Living by the Word

by Alice Walker

  Even on a practical level, killing this small, no doubt bewildered and disoriented creature made poor sense, because throughout the summer snakes just like it regularly visited the garden (and deer, by the way, ate all the tomatoes), so that it appeared to me that the little snake I killed was always with me. Occasionally a very large mama or papa snake wandered into the cabin yard, as if to let me know its child had been murdered, and it knew who was responsible for it.

  These garden snakes, said my neighbors, are harmless; they eat mice and other pests that invade the garden. In this respect, they are even helpful to humans. And yet, I am still afraid of them, because that is how I was taught to be. Deep in the psyche of most of us there is this fear—and long ago, I do not doubt, in the psyche of ancient peoples, there was a similar fear of trees. And of course a fear of other human beings, for that is where all fear of natural things leads us: to fear of ourselves, fear of each other, and fear even of the spirit of the Universe, because out of fear we often greet its outrageousness with murder.

  That fall, they say, the last of the bison herds was slaughtered by the Wasichus.** I can remember when the bison were so many that they could not be counted, but more and more Wasichus came to kill them until there were only heaps of bones scattered where they used to be. The Wasichus did not kill them to eat; they killed them for the metal that makes them crazy, and they took only the hides to sell. Sometimes they did not even take the hides, only the tongues; and I have heard that fire-boats came down the Missouri River loaded with dried bison tongues. You can see that the men who did this were crazy. Sometimes they did not even take the tongues; they just killed and killed because they liked to do that. When we hunted bison, we killed only what we needed. And when there was nothing left but heaps of bones, the Wasichus came and gathered up even the bones and sold them.

  —BLACK ELK SPEAKS***

  In this way, the Wasichus starved the Indians into submission, and forced them to live on impoverished “reservations” in their own land. Like the little snake in my garden, many of the Indians returned again and again to their ancient homes and hunting grounds, only to be driven off with greater and greater brutality until they were broken or killed.

  The Wasichus in Washington who ordered the slaughter of bison and Indian and those on the prairies who did the deed are frequently thought of, by some of us, as “fathers of our country,” along with the Indian killers and slave owners Washington and Jefferson and the like.

  Yet what “father” would needlessly exterminate any of his children?

  Are not the “fathers,” rather, those Native Americans, those “wild Indians” like Black Elk, who said, “It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit”?

  Indeed, America, the country, acts so badly, so much like a spoiled adolescent boy, because it has never acknowledged the “fathers” that existed before the “fathers” of its own creation. It has been led instead—in every period of its brief and troubled history—by someone who might be called Younger Brother (after the character in E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, set in turn-of-the-century America), who occasionally blunders into good and useful deeds, but on the whole never escapes from the white Victorian house of racist and sexist repression, puritanism, and greed.

  The Wasichu speaks, in all his U.S. history books, of “opening up virgin lands.” Yet there were people living here, on “Turtle Island,” as the Indians called it, for thousands of years; but living so gently on the land that to Wasichu eyes it looked untouched. Yes, it was “still,” as they wrote over and over again, with lust, “virginal.” If it were a bride, the Wasichus would have permitted it to wear a white dress. For centuries on end Native Americans lived on the land, making love to it through worship and praise, without once raping or defiling it. The Wasichus—who might have chosen to imitate the Indians, but didn’t because to them the Indians were savages—have been raping and defiling it since the day they came. It is ironic to think that if the Indians who were here then “discovered” America as it is now, they would find little reason to want to stay. This is a fabulous land, not because it is a country, but because it is soaked in so many years of love. And though the Native Americans fought as much as any other people among themselves (much to their loss!), never did they fight against the earth, which they correctly perceived as their mother, or against their father, the sky, now thought of mainly as “outer space,” where primarily bigger and “better” wars have a projected future.

  The Wasichus may be fathers of the country, but the Native Americans, the Indians, are the parents (“guardians,” as they’ve always said they are) of the land.**** And, in my opinion, as Earthling above all, we must get to know these parents “from our mother’s side” before it is too late. It has been proved that the land can exist without the country—and be better for it; it has not been proved (though some space enthusiasts appear to think so) that the country can exist without the land. And the land is being killed.

  Sometimes when I teach, I try to help my students understand what it must feel like to be a slave. Not many of them can go to South Africa and ask the black people enslaved by the Wasichus there, or visit the migrant-labor camps kept hidden from their neighborhoods, so we talk about slavery as it existed in America, a little over a hundred years ago. One day I asked if any of them felt they had been treated “like dirt.” No; many of them felt they had been treated badly at some time in their lives (they were largely middle class and white) but no one felt he or she had been treated like dirt. Yet what pollution you breathe, I pointed out, which the atmosphere also breathes; what a vast number of poisons you eat with your food, which the Earth has eaten just before you. How unexpectedly many of you will fall ill and die from cancer because the very ground on which you build your homes will be carcinogenic. As the Earth is treated “like dirt”—its dignity demeaned by wanton dumpings of lethal materials all across its proud face and in its crystal seas—so are we all treated.

