Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  At night she was restless and couldn’t sleep. In order not to disturb us she would leave for long walks, no matter how cold or rainy. She’d return around midnight, e na wi te hi ki ki, or early in the morning, ma ma wi ke ki tte eba.

  Once during our deepest sleep we began dreaming to the babylike wail of a screech owl. Suddenly, the cry changed into her words. Upon waking, we saw her there in the middle of the room, talking to herself about Bent Tree. She eventually woke her up and began addressing her like a stranger on a mature subject.

  “Don’t think about men,” she hissed. “You persist in visiting all over. ‘She likes to visit for the purpose of giggling in front of men’ is what they will say about you. Everyone no doubt believes you are destined to wear a belt of men’s private parts around your waist, a loathsome belt that will accompany you to the Afterlife, for all to take note of your promiscuity.”

  We grew dry-mouthed as we listened from our beds on the floor.

  “This is what will happen to the One Most Afraid, the girl your father lives with. They talk about her. My aunts. She sees other men, collecting still new prizes on her belt. She will wear it into her death and beyond. Do you aspire to be like her? I ni e tti-a ka wa ta ma ni-ni i na te si wa ni? Tell me! A tti mo i no!”

  With eyes wide open, I lay still and smelled the air, hoping to detect the faint sweetness of homemade wine in her breath. There was none. Intoxication, ke skwe bya a te si we ni, would have accounted for her strange behavior.

  At the oddest hour Bent Tree would be told a story about the hideous belt of male genitals, of the brother who punished and killed his married but promiscuous sister for the honor of the family.

  The Wife That Was Slain with a Club by Her Brother

  In the distant past there was once a woman who was promiscuous with men. It was in the summertime, when the people of the tribe were gathered in a single village. It was then that this particular woman had arranged a sexual union with a man who cut a hole in the wall of a bark lodge in order to carry on their secret but dangerous affair. This woman used a cutout piece of bark to cover the hole in the wall so as not to arouse her benevolent husband’s suspicions.

  But before long, the husband somehow found out that his own lodge provided access to his beloved wife. So one night he made a casual suggestion to his wife:

  “I think I am going to sleep next to the wall tonight.”

  As expected, the woman was not in the least willing to exchange places, and she eventually became so distraught, tears streamed down her cheeks, which gave the husband an idea. He decided to stop talking to her in a persuasive manner. After she fell asleep, he carefully lifted and moved her body from the place in question. Finally, he was next to the wall. After a short while, he, too, fell asleep.

  Pretty soon he was nudged by something on his rear. As he was groping in that direction, he took hold of a rather large penis. It was protruding from the hole in the wall. Without forethought he turned around and whacked off the penis in one swing with his knife.

  “I-I-I!” screamed a manly voice on the other side of the bark-lined wall. The husband then proceeded to cut a hole in the penis, and he fastened a string of sinew through it, which was then tied to his sleeping wife’s belt.

  Early in the morning he innocently said to his wife, “Wake up, you should be cooking.”

  Without realizing which side of the bed she awoke on, the woman rose groggily and stoked the cooking fire for the meal. At the same time her elderly father-in-law stirred and sat up in a half daze. The old man edged closer to the warm fire and began smoking tobacco. While she was cooking and sweeping, the old man noticed an object dangling from the woman’s belt.

  “Oh, daughter-in-law,” commented the old man, “there is something unusual about your knife case.”

  At that precise moment the woman’s eyes fell upon the so-called “knife case.” She promptly screamed out in horror and disbelief. She raced out of the lodge to dispose of the detached penis.

  Elsewhere that morning a lifeless man was discovered. He was sprawled out on the doorway of his lodge. He had died on account of having his penis cut off. A path of blood was trailed back to the exact place where the man had met his ghastly fate.

  And when the woman’s brother heard of the astounding news, he set out to confront her for the shame she had brought to the family and clan. From outside her husband’s lodge the brother asked his sister to join him. As soon as she came outside and into the clearing, she was heaten to death with a cluh by her brother. After the brother did what was expected of him as the closest kin, he went home and told his little sister to go sweep the bed of their former sisters abode.

