Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  THe Black Eagle Child Settlement

  The Black Eagle Child Settlement, with a twelve hundred-plus populace, is located near the small rural communities of Why Cheer and Gladwood, Iowa. When people ask me where I am from, I usually say Why Cheer. Which is sometimes unsettling because a majority of people either will have no idea where I’m from or will think I’m making up the name of the town as a joke. Sometimes I really can’t help but chuckle along. It’s an unusual name—and rightly so.

  The fact is, Why Cheer is a small white town—five miles to our east—where we frequently shop for groceries, household goods, and clothes. Remarkably, some of lis graduated from high school there. It also happens to be our postal mailing address. But neither the tribe nor myself, with the exception perhaps of four or five tribal-affiliated families, live in Why Cheer. Since the town has no unique identity of its own other than supposedly being the “BIRTHPLACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY,” Why Cheer and its white citizens are viciously jealous of the Black Eagle Child Settlement’s notoriety. Out of curiosity, academic or otherwise, visitors in multitudes are drawn by our ancient Woodlands tribal culture. As a result, our white neighbors feel excluded. That’s why they deliberately misinform visitors by referring to the Settlement as the “Why Cheer Indian Reservation.” Sometimes they will even give wrong directions, and our potential friends never find us.

  This is an insult.

  But for years the Twintowns (Why Cheer and Gladwood) Chamber of Commerce printed “HOME OF THE WHY CHEER INDIANS” on postcards they made, sold, and distributed. It was extremely embarrassing. The subjects photographed were not even Black Eagle Child. They were local whites in hideous black braided wigs, potato sack dresses, and scraggly chicken feathers, resembling Hollywood extras.

  What purpose this served no one quite knows.

  Was it simply an ignorant marketing practice or was it mockery? There are war paint suspicions. The irony is, these controversial postcards first issued in 1928 have since become collector’s pieces. And so it surprises people, Iowans generally, when I explain that whoever first called our tribal homeland a “reservation” made an unforgivable mistake. When people realize they are accessories to an error, they listen. Of course, in making these corrections, I take every opportunity to plug several facts: (1) that we own the land; (2) that it wasn’t allotted by the government; (3) that Why Cheer “depends on the Settlement’s reputation”; and (4) that if Why Cheer had any worth, the tribe would buy the town just for the sake of changing its name.

  Why Cheer. If nothing else, it’s my mailing address.

  The lone gravel road of the Black Eagle Child Settlement, “Rural Route 2,” winds through the main valley, where 126 tribal families reside. In the summertime this is an immaculate woodland jungle, with green shimmering leaves, the echo of children’s laughter, and the scent of wild purple flowers everywhere; in the winter elegant frost hangs on the dark, skeletal outline of trees, and your breath, as you exhale, drifts skyward to join breakaway pieces of clouds that dash across the glistening prairies.

  At night the sounds are plentiful. If it isn’t crickets, distant whippoorwills, or barking neighborhood dogs, it is the mournful cry of a wintry blast of wind piercing the clattering pine trees. Of course, at two precise hours at sunup and sundown, the vehicular traffic on the main gravel road comes alive as the Black Eagle Child Casino workers head for the complex whose doors never close.

  The houses, as has always been the case, sit a quarter of a mile or more from each other. There is no overwhelming evidence to signify that an economic boom is taking place. In Why Cheer and Gladwood, however, the white business types have helped themselves to loans from the banks stocked with tribal monies to bring new hotels and restaurants to the area. Those who have hated us in the Twin-towns hate us even more now in thinking we are rich.

  You would think that remarkable projects to benefit the tribal community, backed by casino coffers, might have taken root, spewing forth dozens of marvelous structures—houses, a fire and police station, a library or a museum, a tribal hospital, or even a school with a professional, competent staff.

  But that isn’t the case.

