Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  We know ourselves more than they do. So much so there’s no need to incite arguments. Three times the Well-Known Twin Brother’s blessing—escaping the enemy in a flag war with the summoned aid of inclement weather—saved us. The sad thing is, even luck has limitations; resilience is costly. We became adept, you could say, in hiding and making up for most of what we lost. The lives and events that somehow slipped through the protective netting and fell into the wide, sweeping waters of an invisible ocean called eventuality were an additional expenditure.

  Lulled into believing we were highly spiritual, we perpetrated a major transgression by making our prophecies less important, condoning laxness and setting aside ancient forecasts. Maybe there were too many a te so ta ka na ni, winter stories, and a ji mo na ni stories, to keep track of. Once armed with a strength that made us rush about like fervent summer wind, bending the highest cottonwood trees, we lost our momentum, and our children fell into a chasm of imminent change.

  In this fatalistic consciousness, religion faltered, and some of our Earthlodge clan leaders took on the oddball persona of television evangelists. They sinned and forgave themselves in public until their followers were inured to the abuse. And our culture, that amazing matrix of ideas and self-worth, curled up over the cool concrete floor and never woke.

  Enter the mixed-blood tribal historians.

  “When mixed-bloods, a he ta we si a ki, begin misinterpreting history and forget they are visitors,” say the Six Grandfathers’ Journals, “they are an indelible part of genocide itself.” Our history, according to their library research, wandered out from the green majestic forest and walked onto the hazy road only to be struck down by traffic. Dumbstruck by portent and mystified still by this once-noble, brain-fat animal, we were doomed travelers from day one, so to speak. According to them, we stood in awe of this overturned carcass, inhaling its utter lifelessness until our mouths dried and so forth.

  That perception is wrong, though. So state the Six Grandfathers. Our history on occasion has had the eminence to wear a shiny coat of black feathers and soft white plumes, having absolutely no need for historians who don’t even know or dare to ask their mothers the names of their fathers.

  Unfortunately, as the strength of mythology and history diminished in the summer wind, membership in the Principal Religion, Ni ka ni-Ma ma to mo we ni dwindled. For each person indoctrinated into the Earthlodge clans, three to four others reneged. Everyone felt no individual was accountable for the life expectancy of a tribe, a strength that once toppled the highest cottonwoods. Well, mon ami, hinterland rainbows are synonymous with black hummingbirds.

  The Blinking Child Traditional Dancer

  Luciano Bearchild ne ke ki no a ma kwa-ni ne wa ki-ne na wa ka si a-na i na ki na wi a we te-me to se ne ni wa. Ma ni-a be i yo-e si tti: Na i na-e tte tto o wa tti-o na te wi no wa-a ne ta-e se se se si wa tti-tti ke-e mwe mwe ske i wa tti-a sa mi-a si tti-o ski tte kwa-tte tto o wa ki. Na i na tta i-ei-e ki ta ko se wa tti-me to se ne ni wa-ki tti tti bi ne kwa so wa ki.

  I no ki tta-na i na-be no tti-e ki we ska wa ni-mi ya tti-me go-ta ta ki-ne ta ka a ba ma wa ki-ki ji bi bi kwa so tti ki. Mo tti-me ko-a be no a ki. Ne ta be tti ko tti-me kwe ne ta-e se bo tte ska tti-e ta tti ke ke ne na ke tti-ne ko ta-kwi wi se e a-mi tta tti ta ta:

  Ne ko te wi-1960-ne wi te ma-e kwi se i ya ni-e me ki ki we ska tti. Me na ni-me ko o ni-ne ta tti i tti te a be-e ma wi ki e ska ya ke-i ni na. Ne ke te ma ke si be na ke wi ni-tte na-na a wi ya be-i yo-i ni ya-tto ni ya a-ni me ka wa tti. I tti me ko-na i we si kwe ni, Ne hwe ka kwe ni-ke e i ki. Ke te na ma ni-ke ko-na o he na to kwe ni-me tti meko-e ka wa ta mo kwe ni. No ko me se ma-ke te me na we si-i ne wa-a he. E ye ba wi-na o se tti-ta kwa ba biwa-be tti to a i-a ma ma to mo wi na ka mo ni tti.

  (Luciano Bearchild taught me to identify night-enemy sorcerers when they visit people. This is what he used to say to me: When they paint their medicines, some, because of being in a rush or being awkward, apply the paint too close to their eyes. When they walk among people, their eyes are perpetually blinking.

  Now when I travel afar, I watch out for blinking-eyed people. Even children. For I always remember the little boy in a dance costume who deflated as we held him.

  Once in 1960 I traveled with him. That’s intriguing, I sometimes reflect, for us to have been traveling back then. For we were poor, hut he used to be good at finding money. Through natural means he was talented. And he was also intelligent. Undeniably, he succeeded in whatever he set out out to do, whatever he wanted. My grandmother used to say he was blessed. Before he could walk he sat with the old men as they sang religious songs.)

