Songs of the Dead

by Derrick Jensen

  I think, for that matter, about the “ugly episode” that gave Hangman Valley its name. Before Colonel Wright arrived in Spokane, Hangman Valley and the creek that runs through it were known as Latah, which means in the native tongue stream where little fish are caught. Soon after the battle near the Spokane River, soon after Colonel Wright and his men hanged a chief who had come under a flag of truce, soon after Colonel Wright and his men slaughtered the horses, Colonel Wright sent a note to the Yakima warrior Qualchan, saying once again he wanted to talk about peace. Qualchan’s father Owhi responded. He was, of course, put in chains. Qualchan came in after his father. Still believing that a flag of truce might mean something, he brought along his wife. Qualchan was immediately put in chains and taken to a tent. His wife describes what happened next: “We were waiting for developments when in a moment, two soldiers entered the tent from behind where we were sitting, grasped my husband about the head and shoulders, threw him on his back and bound him with cords. I tried to cut one soldier with my knife, but another one kicked the knife out of my hand and then a great number of soldiers crowded in, overpowered us, and we were at their mercy. I thought then that the worst that could happen would be a few months’ imprisonment, and you may imagine my consternation when I saw that they were making preparations to hang my husband. I first thought it was a huge joke, but when I saw the deliberateness of their preparations, the fullness of their treachery and cowardice became apparent.” Qualchan first tried to go for a revolver he had hidden under a blanket, but did not succeed. Then he tried to bite the hand of the man who put a noose around his neck. In that, too, he did not succeed. After that Qualchan called upon the spirits of the mist, and twice the rope by which he was to be hanged broke. The third time he was killed. Qualchan’s brother Lo-kout was also there. He was also tied. He was also to be hanged. He heard a voice say in his native language: “Jump on your horse and flee or you are a dead man.” Another Indian cut the ropes that bound him, and he jumped on Qualchan’s horse and rode for the mountains.

  As Wright noted in his report to headquarters: “Qualchew came to me at 9 o’clock this morning, and at 9 1/4 a.m. he was hung.” The next day Wright similarly hanged six Palouse Indians. He was a hero.

  A few years ago the city of Spokane decided to put a golf course in Hangman Valley. The golf course is named Qualchan.

  I know why the author of The Barbarian Conversion didn’t provide examples of such “ugly episodes”: to do so would undercut his thesis of the “conversion” of the indigenous of Europe, just as today similar presentations of “ugly episodes” (perhaps those including cluster bombs, napalm, nerve gas, machine guns, imprisonment, sensory deprivation, torture, dispossession with consequent mass starvation, and so on) would undercut the thesis of the “conversion” of people everywhere to capitalism, the most recent name of the God of civilization, the cannibal God.

  That’s why I’m disappointed.

  At this point—given our near-total inability to face who we are and what we have become—my disappointment more likely stems from stupidity than optimism. Come to think of it, at this point—given that this culture is killing the planet—any sort of eternal optimism is probably inseparable from stupidity.

  I return to the other book, read more, and despite the author’s prejudices, I start to get more and more excited. I start to get blown away. Why? Miracles. The book is full of descriptions of miracles. And I understand: just as Hitler and through him the Nazi government experienced numerous miraculous escapes from death and dissolution, and just as the conquest of the Americas (and the consequent founding of the United States) required such good fortune that even George Washington noted in his first inaugural address, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency,” so, too, the conquest of Europe— the conversion of the barbarians—required countless miracles.

  What if these miracles were real?

  They’re everywhere. Martin, bishop of Tours, had demolished a pagan temple and was getting ready to cut down a sacred tree. The people to whom the tree was sacred challenged him to stand directly where the tree would fall. He did. The tree screamed the scream of dying trees—you can hear it if you listen, and sometimes even if you don’t—and began its arc toward him. He made the sign of the cross, and the tree fell to one side. The hagiographer Sulpicius related what happened next: “Then indeed a shout went up to heaven as the pagans gasped at the miracle, and all with one accord acclaimed the name of Christ; you may be sure that on that day salvation came to that region. Indeed, there was hardly anyone in that vast multitude of pagans who did not ask for the imposition of hands, abandoning his heathenish ways and making profession of faith in the Lord Jesus.” That was from only one miracle. Another: A young man named Aquilinus was hunting with his father when he suffered a seizure and fell into a coma. His relatives recognized immediately that he had been put under a spell by some enemy. They called a local healer, who was able to do nothing. The boy’s griefstricken parents brought him to the shrine of St. Martin, where he recovered. There was the hermit Caluppa, who, cornered by a brace of dragons, put them to flight by making the sign of the cross (although one dragon did fart defiantly before leaving). Amandus raised a hanged man from the dead, and “when this miracle was diffused far and wide, the inhabitants of the region rushed to Amandus and humbly begged that he would make them Christians.” Emilian cured the blindness of the slave-girl of a senator, exorcised demons from the slave of a count, cured the paralysis of a woman who had traveled great distances to see him, and through the sign of the cross cured the swollen belly of the monk Armentarius. Miracles were almost as important as the sword in “converting” the indigenous of Europe. As Fletcher put it, “Like it or not, this is what our sources tell us over and over again. Demonstrations of the power of the Christian God meant conversion. Miracles, wonders, exorcisms, temple-torching and shrine-smashing were in themselves acts of evangelization.”