  “After you have finished,” the brother added, “I want you to stay there. Permanently. Do not return here ever again.”

  The young girl then went and swept the sleeping place of her older but deceased sister. After she finished, she sat down as commanded by her brother and took the man that had been her sisters husband for her own. For as long as they lived she had him for a husband, even until his death, which was after he had become an old man.

  And as for her, she was held in fond affection, even when she had become an old woman. Everyone knew she and her husband cared deeply for each other. In no way whatsoever did they ill-treat each other, nor was there any talk of the original circumstances that brought them together. Because of his love for his wife, the man never had aspirations to be unfaithful. All this during the full course of their happy lives.

  This is a revised version of an excerpt from Fox Texts by William Jones.

  Remnants of the First Earth

  On the outskirts of town one day, on old Lincoln Highway 30, a billboard sign that was repainted yearly became readable at long last for Alan and myself. In huge frontier-style lettering, next to a side-profile silhouette of a big-nosed Indian man, the sign read “WHY CHEER: HOME OF THE WHY CHEER INDIANS.” Thanks to Weeping Willow, we had somehow learned to read English. We rarely spoke it, though, for there was a lesson after all from Pat “Dirty” Red Hat’s famous misinterpretation of the word “but.” And Hayward Muscatine’s becoming “Grubby” forever due to a soiled wiener was another fateful lesson. Mistakes would be made, and they inadvertently became fodder for stories.

  Over the table our uncles would enjoy retelling the story of Mateo Water Runner, our ingenuous cousin, who told a Weeping Willow Elementary teacher he had accidentally swallowed the gum when asked to spit it out.

  “Mateo, what are you chewing?” the teacher had demanded.

  “Teacher, ne be tti-ko-o ma-a-a-a, I accidentally swallo-o-wed i-i-it,” Mateo had replied in Indian, emphasizing and elongating the last two syllables in an English-type pronunciation. The vocal elongation of the last syllable, my uncles theorized, was the sound the wad of gum made on its way down Mateo’s throat.

  There was adventure, humor, risk, and fear of humiliation through verbal usage of the English language. Grandmother, like most Weeping Willow students, knew enough English to get by. She had to because of her Why Cheer Laundry and Dry Cleaners employment. Enunciating the language made her uncomfortable, but she could deliver words in a fake cheerful voice if she went to a restaurant for lunch or to the bank. “Hello-o-o, good-bye, th-h-hank you” were the easiest. Ordering food wasn’t too bad either, provided she had one of three memorized choices: eggs, bacon, and coffee; hamburger with pickles and coffee; or hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. At the bank downtown, where before she had gesticulated and made facial expressions if an idea wasn’t communicated, she knew how to say: “Can I cash this check? Here? Me work. Dry Cleaners! Wash and iron clothes every day. Oh, than-n-nk you ve-ry much, my good frien-n-nd!”

  Having recorded Grandmother’s entries in the Six Grandfathers’ Journals since childhood, I knew she was embittered by all that she witnessed transpiring around her. At the most importune time when she was peeling potatoes in the kitchen or cutting out floral designs from brown grocery bag paper with scissors, she broke dow
n suddenly and wept for all the difficulties humanity had undergone. Her emotional surges came down from the hills, like invisible whirlwinds, demolishing the small house’s tranquility. If I wasn’t hiding behind the door, I stood beside her, not understanding what depressed her so.

  At the Why Cheer Laundry and Dry Cleaners, though, with her small arm swinging down the huge, padded steam press, she was calm and detached. Being so involved with the operation of the hissing machines, ironing the slacks, sheets, and shirts of the white people, maybe she didn’t think about these extraordinary changes. In giant vats the detergent bubbled and churned eight hours a day while the pulleys on the second floor squeaked under the bouncing load of suits and dresses on hangers. It was a bustling business; for the few minutes I visited, the burnt-smelling steam would cling to my nostrils for hours. Eventually I became inured to its flurry of sights and sounds. It was always a thrill to push or pull a laundry trolley for Grandmother from the back room to the front. At her station she’d wipe the sweat from her eyebrows with a bandana and begin the tedious task of sorting the mountain of clothing.