  The houses here are merely functional. Some structures that were built in the early 1900s are still occupied by families who are loyal to houses they grew to adulthood in. Only recently, in the last twenty-five years, have new units been built under federal housing programs. To accommodate water lines and sewer drainages, the tribe began clustering these new houses into residential zones. “Candlestick Park” was the first such zone. It was so named due to faulty wire installation; whenever thunderstorms rolled over the Black Eagle Child Settlement, these poorly constructed houses were the first to sit in darkness, lit only by candles. They were intended only to meet the temporary needs of a tribe; it wasn’t long before they became useless. Water lines froze and foundations under the bathrooms molded and gave way. Some houses had to be totally rebuilt.

  Today, depending on who you are in the community—it’s better to be a family, clan member, or friend—you can apply for a new house. If you are not a political adversary, you will probably receive one. The only trouble being, quick large-scale prefab housing solutions become old recurring problems. Your house is guaranteed to rot in twenty-five years. People say we are fast becoming a part of modern society, but we have yet to learn about housing contracts and substandard building materials.

  Although there are twenty gambling enterprises within the state, the Black Eagle Child Tribal Council has made a stupid business decision to expand the casino, pumping thirty to sixty million dollars into a new gigantic structure on top of the ten million dollars already invested. All in an effort to “stay competitive.”

  Corruption has haunted the casino from the start. The strange thing about this is that some of the tribal leaders involved in the casino trade serve as clan priest apprentices. Black Eagle Child prophecy warns against money. And they should know this. Yet they act like money-hungry piranhas on a wild feeding foray, In the shredded frogskin cloud, the quarterly per capita remains are doled out to the tribe “like table scraps intended for mutts.” Betrayed and aware these illegalities can lead to more trouble, the elders hoard money. Their pillows and mattresses have secret seams for huge wedges of multi-denominational currency. There is a real fear this is only the beginning of what surely has to be the end.

  The fact that interaction with the greater American public is required for the casino to operate runs counter to the isolationist objectives espoused by our founding grandfathers. The reason they chose isolation from the Outside World was so that the Principal Religion would be practiced by each succeeding generation without fail. But today the very people who wave the banners of religion are the very people who don t consult the Earthlodge clan elders on critical issues that pertain to the welfare and future of the tribe. Novelties, like gambling, are introduced without tribal consensus, without the input of the elders. In the skies, in the water, and under the earth, so say these cast-aside elders, there is dissension—because of this act of forgetfulness—among the Supernaturals who control all earthly matters.

  Because of its tightly enclosed valleys, evening begins early on the Black Eagle Child Settlement. Conversely, after the sun has illuminated the surrounding countryside, darkness also lingers a bit longer here in the morning. Because of this factor, traditional-minded parents are quick to warn children sternly of the risks of remaining or going outside during these intervals. There’s a long-established belief that witches make use of the concavities of darkness just before sunup or just after sundown, even with the pervasive casino traffic, to render their animal or bird disguises more believable.

  The landscape is thus used as part of a subterfuge.

  If there is turmoil seething among the people, their disruptive situation is exploited by the opportunistic witches as a means to enact their practice. During the smallpox outbreak of the late 1800s, for instance, witches were said to gather en masse like hunchbac
k buzzards near the geodesic dome-shaped lodges to await death.

  It is no different today, say the Earthlodge clan elders. A century later witches continue to strengthen their own immortality by preying on Black Eagle Child victims of the casino enterprise. There is turmoil through political infighting for monetary control. In another sphere, among the lifelong alcoholics, the quarterly per capita payments from casino profits merely hasten the rot of livers. Among youth and restless adults there is a craving for a thimble-full of crystal-ized substance that keeps them awake and delusional for two weeks at a stretch.

  The casino money that flows like a strong creek, cascading through the hands and bodies of those who are near it, causes a sickness called greed. In this sickness our spiritual and physical defense against tangible and intangible forces is compromised. From the sky or water or underground, a message is forthcoming.

