Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  In the first memory of my life my grandfather went on to sweep me off the sunlit floor and place me on his knees; I can still visualize his face and his large brown hands on my infant arms. In the second memory of my life he stood precariously over a well-trodden path; his two sons, my uncles, and their cousin stood under his weak arms as they walked into the thickets. In the third memory of my life he was suddenly made to be no longer, and another person, a living person, was chosen to stand as his replacement.

  And in the fourth memory of my life, wearing imitation cowboy-type clothing, I stood on a dusty path where grandfather had stood and watched a shooting star explode right over the house and the yard. As the glittering sparks floated down into the green, whispering garden, I saw myself in them. Bits of meteor. Black discarded pieces of charcoal that first had to be nurtured and brought into total being. This I can now see resulted from the love of four women: my mother, my grandmother, my wife, Selene, and Grandmother Earth herself.

  With such a strong tether to both personal and family history, there should be an utter sense of regard for this house now clad with white aluminum siding. In a way there is. Regrettably, it isn’t enough to compel me to take action, to serve its present occupants a notice to vacate. Were it not for the fact that the house still provides shelter,I’d make an effort to declare it a house of historic significance, for it truly is. For me at least. But I can only look and ponder from afar. I remember everything. ...

  On hot sunny days you could clearly see and feel with your open hand the elaborate texturing of the yellow knots on the wooden siding. And if per chance the box elder bugs didn’t surface from underneath the slabs, disturbing the scene, I perceived the knots as an odd assortment of reflections of the sun preserved in gray, cracking wood. These you could look at without hurting the eyes.

  Ghostly sensory images from the 1950s are stirred up in research like sediment in a translucent creek. As the muddy clouds billow and expand underwater, a return is facilitated to my first years at the Weeping Willow Elementary School: how I whimpered in protest at the staff feeding me a horrid mudlike substance called “chocolate pudding” on top of the nauseating purple liquid of “beets,” how I sat later that evening on the hardened dirt floor of a priest’s lodge with giant wedges of sturgeon fish in fresh green bean soup, relishing the moment, the invitation to eat.

  If knocking memory ajar proves to be difficult, I rely on a musty-smelling collection of visual aids. Old photographs and newspaper clippings. On occasion, along with listening to early rock and roll music, the family photograph album is inspirational. Without pause or objection the mind agrees to play back certain events by way of the sun’s color and intensity.

  In remembrance of experiences with modernity itself, aside from elementary school, there was a dark blue 1932 Ford we had that transported us to the Why Cheer Theater. This was another historic place where I first rubbed elbows with Selene Buffalo Husband, my wife-to-be. From popular Mattel toy firearms and Daisy Red Ryder BB guns, I advanced to a Remington bolt-action tube-fed .22 caliber rifle with a peep sight. And Log Cabin, the maple syrup that came in a tin container shaped and painted like a miniature log cabin, was a delight but a mess at the family table. There was also a 35 mm camera my uncles borrowed from Howard Courting, their cousin. In terms of electricity we were the last family to get hooked up in 1957. For one summer, through a boy who was about to be orphaned, we had a black-and-white television set. The person who owned the TV was the boy s uncle, Billy “Cracker” Jack. Witnessing Saturday morning cartoons for the first time was to relive visually the myths told by Grandmother. As a result perhaps of watching my two young uncles scratch pictographs on the darkened ceiling, like twin Michelangelos, I found anything visual important. Later, this transcended into a penchant for art forms that included wood carving, painting in mixed media, photography, and filmmaking. The color photographs I took in 1967 with Uncle Severt’s Petri camera, the 35 mm model he brought back from South Vietnam, bear astonishing witness to this interest. I was sixteen.

  In Bureau of Tribal Affairs birth and medical records I am listed as “Edgar Principal Bear” via my mother Clotelde’s maiden name. My father, Tony Bearchild, was nonexistent then. Evidently, due to differing political beliefs, there was disapproval of their Montague and Capulet-like romance from both sides of the family.

  At least that’s what I have been told.

