on another for his daily bread was not free.

  She handed me a piece of fry bread full of savory mutton. It was good and she continued, “You, Cowboy, you’re more like the old ones. Last night you could have taken anything, everything, but you didn’t. You respected me, you respected my home. You have honor.”

  Those green eyes fastened upon me. “Cowboy, may I come with you?”

  This woman had given us shelter, possibly saving my daughter’s life. She had fed us with the last of her food. This she had done, asking for no favors beforehand. She was alone and now bereft of her parents. I was grateful as well as indebted to her.

  “My name is Jake and my home is yours as long as you need, Ma’am.”

  * * *

  We rested two days until the hay was gone. During that time, I took a sheep skin, with the wool fleece still on, and made a pair of crude moccasins. I coated them with tallow to help shed the moisture. They fit nicely over the woman’s tennis shoes. Her feet would now stay warm on the long ride.

  Cathy slept, ate and slept some more.

  My clan was small. Counting Mom and me, plus four kids, a daughter in-law and two grandkids, it made nine. We had lost Mom and I was down to eight. My family was everything to me and I was deeply grateful for the kindness Sandy Yazzie had shown my daughter. Her parents were dead and I felt for the woman’s loss. I had never known mine.

  On the morning of the third day, I packed the rest of the grain and we left. The snowing had stopped and the clouds lifted. The following day, a warmer breeze coming from the southwest carried the clouds away and we welcomed the sun.

  We made good distance each day and on the ninth we were at what is known as the Big Cut, 25 miles south of Page, Arizona. We had traveled cross country to avoid people and had been successful. Those we had seen, we had kept at a safe distance.

  The Big Cut was where Highway 89 dropped over the Vermillion ledges, which ledges stretched for miles and miles, running north and south. There were few places where one could descend over those ledges from the mesa above to the valley below.

  It was a small bottle neck. The big bottle neck was still ten miles further at Marble Canyon. In times like these, any bottle neck was dangerous. In the valley below the Big Cut was the little community of Bitter Springs. Originally, it had been a simple trading post to which the old Navajos had come to barter their rugs and silver-work for staples that they needed.

  The trading post was now long gone. In its place, the government built a community of homes and ran power to it. This brought the people out of their scattered clans into a community that was not self-sustaining. The closest town was Page, 25 miles away, on Highway 89. The closest store was the trading post, ten miles north, at Marble Canyon on Highway 89-A. The bridge that crossed the river at Marble Canyon was the serious bottle neck.

&nb
sp; Bitter Springs had nothing to keep it alive except the water. There was no store, no farms, no gardens, or anything that produced. What few cows that had been grazed locally were surely gone by now. Where would all the people be? Desperate people can do desperate things and that made the distance between the Cut and the bridge at Marble Canyon a high risk region.

  I stopped a mile before the Big Cut. I drew up in a small arroyo that was concealed by some cedar trees. Here I left my small band. Sandy had brought her father’s rifle with the two bullets. Cat had her Remington and I left them with the reminder to stay alert. Carrying my rifle and binoculars, I took off on foot.

  I carefully worked my way towards the cut until I was within a 1000 yards. Keeping myself concealed, I studied the vicinity around the entrance of the cut with my binoculars. It did not take long for me to spot them. There was a camp to the north of the cut. It lay against the mountain hidden between a large sand dune and the face of the ledge. From my position I could see both the camp and the road passing through the slash in the mountain.

  The camp was concealed from the opening of the cut. At the camp, two women were sitting by a fire while a boy gathered firewood. There was a man and he was hidden in the cut itself.

  The Big Cut was a deep narrow gash that had been blasted through the sandstone ridge of the mountain. This is where the road, from the valley below, passed through and topped out on the mesa above.

  My little band of horses and riders must pass through this gap. Halfway down from the top edge of the cut was a bench that formed a step. The top of the cut was wider and then, at the step, it became narrower. The bottom was wide enough for two small lanes.

  It was on the bench that the man sat. I was coming from the east and he was looking west, down the other side of the mountain. He was kneeling behind a boulder that was resting on the edge of the bench and was very intent. I watched as he slowly raised a rifle and pointed it at something beyond my view. Was this a man defending his family or was this someone about to murder an innocent traveler? As I pondered the question, I saw the rifle recoil against the man’s shoulder. The sound of the shot soon followed as it echoed off the ledges.

  In excitement, the man jumped up and ran back along the bench where he was able to descend to the bottom. Still holding his rifle, he disappeared into the cut. Soon thereafter, he reemerged dragging a body by one hand. It was a woman.

  This looked too much like a hunter who had just bagged a deer. He had not dragged the body long when the others showed up from the camp. The four of them soon had the body laid out by the side of their campfire. Like hungry coyotes, they ripped the clothes off and cut off pieces of flesh. They were ravaged with hunger and ate some of the flesh raw while cooking other pieces on sticks. It was sickening.

  Sickened as I was, I was not surprised. I was one of the few who believed these things were coming. It was no more than a repeat of history, a history that was not taught in our public educational system. Nowhere in any high school history course could you find what the starving masses did in Russia when Communism was implemented by Lenin and Stalin.2

  Without a strong core belief or a moral compass that was fixed, starvation drove good people to do the unthinkable. A month ago that man was probably an average ol’ Joe. Was the child at the camp his boy, the woman his wife or mother?