  Some of us have become used to thinking that woman is the nigger of the world, that a person of color is the nigger of the world, that a poor person is the nigger of the world. But, in truth, Earth itself has become the nigger of the world. It is perceived, ironically, as other, alien, evil, and threatening by those who are finding they cannot draw a healthful breath without its cooperation. While the Earth is poisoned, everything it supports is poisoned. While the Earth is enslaved, none of us is free. While the Earth is “a nigger,” it has no choice but to think of us all as Wasichus. While it is “treated like dirt,” so are we.

  In this time, when human life—because of human greed, avarice, ignorance, and fear—hangs by a thread, it is of disarmament that every thoughtful person thinks; for regardless of whether we all agree that we deserve to live, or not, as a species, most of us have the desire. But disarmament must also occur in the heart and in the spirit. We must absolutely reject the way of the Wasichu that we are so disastrously traveling, the way that respects most (above nature, obviously above life itself, above even the spirit of the Universe) the “metal that makes men crazy.” The United States, the country, has no doubt damned its soul because of how it has treated others, and if it is true that we reap what we sow, as a country we have only to recognize the poison inside us as the poison we forced others to drink. But the land is innocent. It is still Turtle Island, and more connected to the rest of the Universe than to the United States government. It is beginning to throw up the poisons it has been forced to drink, and we must help it by letting go of our own; for until it is healthy and well, we cannot be.

  Our primary connection is to the Earth, our mother and father; regardless of who “owns” pieces and parts, we, as sister and brother beings to the “four-leggeds (and the fishes) and the wings of the air,” share the whole. No one should be permitted to buy a part of our Earth to dump po
isons in, just as we would not sell one of our legs to be used as a trash can.

  Many of us are afraid to abandon the way of the Wasichu because we have become addicted to his way of death. The Wasichu has promised us so many good things, and has actually delivered several. But “progress,” once claimed by the present chief of the Wasichus to be their “most important product,” has meant hunger, misery, enslavement, unemployment, and worse to millions of people on the globe. The many time-saving devices we have become addicted to, because of our “progress,” have freed us to watch endless reruns of commercials, sitcoms, and murders.

  Our thoughts must be on how to restore to the Earth its dignity as a living being; how to stop raping and plundering it as a matter of course. We must begin to develop the consciousness that everything has equal rights because existence itself is equal. In other words, we are all here: trees, people, snakes, alike. We must realize that even tiny insects in the South American jungle know how to make plastic, for instance; they have simply chosen not to cover the Earth with it. The Wasichu’s uniqueness is not his ability to “think” and “invent”—from the evidence, almost everything does this in some fashion or other—it is his profound unnaturalness. His lack of harmony with other peoples and places, and with the very environment to which he owes his life.

  In James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, collected between 1887 and 1890, he relates many interesting practices of the original inhabitants of this land, among them the custom of asking pardon of slain or offended animals. And in writing about the needless murder of the snake who inhabited our garden—the snake’s and mine— I ask its pardon and, in the telling of its death, hope to save the lives of many of its kin.

  The missionary Washburn [says Mooney] tells how among the Cherokees of Arkansas, he was once riding along, accompanied by an Indian on foot, when they discovered a poisonous snake coiled beside the path. “I observed Blanket turned aside to avoid the serpent, but made no sign of attack, and I requested the interpreter to get down and kill it. He did so, and I then inquired of Blanket why he did not kill the serpent. He answered, ‘I never kill snakes and so snakes never kill me.’ ”

  The trader Henry [Mooney observes elsewhere] tells of similar behavior among the Objibwa of Lake Superior in 1764. While gathering wood he was startled by a sudden rattle…“I no sooner saw the snake, than I hastened to the canoe, in order to procure my gun; but, the Indians observing what I was doing, inquired the occasion, and being informed, begged me to desist. At the same time, they followed me to the spot, with their pipes and tobacco pouches in their hands. On returning, I found the snake still coiled.

  “The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by turns, and calling it their grandfather, but yet keeping at some distance. During this part of the ceremony, they filled their pipes; and now each blew the smoke toward the snake, who, as it appeared to me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining coiled, and receiving incense, for the space of half an hour, it stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humor. Its length was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open the heart of Sir William Johnson (the British Indian Agent, whom they were about to visit) so that he might show them charity, and fill their canoe with rum. One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no notice of the insult which had been offered by the Englishman, who would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offense. They further requested, that he would remain, and inhabit their country, and not return among the English…”

  What makes this remarkable tale more so is that the “bite” of the Englishman’s rum was to afflict the Indians far more severely than the bite of any tremendous number of poisonous snakes.