  In any case, there is something Shakespearean-intriguing about how I was born into a Principal Bear family as opposed to being written legitimately into existence as a Bearchild. It has never bothered me per se. Yet the subject has managed to surface in matters that pertain to family, clan, and tribal obligation via religion. As on that day on the octagon-shaped merry-go-round at Weeping Willow Elementary when the question of my fathers occupation was posed, it throws me into an abyss. Every time. Of course, there’s a possibility Romeo was used far too much as an excuse. My father’s absence was just exactly that. Whatever reasoning he went by, it pointed to something having gone askew. In not being there he was simply un-missed. There was no basis on which to base an emotion. Does that make sense? No basis on which to base an emotion? Selene who is listening from her beadworking studio as I read this section aloud says that’s a harsh indictment. It isn’t meant to be. My father, Tony, and I are merely two different people. I could never be like him as a Bear clan leader nor could he ever be like me as a writer. Influenced and guided by opposing factors, we remain two different people in two different worlds. He will always be my mother’s love, however. For me, he remains the man who came after me at the small unpainted house one afternoon. Together, in his Mercury Coupe, we went to the Heijen Medical Center to await the birth of Dan, my second younger brother. Afterward, I stayed with him while he went out drinking at the tribal fairgrounds. Along with his friends and relatives, with a twelve-pack of beer each among them, we sat high atop the bleachers, whooping war cries and gossiping in the clear blue moonlight. That morning we went to his home and fed the geese. ...

  But like I said, there was this phase in which I subscribed to the belief that being fatherless was the sole reason why I was remiss with the Earthlodge clan ceremonies. Today I am inclined to believe that’s not the case, for others without fathers or tribal enrollment status have aptly demonstrated that anyone can become a clan priest apprentice. Which ostensibly weakens my defense. It has to be a question of priorities, then.

  And what about the fatherless, unenrolled mixed-bloods who excel in roles full-bloods should have followed? There’s no humiliation quite like the kind religious mixed-bloods serve, outshining us cop-outs with copious amounts of ceremonial bedazzlement. Their presence in Black Eagle Child society has prophetic dimensions; I am in awe of such talent. Yet, at the same time, I theorize that their religious commitment is based in part on a desire to become “accepted” as tribal members.

  So a question arises: What would prevent the mixed-bloods from becoming just as remiss as me after being accepted? In their being where they presently are, “in limbo,” not accepted as legitimate tribal members but crucial to the Principal Religion’s continuation, aren’t the life-years of the earthlodge ceremonies indirectly extended?

  Above all this, though, is the proverbial comeback for anyone who thinks he can detach himself from involvement: What is my purpose as a Black Eagle Child tribal member? What have I done to prolong life-years of a tribal religion? While there probably ain’t a damned thing wrong with me, I always end up asking halfheartedly: Have I been irresponsible? Whit are my priorities? Centuries of history could be blamed, but it’s simpler to plead guilty. In the Cosmic Earthlodge Tribunal I would ndt contest the charge of forgetfulness. My rationale is, it is merely a part of “eventuality.”

  Ironically, in an indirect way my being aloof probably began with the Six Grandfathers’ Journals. My introduction to Black Eagle Child society and the general workings of the greater world itself came by way of my grandmother dictating her entries to these j
ournals. Beside the kerosene lamp, with my small elbows on the kitchen table, I wrote down her thoughts and ideas replete with politics, religion, family, and our social condition. I became so adept at taking notes that I began jotting down my own observations that had nothing to do with our impoverished plight, like “drinking the orange skylight” from a Ne-Hi pop bottle.

  In addition to this star-crossed genesis—I can only postulate— there were two beliefs that led to my becoming a “word-collector”: From my mother’s side were the conservatives, and from my father’s side were the progressives. It is an ongoing tale of a bitter entanglement between two families, within the same Bear clan, and how they contributed to or impeded the destiny of the tribe itself.