  I watched as our country had raced away from the moral anchors that once were the norm of our society. There were those in our government that had advocated for abortion up to the age of two years. Stating that a child was not self-aware until that age, thus, it was no different than a regular abortion. That argument assumed that there was nothing wrong with regular abortion in the first place.

  If our country could support killing the innocent for convenience sake, why could not a person kill the innocent for the survival of the group? Our world was upside down.

  “What to do now?” I thought to myself. I was angry that an unsuspecting woman had just been murdered and was now being eaten. I wanted to shoot the man. That would be justice, life for life. But justice may have to wait for the Lord to mete it out, for my first responsibility was to my family. But, again, if I did nothing who would be eaten next?

  I returned to Cat and Sandy. I did not want to tell them what I had seen but it was best to be upfront. I told them what I had seen in a short fashion. I watched their faces as I spoke and found it interesting how little effect it had upon them. After the death and killing they had already been part of, this was just one more notch higher in the horrors that were becoming the new normal.

  “What are you going to do, Dad?” Cat asked me. “You can’t let him hurt some other innocent by-passer.”

  “You’re right Cat, we should stop him,” I replied, “but what about the women and the child. The boy looks to be only nine years old. Do we shoot them too? They didn’t kill the woman; they just helped to eat her.”

  She didn’t answer right away and after some thought asked, “I don’t know what the right thing is; what should we do, Dad?”

  “There is no more law enforcement or legal system in which this can be handled.. Innately, a person knows that this is wrong but knowing what to do about it is not so easy. I do not want to kill the man. He probably is the father to the others. If I take his gun and let him live, will hunger drive him to eat his own?”

  Sandy joined in, “Deal with what he has done and not what he might do. He has killed an unsuspecting woman who was traveling alone. It was planned, it was deliberate. That he is a father, that his family was hungry, and that we loathe to shed blood, is all beside the point. There is a place for mercy and there is a place for justice. I believe that this is the place for justice.”

  She was right and that meant if justice was going to be meted out in this life, I would have to do the meting out.

  Evening was drawing on. I resolved to move both justice and my little band forward after dark. We remained in the arroyo and rested until it was dark. In the light of the stars we rode our horses to the point where I had watched the ambush. We could see the glow of the fire not far away.

  “Daughter, wait here and watch with the binoculars. You will be able to see me by the fire once I’m there. When you see me wave my hat, ride on in.

  The snow had been melting all day and it was still above freezing temperature. That was to my advantage, making it much quieter as I stole forward. Taking my time and being careful, I was soon close to the camp. They did not have a dog. Around here, all dogs would have been eaten by now. That was good. Sneaking up on someone with a dog is so much more difficult. Of all their senses, a dog’s sense of smell was the most powerful. Upon the slightest breeze they could pick up the scent of animal in the distance.

  By the light of the fire I could make out the people. Three were sleeping under blankets close to the fire and a young lady was keeping watch. She was sitting; straddle legged, on a log that had one end in the fire. The rifle, which was an old bolt action with iron sights, rested on her lap. She was the watch but the warm fire and full belly were making her sleepy. Her head was resting upon her chest and I simply walked in and took the rifle off her lap.

  Thinking it was one of her group, she was not startled at first. I stepped backwards to the edge of the firelight. They all were easily covered by my Colt AR.

  “Get up,” I demanded clearly and evenly to the ragged band. “Keep your hands where I can see them or I will shoot you.” They all stumbled to their feet.

  “Move to the other side of the fire so I can see you,” was my next directive.

  They did and the light of the fire shone upon their faces. They were a sad lot; unkempt, unwashed and it could be seen that the dead woman was their first full meal in many days.

  Making the signal, I took my hat off and waved it. In a few moments I could hear the horses coming and then they pulled up as they reached the firelight. Cat and Sandy did not get off their horses. The light of the fire made us targets to anyone out in the dark, so I made it quick.


  “Mister,” I spoke to the man. From his features I could tell he was the father to the boy. “I saw you kill the woman that you all have been eating.”

  He was visibly trembling. The boy was clinging to the older woman’s leg. It was his mother.

  “I am willing to let your family live if they swear never to kill a human again in order to eat him.”

  Now addressing the others, I demanded of them, “Do you swear before the heavens to keep that commitment?”

  They were scared and there were nods and mumbles of commitment.

  Turning back to the father, “I am your judge tonight, and” pointing to Cat and Sandy, “they are a jury of your peers. Do you have anything to say?”

  His trembling was too great for the man to remain standing. Falling to his knees, he begged. “My family was hungry. We were starving. Please, please let me live.”

  My heart was torn at the pitiful sight. The barrel of my AR was centered on his chest.

  “Cat, Sandy, is he worthy of death?”

  I did not take my eyes off of the kneeling man. I heard the voice of Sandy, “Yes,” then the voice of Cat, “Yes.”

  I pulled the trigger twice and the man pitched forward. His family, too scared to move, remained frozen silently where they stood. Turning to my horse, I slid my rifle into its scabbard. Opening my saddlebags I took out all the food I had in it. It was not much. I went to Sandy’s and Cat’s horses and did the same. I took the food and set it on a blanket by the fire.

  Taking the bullets from their bolt action rifle, I threw them into the dark. The rifle I threw in the other direction. In sorrow, I looked once more into their forlorn faces then turned away. I took up the reins of my horse, swung into the saddle, and we rode off.

  _____________________

  1. BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, operates under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Before there were sufficient schools and busses, Indian children were forced to attend boarding schools or go into foster homes to meet the government’s demands for their education. This took children away from their parents 3/4ths of the year.