  That the Indians were often sexist, prone to war, humanly flawed, I do not dispute. It is their light step upon the Earth that I admire and would have us emulate. The new way to exist on the Earth may well be the ancient way of the steadfast lovers of this particular land. No one has better appreciated Earth than the Native American. Whereas to the Wasichus only the white male attains full human status, everything to the Indian was a relative. Everything was a human being.

  As I finish writing this, I notice a large spider sleeping underneath my desk. It does not look like me. It is a different size. But that it loves life as I do, I have no doubt. It is something to think about as I study its many strange but oddly beautiful dozen or so legs, its glowing coral-and-amber coloring, its thick web, whose intricate pattern I would never be able to duplicate. Imagine building your house from your own spit!

  In its modesty, its fine artistry and self-respecting competency, is it not like some gay, independent person many of us have known? Perhaps a rule for permissible murder should be that beyond feeding and clothing and sheltering ourselves, even abundantly, we should be allowed to destroy only what we ourselves can re-create. We cannot re-create this world. We cannot re-create “wilderness.” We cannot even, truly, re-create ourselves. Only our behavior can we re-create, or create anew.

  Hear me, four quarters of the world—a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you…

  Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

  —BLACK ELK SPEAKS

  Note

  The Onondagas are the “Keepers of the Fire” of the Six Nation Confederacy in New York state. The Confederacy (originally composed of five nations) is perhaps the oldest democratic union of nations in the Western world, dating back roughly to the time of the Magna Carta. It is governed under an ancient set of principles known as the “Gayaneshakgowa,” or Great Law of Peace, which in written form is the constitution of the Six Nation Confederacy.

  This remarkable document contains what well may have been the first detailed pronouncements on democratic popular elections, the consent of the governed, the need to monitor and approve the behavior of governmental leaders, the importance of public opinion, the rights of women, guarantees of free speech and religion, and the equitable distribution of wealth.

  Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson acknowledged in the mid-18th century that their own ideas for a democratic confederacy were based largely on what they had learned from the Six Nations. A century later Friedrich Engels paid a similar tribute to the Great Law of Peace while making his contribution to the theory of Marxism.

  —Jon Stewart, Pacific News Service

  * Vancouver: Press Gang, 1981.

  ** Wasichu was a term used by the Oglala Sioux to designate the white man, but it had no reference to the color of his skin. It means: He who takes the fat. It is possible to be white and not a Wasichu or to be a Wasichu and not white. In the United States, historically speaking, Wasichus of color have usually been in the employ of the military, which is the essence of Wasichu. By John G. Neihardt (New York: William Morrow, 1932)

  ***By JohnG.Neihardt (New York: William Morrow, 1932.)

  ****Though much of what we know of our Indian ancestors concerns the male, it is good to remember who produced him; that women in some tribes were shamans, could vote, and among the Onondaga still elect the men who lead the tribe. And, inasmuch as “women’s work” has always involved cleaning up after the young, as well as teaching them principles by which to live, we have our Indian female parent to thank for her care, of Turtle Island, as well as the better documented male who took her instructions so utterly to heart.

/>   “NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE”:

  THE MOVE MASSACRE

  Under questioning by commission members, Mr. Goode said he thought he managed the crisis well with the information he had at the time. But he said that he realized in retrospect that his subordinates had not given him enough data to make proper decisions, such as dropping a bomb on the MOVE house. He was first asked for permission, which he granted, to use the device 17 minutes before it was dropped from a helicopter…Mr. Goode also said that Mr. Sambor had violated his order not to involve police officers in the assault who might hold what the Mayor called a “grudge” from participating in a confrontation with the radical group at another MOVE house in 1978. Several officers involved in that siege participated in the assault this year. [My italics.]

  —NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 16, 1985

  One of two people known to have survived an inferno that killed 11 people said that police gunfire drove fleeing members of the radical group MOVE back into their blazing house in the May 13 confrontation with police…

  —NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 31, 1985

  [Detective] Stephenson’s log also gives a gruesome glimpse of just what kind of deaths MOVE was forced to endure. Excerpts of entries concerning the search for bodies revealed, “15:35—The body of a female was recovered 10 feet from rear door, 8 feet from west wall. On her foot, left, was a black Chinese slipper and was lying on her right side facing the rear wall. No other clothing…head and chest appeared to be crushed, can’t recall hair—all photographed.