  I was nine years old at the time I accompanied my well-dressed cousin Luciano Bearchild on a summer powwow trip to a snow-besieged, mountainous place called Browning, Montana. This was four years before he came into the Doetingham Junior High classroom. Using a light brown 1949 Ford, it took us a total of four days, nwe wi-o ko ni, to get there, sleeping and camping along the way at roadside stops.

  On a July morning we found ourselves near the Blackfeet Tribal Celebration grounds. E ki tti-na ka ni-te be kwi-e be me ka wa ki-we bi-me bo wi. After traveling all night, it snowed. Styrofoam-type snow fell hypnotically from the sky, covering the rolling plains, and nothing moved except the smoking portals of the tipis. Through the cracked-open automobile window we could smell the distinct odor of burning wood, and our senses became disoriented.

  Where was summer? Were we somewhere unreal? Which highway sign was it that we didn’t see, foretelling this mystic geography?

  Later, around eleven o’clock, the PA system crackled as it was turned on.

  “Tet-ting. Tet-ting. One, Two. Tet-ting. Mike tet.”

  The announcer who announced himself as “Nine-Ball” told the powwow committee and their families to go home and retrieve their shovels.

  “Bwing wots of ‘em and yo gwoves,” he said.

  By noon most of the snow was scooped to the side of the dance arena, and it melted, creating large, sparkling pools where dark, uncombed Indian boys in ragged blue jeans sailed handmade boats.

  Together they surveyed the distant mountaintops. With one hand shielding the sun from their eyes, they swept away the last remaining clouds with the other.

  While the Blackfeet dug themselves out, we sat in the Ford astounded by the untimely snowfall. Imprinted still in our minds was the large bear, ke tti-ma kwa, who waved us down on the highway the night previous. He stood up in the middle of the road and stared at the headlights before walking up the mountainside on two legs. Suddenly, in a surreal, mechanical fashion, our namesake dropped on all fours, going up the mountainside like a wobbly locomotive in apparent distress. The Bear Machine chugged and creaked over the rock-strewn valley. Through the chimney mounted behind its neck, black smoke was expelled. Small breakaway pieces of smoke and sparks rolled up the mountainside and came back down as an onslaught of spellbinding winter snow. That was our night.

  The Blackfeet made ample use of the shovels before the hot sun, ke tte swa, encompassed everything. Trucks drove through the last snowdrifts and towed automobiles out of the meltwater; and the cloud-moving Indian boys were called in for lunch by their mothers.

  Elsewhere, octagon-shaped drums, te we i ka na ki, that sounded like cardboard when their owners first test-pounded them, e ko twe we wa ji, began to stretch, cracking the leather intersecting ties. In less than an hour the solar-heated drums acquired the perfect resonant, hollow tone that echoed throughout the sloping hillside. Hearing this, beautiful women, we we ne si tti ki-i kwe wa ki, came out of the painted lodges with young helpers to bask in their elk-teeth-adorned or fully beaded buckskin dresses. Hand mirrors, wa ba mo na ni, decorated with dangling eagle plumes and small tin cones, flashed as the women directed the braiding of their long black hair. Their perfumes, se swa o na ni, mingled in our mongrel noses and we sneezed. Knowing we were ignorant of the tingling freshness of woman, we nonetheless eagerly caught their sweet air with our scroungy senses.

 
“Don’t look at the mirrors,” commanded Luciano.

  I froze and shifted my reddened eyes to either side, wa wi ta wi.

  He reached over and pulled down the car’s sun visor, blocking flashes of light I hadn’t noticed before. “There are women who take part in mirror-shooting.’ With breath laced with good or bad medicine they know how to direct sunlight. On sunny days novices will practice for the hell of it. Be wary of women who pretend to unwrap a stick of gum, for the gum may not be one hundred percent gum.”

  He then took out a square brass mirror that he kept in his flannel shirt pocket, the one strategically placed over his precious heart. He held it up to his face, blew on it, and said: “The way the mirror fogs up. Look, the right amount. Half mirror, half fog. Womanly ingredients, their breath and saliva, stirred in with romantic expectations and the accomplice-root$ from the grassy foothills, equals . . . equals . . . aheml”

  Overcome with fear I looked straight ahead and saw the quandary we were in. The sun was to our south and the women to the three other directions. Love medicine zipping by in beams of harsh sunlight. Cross fire.

  “Equals what, Ed?” asked Luciano, scaring me out of my trance on medicine-toting women. “You believe me?”

  Almost imperceptibly, the bitterly cold winds had given way to a spring breeze and then to a tolerable summer heat in the span of half a day. After the grey slanted clouds moved the blizzard wonderland eastward into another valley, the breeze bore the scent of distant wildflowers. In the automobile we lifted off ourselves the few blankets we’d brought. From sniffles to sweat—we held the snow-spewing Bear Machine accountable. The beautiful women in buckskin dresses ended the laser medicine show. Everywhere people began putting on their regalia, and somewhere over the ridge a drum began to beat.