  “If you want to make something of yourself, Grandson,” she’d say at home over supper, “you will need to find better things to do than this. Don’t do like what I am doing.” She would talk about my grandfather, Jack Principal Bear, and the commitment he gave the railroad. “Whatever the weather condition he worked in order so that we would have food, clothes, and a place to live. But he never forgot about the Sacred Chieftain blood that coursed through his physical-ity.” She would emphasize that Grandfather, a good provider, felt the tribe had been irreversibly swayed by the white man’s novelties and way of life. “Everything starts over again,” she’d say, “for this, all this we see outside the window stretched before us, is the Second Earth.” I looked past the frosted glass and beyond the silhouetted trees on the hilly horizon, peering into the rose-spotted clouds. In the proper frame of mind, I saw the First Earth as a fireball and then a vast ocean previous to the Black Eagle Child Creation. “Anything that we do here,” she continued, “our successes and failures, have all been done before by the Supernaturals.” I came to understand that in emulating their previous lives, through the instructions given in the Principal Religion, the Black Eagle Child people were reenacting Remnants of the First Earth. In this reenactment was found a continuation, a strengthening in a largely unpredictable cosmos.

  There was good here, just as there was bad.

  From Grandmother I learned that Jack Principal, my grandfather, accepted fate, but in his prayers he asked the Well-Known Twin Brother to keep the worst imaginable catastrophes away from the Settlement. Undaunted by the inner and external forces that had excluded his own grandfather from leadership, he donned his spiked shoes on the iciest mornings and punched in for work. In open Chicago-Northwestern boxcars he sat with grubby-looking white men, traveling noisily down the lonely tracks in search of a passenger train caught in a snowdrift.

  “That’s the example you must follow,” Grandmother urged. “To keep on improving your life, no matter how horrible the circumstances.” She also taught me to see and remember the past and how it should reflect as clearly as a mirror in the present and future. Through her teachings and the Six Grandfathers’ Journals I learned about the hereditary chieftainship of my uncles, Winston and Severt Principal Bear. For whatever purpose and not being conscious yet that they were family members, I memorized the names of Earthlodge clan people who had prevented them from reclaiming their divine Black Eagle Child decision-making roles.

  “We are looking for prophecy in its early stages,” Grandmother would forewarn. “It is all around us. The people themselves, those who reside here with us, are the initial messengers. By their actions we are witnessing the beginnings of what had been said would happen by our grandparents and theirs before;...”

  From fourth grade on, I heard Grandmother say I had been selected to be the next caretaker, e ka wa ba ta ka, of the historic but badly tattered documents called the Six Grandfathers’ Journals. It wasn’t even a revelation. From serious and encouraging looks received at the family dining table I was aware steps had been taken to strengthen my Black Eagle Child language and writing skills. For the most part, I was probably too young to comprehend the enormity of what Grandmother told me to write or read.

  Among the twenty-two dusty notebooks, ledgers, and deerhide boxes of rolled parchment kept by six of my maternal Sacred Chieftain grandfathers, my own entry writing, beginning in 1958, consisted mostly of Grandmother’s thoughts on the state of tribal affairs. Even if I didn’t fully embrace what she was dictating, my sole purpose was to listen, break down the separate vowels, and transcribe the sounds heard. Utilizing the English alphabet, as we had been taught by early French explorers in the 1600$ around the Green Bay (Wisconsin) area, we wrote the entries in the Six Grandfathers’ Journals phonetically.

  While the Black Eagle Child people used oral tradition as the main vehicle for keeping our stories, prayers, and philosophies intact, our forefathers made extensive use of quill, ink, and writing material. This “word-collecting” task, due to its precarious nature, was relegated to the O ki ma wa ki, or Sacred Chieftains. Since writing was deemed too powerful for most people, my grandfathers—through their living divinity status—were the primary word-collectors, ma ji to ji ki-ka na wi ye ni. Crucial history-altering information that would have otherwise been dismissed as inconsequential was recorded forever on ribbon-held rolls of parchment. In some ways the rolls resembled the sacred mats of the Earthlodge clans that were inscribed with pictographs. Beside some of the elaborate black and red line paintings on the boxes are the names of my grandfathers, going back through time: 1832. 1801. 1787. 1754.