  Just as the history of this tribal homeland is different, the Black Eagle Child people themselves are supposedly “entrenched” in what self-annointed scholars call “beliefs that are detrimental to their overall community progress.” If you could include in that judgment an animistic worldview that prophesies an earthly demise upon the loss of our identity due to the white-complexioned people, obliterating forever the compact we made with the Well-Known Twin Brother, then there would be room for plausibility. Native Americans possess a blood-borne knack for understanding the machinations of unexplained phenomena. It is an ancient form of knowledge left behind by the Supernaturals to remind us of a dualistic existence. Accordingly, there is daylight or darkness, sunshine or moonlight.

  From high along the sandy ridges of Rolling Head Valley, Ridge Road, Cottonwood and O’Ryan’s Hills, including Liquid Lake, to the farthest fence line of the tribal South Farm, with Lone Ranger, Half Moon Beach, and Onion Creek nestled somewhere in between, this land strives to provide a sanctuary. Its geographical face has not changed much, but the generations of people who came and left took with them parts of our god-given thoughts, practices, and beliefs. In losing these we became vulnerable. Among the believers and nonbe-lievers of the Principal Religion there were sorcerers who thrived on turmoil as a means of unleashing their destruction. The cross fire between fate and sorcery of the Black Eagle Child Settlement, if it could be seen, would resemble a night sky lit up with tracer fire from antiaircraft artillery.

  I refer to the Black Eagle Child Settlement as an “earth-island.” We are its passengers, the only ones, and we are on a perilous journey. Yet, depending on a variety of factors, like microdegrees of assimilation, some of us are truly aware of destination, while others are totally oblivious. Some of us, thinking we have successfully straddled religion and modern tribal bureaucracy, end up being ultrahypocrites. Major transgressions in real life are committed openly against tribal precepts, business ethics, and religion itself. When you are more of a danger to our future than an asset, something is wrong. We are told this sanctuary was founded through divine means; we are also reminded that if we are not careful, we can lose it. Even those who seem well-intentioned do not realize they, too—perhaps more than the nonbelievers—are responsible for directing culturally debilitating fire to the tribe itself. Crippled and set ablaze by these disarming forces from within, all of us are responsible for the piecemeal deterioration of the Black Eagle Child Nation. It is a wonder that this bird aegis, this scuttled, smoldering “earth-island,” has been left alone high atop a cottonwood perch, sewing its wounds back together and mending itself. The biggest question now is, How long before we falter—and do ourselves in?

  From any of the cardinal points, the hills of the Settlement seem to form a single geographic edifice. In all, though, there are eight elongated hills that form the basic layout of our heavily wooded tribal homeland. They generally lie in a southeast-to-northwest configuration, snaking along the Iowa River and quitting at the confluence where the Iowa merges with the Swanroot River. When seen from the south the flat riverbottoms of the Settlement begin where the hills end, stretching westward until the first ridge of Runners Bluff begins. Going toward the east the last hill abruptly stops and gently evens out on a long sloping hill where Why Cheer sits. Toward the north the two uppermost ridges of four hills and their valleys stand out against the open sky. From a landmark there known as Sand Hill, all that can be seen when one faces south is Runner s Bluff disappearing in the distance past the valley of two rivers.

  Because of these two rivers, the Swanroot and the Iowa, a good portion of the Settlement lies over the grassy prairies and thickets of floodplains. For half a century, before the infamous U.S. Corps of Engineers alighted on the scene, the Earthlodge clans constructed their respective longhouses beside the rivers near areas that were believed to be the mystical doorways to the realm of the underworld.

  Recalling these special places, if only by threads of memory, through songs, dances, and prayers was crucial. Long ago the clans had access to the Supernaturals, and they even made visits to gain their wisdom and advice. No one knows who made the last visit, but those who knew about the doorways kept it a secret. Everyone knew the Supernaturals used the hillside springs as doorways, and others burrowed beside or under where the two rivers came together on the southeasterly tip of the Black Eagle Child Settlement. At sundown they would emerge from the tree-silhouetted horizon like shooting stars, crisscrossing the sky.

  Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, whatever knowledge of the doorways remained slipped away in the clouded memories of our clan elders, the secret-keepers. In time the sons of the secret-keepers would rationalize in the course of their sermons to their believers that “exact locations are not important.” What mattered was the overall intent for communion. “As long as we are in the general vicinity of the doorways,” the sons would say upon delivery of offerings to nonsites, “the Supernaturals will know. ...”

  No one, of course, disagreed.

  What is one to say when told a major transgression has already occurred? What is one to say when told we have already begun to forget? We were told that losing the doorways would be only one among the many transgressions forthcoming. It was a simple eventuality, a sign of a greater nonhuman spirit at work, the elders conveyed. They knew this earth-carrying knowledge was fast disappearing; they also felt our chances at salvation were next to nil if there was no one present to listen and to learn. Thus our piety was measured.

  It was blatantly evident.

  Through the polity that subjugated us, we had splintered apart into factions. Political groups who had nothing but good intentions for the tribe became self-defeating entities. As we fought with tribal members and our families over control of the tribe’s future, young people were struck down around us like innocent passersby in a gangland-style shoot-out. Sparks in the night sent real lead bullets, and witchcraft spells turned into trains, plowing into unsuspecting lives.

  From this tragic series of events storytellers and their stories were made. Each succeeding Black Eagle Child generation for hundreds of years encountered different obstacles. Modernity came to us in different forms; the early versions brought forth war, disease, famine, and undreamt-of atrocities. Invariably, our plights became our legacy. In instances where survival was the outcome, songs and ceremonies were said to come from the Creator Himself. Stories were retained for the purpose of instructing others. Through the retelling of our suffering, it was hoped lessons could be learned.

  Among the most notable tribal storytellers was Carson Two Red Foot, my grandmothers adopted brother. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but a bottle of sweet Ambrose wine was “helpful” he’d say in dislodging all that he had experienced. “That is, if you want to hear it,” he’d always remind his visitors. Born in 1896, Carson was said to be the last person who knew where the Supernaturals’ doorways were located along the mossy riverfronts.

  From 1971 to 1975, three to four times a year, I would take a fifth of Ambrose in a brown paper bag to Carson. Sometimes I took cigarettes too. His stories were of great interest to m
e. Blessed in the sense that he possessed an astonishing memory, Carson was long thought to be the person who knew the secret of tribal immortality. But my sole purpose was to ask him about the One Most Afraid. I was fascinated by this story of a young enchantress who stole Carson’s father from his family in 1908, a story replete with romance, witchcraft, and an unsolved murder. Years later my grandmother would reflect that Carson’s mother was thought to be the person responsible for the One Most Afraid’s death.

  Carson Two Red Foot told stories the old way. Meaning you didn’t realize until a day or even a week later the meaningful revelations he had shared with you. He knew stories told by his grandparent’s grandparents, and he recited them as if they had occurred only the day before. In an epoch where others barely remembered their histories, he could relive past lives and events. His recollections were numerous and unparalleled. Unmarried, Carson Two Red Foot lived by himself in a one-room house on stilts along the desolate river-bottoms. Attired in a skull-snug New York Yankees baseball cap, dark green khaki pants, a wool shirt, and a large baggy sweater, Carson always welcomed his visitors with wide, quick smiles, excessive handshaking, and a Charlie Chaplinish gait. If he knew you were there exclusively for his stories, he would start touching his dark brown face until he felt the blue-green mole with his left hand. He had a small, gentle face, and so the mole stood out over his lower left cheek beside his pudgy nose. Out of habit he’d touch it once or twice as if to confirm the intent, to send an electrical message to the story’s light source somewhere behind his wrinkled but sparkling eyes. Before his discourse on our family histories or on the reason why he would never divulge the doorways’ location, he’d raise a speckled coffee cup to his thin mouth. After a long, audible drink, he’d pull the brim of the baseball cap downward and begin thinking. Then he’d hold his frail, sweater-covered arms together, trembling slightly from the gathering cold.