  It was in 1856 that my maternal great-great-grandfather, who was a Sacred Chieftain named Bear King, or Principal Bear, orchestrated the Black Eagle Child tribe’s return and subsequent purchase of the first acreages in central Iowa. When the famous chief died in 1890, the untimely rape and murder of a young woman named Dorothy Black Heron interrupted the proper transference of the chieftainship to his son. Simultaneously, the Earthlodge clan elders in an unprecedented decision felt Bear King’s son was too young to assume the hereditary reign as a bloodline leader. Which was odd because Bear King himself was but a boy when he brought the tribe to Iowa.

  What had really been at stake was the direction of the Black Eagle Child Nation. Should we go forward or back? was the question asked. Sensing an opening through our confusion, the white politicians of Why Cheer and Gladwood contrived a ploy that would irreversibly assimilate the tribe deeper into the American mainstream. When they learned Dorothy Black Heron’s murder had been committed allegedly by my paternal great-great-grandfather, Bearchild’s elderly father, history was forever changed: They blackmailed Bearchild, a noted translator, into becoming a “federally recognized chief.” Alcohol, you could say, brought education onto our land and right into our lodges. Although Bearchild was not a traditional bloodline chief, the shrewd white politicians made him into one. There was little choice, and even less so when his father vomited a night’s worth of homemade wine at the dreadful crime scene: his moccasin tracks matched the ones left at the sandy thickets.

  In exchange for his fathers freedom, Bearchild, as an unauthorized tribal representative, signed education into law. And alcohol was the root problem. This wasn’t anything new. Since white man immemorial, alcohol has been hazardous for all tribal groups on the North American continent. In fact, there wouldn’t be a state of Iowa if it hadn’t been for intoxicants. They were used to coerce two lost Black Eagle Child hunters, who were made out to be our leaders, into signing away territorial rights to Illinois and Iowa. It was easier for everyone to ignore that Dorothy Black Heron had been raped and murdered—had ever existed—like a possession that is irretrievable.

  Bearchild saw some benefits to his role as a federally appointed chief. For one, and the most obvious, there was his elderly father’s life. Would you squeal on your own father? Probably not. Second, a fancy-sounding title was more appealing than the translator job Bearchild had held with the tribe, reading documents that only a lawyer should have read. Third, five hundred dollars a year for allowing the government to establish a school on tribal land probably didn’t seem like a bad deal. This “cultural disfiguring” would have happened, anyway, so say our mixed-blood tribal historians. But Luciano Bearchild, my first cousin, used to say that being educated meant one was nursed with misinformation and therefore history-blind, implying that “our self-proclaimed historians were accessories” in the cover-up of the “Heron, Dorothy Black” atrocity. Her suffocation made the dormant creature named Education breathe its revolting breath. . . .

  From the twisted carnage of the Principal Bear and Bearchild family histories, in which political betrayal permeated and dictated the lives of all concerned, there arose “Edgar Principal Bear,” who later became “Edgar Bearchild.” Up until seventh grade at Doetingham Junior High School in Suntour, Iowa, I signed my last name “Principal Bear.” When my mother and father began living together in 1961, I was told to change my last name to “Bearchild.” Upon the arrival of a younger brother, Dan, the Bearchild name was consecrated for Alan and myself.

  Mrs. OToole, the former Weeping Willow teacher who followed me shadowlike to junior high, called me “Ed P. Bear” with certain delight during student roll call.

  “You mean Bearchild,” I said after she made the daily put-down.

  “No, I mean you, Ed P. Bear!” Mrs. OToole returned with a snap.

  “That’s not my name anymore,” I returned, standing my ground. The heads of the students who sat around me dropped at my stupidity.

  “This sheet lists all of the students’ names!” she shouted. “Today and for eternity it says you’re—”

  “Bearchild!” I interjected. “That’s my name now, Mrs. O’Toole. The paper and what it says, that can be changed. The same way you changed Principal Bear to ‘P. Bear.’“

  Mrs. O’Toole, who still harbored feelings of resentment for being fired from Weeping Willow, marched down the aisle like a high-goose-stepping Nazi soldier. In her long gray apparel and a helmetlike hairdo, she stood over me with a blunt little staff. Looking up I saw that her left eye twitched and she was biting the inside of her lower lip raw. “No! That cannot be changed!” she protested. “Simply because you say so, you impertinent little—”

  “Excuse me, sir!” said Luciano Bearchild, my first cousin, from the hallway. In his pinstriped pants, vest, and white shirt, Luciano leaned against the inside door, giving a James Deanesque pose. An unlit cigarette wobbled from his mouth as he spoke again. “Sir, I don’t mean to intrude, really, but could you tell me where the men’s room is?”