  No ko me se ma meant (my) Grandmother, and Ne me tto e ma, (my) Grandfather. Ne hi for water. A sko te wi for fire. A ki for the ground or earth. Wi ske no for bird. Ne me sa for fish. Ma ka te Ke ti wa A he no, or Black Eagle Child proper, which was my fifth grandfathers name, became our tribal namesake. This was a popular second or third name for the Brown-Spotted and Black-Bobtailed Bear clans. Both of my grandfathers, on my mother’s and fathers side, owned this name, the reason being that when they were infants their families sensed they were dissatisfied with the one name they were given at birth. In tribal society, infants who have not yet walked or talked are considered to be attuned to their surroundings. If there was a family matter they disagreed with, the infants had the means to make their feelings known. Overall, though, multiple names meant the person was destined for notoriety—or unyielding rancor. In the case of both grandfathers, the issuing of additional names seemed warranted.

  Undeniably, I often felt insecure about being the journals’ caretaker, e ka ba wa ba ta ka, but these feelings would subside whenever I recalled that throughout childhood I was told that my life had been prearranged. “Yes, it is true, E he i, ke te na me ko,” lectured the family repeatedly, “your life is prearranged, ki tti se ta te wi-ki ya wi.”

  At Weeping Willow Elementary, however, my classmates got a kick out of my stubbornness in completing assignments. They also took delight in my ability to share personal stuff about my family. Trying to be like Pat Red Hat got me in trouble; I finally had to curb my speeches and was forced to apologize with my mother present to the teachers for speaking in Black Eagle Child. By then this gift for stories, which was nurtured in playacting, learning words, and just living, had become uncontrollable. An unwanted, overcooked stew. Given my childhood passion for wild, artistic expressions, I resorted to developing imaginary characters when I couldn’t discuss what was most accessible, my own family’s antics. Imitating the storytellers I had heard and seen, I would also unfurl the anecdotes written in tribal syllables and read them aloud, once the teachers left the classroom. That’s the point where the meteors collided.

  Being a child prevented me from fully understanding what my Six Grandfathers wrote, for the most part. All that was required of me back then was that I read their works aloud or write ne
w words. Today, at midlife, I still cannot grasp the minutiae of what they discussed and pondered without going back to the actual manuscripts themselves.

  Contained in the withered pages of the twenty-two manuscripts are insights and commentary on a vast array of subjects, including military tactics, how a village should be constructed and fortified with timber, and the ordering of the respective clans, their warriors, as they protected the sanctuary. There are also references to lists in other journals of which types of food can be stored the longest, as well as what could be harvested from the wild in times of war, like roots, berries, and nuts for nourishment and medicine. Detailed in the page margins are the plants and trees themselves and where they grow along the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. There are also thorough explanations for each decision the Sacred Chieftains made with regard to whether or not to declare war on our adversaries, who carried different-colored flags. Also included are the accompanying Earth-lodge clan wartime ceremonies and their specific songs. In earlier journals the various battles of victory and defeat are chronicled. The passages that most intrigued Grandmother—and later myself—were those that confirmed how we would succumb to the vices of the greater world around us. Instructions were given to the Sacred Chieftains on how to prevent this cultural atrophy. But Grandmother would emphasize after each reading that prophecy in its rawest form was fatalistic, that whatever was slated would indeed transpire as the manifestation of undeniable truth.

  Weeping Willow Elementary was a perfect example. By law it existed. “That about said it all!” as Carson Two Red Foot used to conclude his wide-ranging stories. Unchallenged acceptance of white culture would be another. Even before we were born we were hopelessly ensnared in a web comprised of dazzling beams of history-bending light.