  Now, I know that history is written by the victors. I know how easy it is to scoff at farting dragons and the exorcism of demons. But I also know that there exists something called audience consideration. If your audience expects miracles to take the form of dragons, the curing of swollen bellies, and safety from falling trees, then this is the sort of miracle you—as God—should and probably would provide. If your audience expects miracles to take the form of fog or smallpox or moonlight reflecting white off sandy beaches on the very last night possible (what if it had been cloudy or had there been no moon on October 12, 1492?), then this is the sort you should provide. And I know as well that the most powerful dictator is the one who need not show himself openly, one whose omnipotence is assumed and internalized, metabolized into the very being of the subjects until they no longer recognize the dictator’s existence at all. A dictator on the way up may need to wow by turning away dragons. One already ensconced has the luxury of using fog.

  Over the next few weeks I returned many times to where Nika was struck, but only fell through time once. I did not fall back, but slightly forward, and saw to my delight that at least in the short term neither bears nor wétikos had knocked down the apple trees. The trees were tall, perhaps twenty years old, and beautiful pink apples hung plump from branches dangling low over the ground and over the stream. As I watched, an apple fell into the water and bobbed its way past.

  I’m sitting by Latah Creek with Allison. The salmon are running. I cannot see the bottom of the stream for the fish. Even this little stream roars with the slapping of their tails against the water. I am happy, and of course sad.

  “This,” I say, “is a miracle.”

  I fall through time, see something not so miraculous, unless perhaps from the perspective of God. I’m sitting by Latah Creek. There is no life. No trees. No grasses. No shrubs.
No fish. No flies. No gnats. No insects at all. The water still flows, though over rocks free of algae. The sun still shines. I cannot believe it is the same sun. I cannot believe it is the same water. Maybe it is not. The stream is as dead as everything else, though its body still flows.

  I know what I’m seeing. I’m seeing the future. I’m seeing the end point of this culture. I’m seeing the final victory of God.

  The director comes to me in a dream. I do not see him. I see the demons. I see millions of them. They are not feeding. They are standing. They are talking among themselves. They are waiting. And mainly they are watching. I do not know what they are watching. I do know the intensity on their faces as they look from where they are to where they will soon be.

  I know what they are waiting for. They are waiting for the director to let them move forward, to let them cross over to where they will feed, to let them loose upon the humans of this world.

  I don’t know whom to ask for help. But I keep thinking about a line I read in The Barbarian Conversion, that one of the church’s necessary tasks was to cause people to stop relying on the assistance of their dead ancestors and to rely instead on God. That shift, I think, is everything. For a place-based people the dead and the land become increasingly intermingled. That this is true physically should be obvious. But it is just as true spiritually, emotionally, and experientially, insofar as there is a difference. A reliance on the dead thus means a reliance on the land. No people who rely on the dead—who rely on the land—could destroy the land, could disrespect both the land and the dead the way we do.

  In order for God to enlist people to help Him destroy the life that terrifies Him—to help Him create stasis—it is imperative for Him to get them to transfer their loyalty from the dead and the soil over to Him and His timeless, placeless, changeless heaven.

  It became clear to me, then, that I would need to reverse the process my more recent ancestors had undergone when they converted from land-based religions to Christianity. I would try to speak to my ancestors. But it would have to be my long-dead ancestors, not the more recent ones. The more recent ones were, after all, wétikos themselves, and thus wouldn’t be able to tell me anything about deep relationships to land, time, or much of anything.

  Years ago, long before I’d written any books, I got this strange idea that I could gain some wisdom by interviewing my elders. So I went to old folks homes. The project didn’t last long, because I realized quickly that for the elders to be able to impart wisdom to me they had to have some in the first place. The gaining of wisdom, I realized, is no accident, nor is it something that comes inevitably with age.

  Years later, I asked American Indian writer Vine Deloria what, in the Indian perspective, is the ultimate goal of life.

  He said, “Maturity . . .”

  “By which you mean. . .”

  “The ability to reflect on the ordinary things of life and discover both their real meaning and the proper way to understand them when they appear in our lives.

  “Now, I know this sounds as abstract as anything ever said by a Western scientist or philosopher, but within the context of Indian experience, it isn’t abstract at all. Maturity in this context is a reflective situation that suggests a lifetime of experience, as a person travels from information to knowledge to wisdom. A person gathers information, and as it accumulates and achieves a sort of critical mass, patterns of interpretation and explanation begin to appear. This is where Western science aborts the process to derive its ‘laws,’ and assumes that the products of its own mind are inherent to the structure of the universe. But American Indians allow the process to continue, because premature analysis gives incomplete understanding. When we reach a very old age, or have the capacity to reflect and meditate on our experiences, or more often have the goal revealed to us in visions, we begin to understand how the intensity of experience, the particularity of individuality, and the rationality of the cycles of nature all relate to each other. That state is maturity, and seems to produce wisdom.”