  Mrs. O’Toole, looking more inflamed, spun on her toes and looked directly at the unexpected and well-dressed visitor. Luciano, in an effort to provoke a response, slung his suit coat over his shoulder and took two steps into the classroom. He stood in an area where the morning sun reflected off his jewelry, blinding us.

  “For your information, young man, my name is Mrs. O’Toole. Mrs. Can you hear? It’s Mrs. And what are you doing here?”

  “Well, oh . . . that’s my mistake, thinking you were a man. My apologies. But with regard to the young man there, he told you his name is Bearchild. Respect his wish. As for my visit, it has to do with my inquiry. Good day.”

  Whatever the reason, Mrs. O’Toole partially respected my wish for a last-name change. Later on that month, when she learned I had been selected by mistake to submit a piece to the Twintowns Chronicles student writers’ section, she saw to it that my first poem was published under the “Child Edgar Bear” name.

  In eighth grade, when white classmates began to know who I was, they recalled how I was “Ed P. Bear” one month and then “Child Edgar Bear” the next. They also recalled Luciano Bearchild with his sparkling jewelry and his unbuttoned shirt, but when I told them he was my cousin, no one believed me. Anyone who switched names in one day was suspect, they explained. But like the Black Eagle Child boys at Weeping Willow Elementary who didn’t harass me with regard to my father’s occupation, the whites never pressed the name-switching issue. In one day’s time I became someone else. . . .

  On my father’s side of the family there were two sisters, Lydia and Agnes; their father, Thomas; and three brothers, Henry, Alfred, and William, the latter being a half brother. They all had families, large ones. Coming into their family ten years too late, I didn’t know anyone with the exception of Luciano Bearchild, my first cousin, and William Listener, my father’s half brother who was a respected Earthlodge clan leader.

  Right up until the fifth grade at Weeping Willow I thought the only cousins I had were from my mother’s half brother, Clifford Water Runner, a diligent railroad worker and part-time farmer. They were Mae Lynn, Sue Lynn, Lynn Lynn, and Mateo. Their cheerful mother was Grace. In their pink 1954 Ford Victoria convertible they would visit Grandmother on weekends, or else we’
d accompany them to town. Packed into a stylish-looking car we’d cruise into Why Cheer with the top down. Brown, smiling faces in a pink car rumbling down Main Street of a small farming town wasn’t an everyday occurrence. For years I didn’t know the convertible was only a test-drive situation, from a white car dealer who was a close friend of Clifford’s.

  Anyway, Luciano Bearchild proved the most captivating of my Bearchild relations. That day at Doetingham Junior High in 1964 when a well-dressed angel from the surreal hinterland came into Mrs. O’Toole’s homeroom and intervened on my behalf was the second time we met. Strange, I never knew what Luciano was doing there or whether he found the rest room. Our first meeting took place four years previous in the starlit hills above Liquid Lake. He rescued everyone—six boys in all—who were on an all night camp-out. My mother’s brother, Severt Principal Bear, published a memorable account of this event, “Unearthly Manifestations,” in the Black Eagle Child Quarterly. That summer Luciano took me on a powwow trip to Montana near the Rocky Mountains.

  After Luciano Bearchild, the most intriguing of my Bearchild family was my father s half brother, William Listener; he could invoke invisible deities through the remnant soup in wooden bowls that held the sacrament. Both of these people—Luciano and William— made me realize that there were things far greater than my capacity for understanding. If Luciano hadn’t disappeared, taking food offerings and material goods to the hills as instructed above Liquid Lake in 1966, he most certainly would have become like our half uncle, blessed and powerful.