  I didn’t know any of this back when I was visiting old folks’ homes. All I knew was that I was interviewing elders who, to be honest, didn’t have much wisdom to offer me, probably because they themselves had never made the effort to gain it.

  So I wanted to contact my ancestors who lived before their conversion to Christianity, with its consequent destruction of their relationship to the land and to their ancestors.

  I faced a problem: I had absolutely no idea how to talk to my ancestors. Do I light two candles and stare into a mirror until my eyes blur and I see the faces of those who came before? Do I hire a medium? Do I ask for dreams?

  I asked for dreams. Nothing. I looked at the stars and asked. Nothing. I sat beneath trees and asked. Nothing. I held soil in my hands and asked. Nothing. My only hint of anything, and I’m sure this was simply a projection on my part, was a faint voice saying, “I can’t hear you very well. You’re too far away.”

  Projection or not, what the voice said was true. My ancestors, the ones whose blood mingled for generations with the same soil, are a half a world away, in Europe, too far away to be able—at least with my inexperience—to help me.

  For several weeks I saw snakes everywhere I went. Live ones. Dead ones. Big ones. Under my feet. Lying stretched across a path. A tiny one who crawled into the track of a sliding glass door. Everywhere. I didn’t know what to make of it.

  And then I saw mice. Just as often. I saw them clinging to tall grasses with their back legs, reaching out with front legs to eat the seeds from other stalks. I saw them dead on the ground. I saw them scampering. Everywhere. Live ones. Dead ones. Big ones. Tiny ones. I didn’t know what to make of that either.

  I accidentally killed a snake. I was writing, and I got a strong urge to go plant some potatoes. There was no reason. It was August, meaning they wouldn’t be ready before winter. But the potatoes were soft and sprouting beneath the kitchen sink, and I didn’t want to just throw them away. I may as well let them feel the soil, feel the sun, before they die. And if I planted them deep enough, they might survive to come up next spring.

  So I took them outside, picked up the shovel, walked to a semi-random place. I was about to dig when I got the urge to move a few feet over. Then I got the urge to move again. Then I got the urge to turn ninety degrees. I stopped, waited. This was the place. I waited again. This was definitely the place. I pushed the point of the shovel through the tall grass, touched it to the ground, stepped on it, pushed hard, and suddenly the grass erupted in a frenzy of movement: a thin thrashing cord of brown and yellow with a red and fleshy end. I had cut a garter snake in half. I looked more closely. The cut was high enough he would surely die. I crushed his head to stop his suffering.

  The next day I saved a snake. Allison was driving. I was in the passenger seat. I saw two crows trying to kill a snake on the sidewalk in front of a hospital. They lunged. He struck at them. They flew a few feet in the air. He moved away from them. They lunged again. He struck again. They flew again. He moved away again. I realized they were driving him into traffic. They were going to have a car kill him, then pick up his body.

  I don’t normally interfere with predator/prey interactions. The crows need to eat as surely as does the snake. But the timing seemed too significant. I asked Allison to pull over. She did. I whipped off my shirt, threw it over the snake, bundled it back up, and got in the car. We drove home. I let the snake loose.

  That night Allison said, “You know what that was, right?”

  “A snake,” I said. “replacing the one I killed.”

  “Two snakes.”

  “I only killed one.”

  “But there were two,” she said. “And what else?”

  “Birds.”

  “Where did we find the snake?”

  “On the road.”

  “In front of what?”

  “A hospital.”

  I rubbed my face.

  She said, “We have snakes, we have wings. All we need’s a ro
d.”

  “I killed him with a shovel.”

  “There’s your rod. That completes it.”

  I shook my head.

  “A caduceus,” she said.

  I shook my head again.

  “Two snakes twining around a rod, with wings at the top.”

  “I’ve seen those,” I say.

  “It’s the rod of Hermes. He’s the messenger for the gods, creator of magical incantations, and conductor of the dead.”

  At one point I might have stared at her open-mouthed, both because she knows this stuff, and because it happened at all. But I’ve long ceased being amazed at what she knows, and so far as the latter, well, the rose on the man’s chest, the demons, the dead horses, and Nika have all combined to make me at least slightly less susceptible to shock at such things.

  She smiled, and even she would have to admit she was the tiniest bit smug at having put this together.

  To temper the smugness I said, “But where does the hospital fit in? You made a point of that, and Hermes has nothing to do with hospitals.”

  She smiled the smile of someone doing a check raise in poker, and said, “At least in this country, the rod of Hermes is commonly mistaken for the rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and medicine (and of healing dreams). Asclepius’s wand isn’t winged, and has only one serpent, but most people don’t know that. It’s entered our consciousness enough, I think, for it to become a symbol.”

  What she said made sense.

  She continued, “In the Hermetic tradition, the caduceus is a symbol of spiritual awakening. It’s also a symbol in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, where it’s always a symbol of harmony and balance.”

  “So what does all this mean?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she said. “Ask the snakes.”