  Rousing ourselves from sleep, we pitched a small military-issue tent beside the car, took sponge baths, and were about to tour the traditional encampment when the emcee, “Nine-Ball” McRoy, made an announcement minus the Elmer Fudd imitation: “Singers and dancers, the committee says that the powwow will start as scheduled. One P.M. sharp. As for beef rations and bread, if you got snowshoes, waddle your chunky selves over to the cookshack for beef. We’ve got a full day ahead of us, dear people. Many fine singers from the United States and Canada are here. Let’s make this right for everyone. Be on time and on your bell-shaking feet!”

  “Ed, go get the reel-to-reel tape recorder,” said Luciano in a rush.

  “But the singing doesn’t start for another hour” I said, walking backward toward the car anyway.

  He shook his head side to side and explained.

  “I want to record Blackfeet. Have you ever heard of the people we lost hundreds of years ago as we stole secretly through the night, eluding the enemy? Hands were clasped together in the darkness, and someone accidentally let go, severing half of a tribe forever? We were Houdinis, good at escaping, especially under the cover of a rainy night, fog, or blizzard, but we were lousy at keeping the tribe together. Anyway, you never know. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Blackfeet had a similar story? And that they’re looking for us? So, the question is, Who finds who? Is there ever a find? Pathetic, isn’t it? All tribes searching in vain for their mythic halves ...”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Nothing, Ed. Go get the damn tape recorder.”

  As I was half-dragging the tape recorder back, “Nine-Ball’s” voice crackled through the PA again: “What was Kool-Aid yesterday is being hacksawed by the cooks and will be doled out as Popsicles to the dancers during intermission. By golly, talk ‘bout Injun-nuity!”

  “Jesus, is that right?” I asked Luciano in further disorientation.

  He pulled down the flaps of his Korean army winter hat and continued the discourse.

  “Another thing, Ed. Their sacred bundles resemble ours. Hey, amigo, do you understand?”

  I nodded an unconvincing “yes” as he waded quietly over the icy green puddles of snow with the cumbersome Norelco tape recorder in his arms.

  I didn’t see him again, and then just glimpses, until the dancers filed into the wet arena, dancing to the blaring, amplified music of the White Spotted Shirts drum group. Watery explosions erupted as beaded moccasins hit the dark green grass. Bits of yellow mud splattered on my black thick-rimmed glasses. Blinded, I had to wrestle my way through the crowd that had enviously gathered around the drum. It didn’t seem fair, the four excruciating days it took to get here. We wanted this long-awaited event to be a perfect live recording. Everything was a blur. Through a tiny untouched spot on my muddy glasses, I saw Luciano kneeling beside the strong-voiced wailing of the middle-aged men. In the chaos the glasses got worse as I tried to clean them with chunks of dirty snow, and I lost sight of him. My fingers with reckless abandon pressed the buttons on the tape recorder and I held the microphone above my head. Through the resonating din I could hear Luciano, blending in with flawless vocals to a song unknown. I held still to keep from being jostled about between the elbows and beverages of admiring listeners and waited. There was only one thing I could see past the crust and ruination: The pin of the Red Star on his fur-lined hat kept in rhythm to the steady but forceful drumming.

  In the singular block of daylight that came through the sweeping clouds of Montana, we were propelled past the high, jagged mountains and their glaciers, zigzagging through the rocky narrows aboard a 1949 light brown Ford.

  Ne me nwe ne ta tta-me kwe ne ta ka ni-i ni ko tti-tte ski e to ya kwi-na i na-i yo-e be ma te si wa tti-tti ne we ma kwi ki. I like memory, for that is all we have from when our relatives were alive. I ni ko tti-e i ki-we tti-a be tti-a to ta te ki-ni me kwe ne me tti-ki tti-a yo-ki tti-be me ka tti ki-ki tti ke ne na kwi. That is also why it is always discussed, to remember (through ceremony) those who have walked here, those who have raised us. A kwi wi na-ke te na me-tti-be ko kwe wa ni-tte na-na i na-e ma ki wa tta o wa ni tti ki a sko te ki-e tti ka-ji ki me te ko ki-ne ta to be na-wi se ni we ni-ka o ni-se ma wa-ne ke ka wa wa ki-e tti so wa tti-ne me tto e ma ki-no ko me sa ki-wa wi ta i-ka on ni-ma ma wi na kwa tti ki-ji na we ne ma ki. It’s true that I have not had a ghost feast, but when I cook large meals, whether placed by the fire or by a tree, I offer food and sacred tobacco, announcing their names— my grandfathers, my grandmothers—on either side, and my relatives who left prematurely. Luciano ta ta ki. Like Luciano.

  By four o’clock the bells of the old-time Blackfeet dancers made us forget the surreal night and the foul morning weather. The Norelco was full of songs from the six local but exemplary drum groups and the visiting confederacy drums from Standoff and Gleichen, Alberta. In a brief break to acknowledge the powwow committee and the volunteers with their shovels, Luciano signaled—from a chair this time— for a blank audio reel, food, and a soda.

  The dancers and singers simultaneously rose from the chairs and benches and headed toward the two arena entrances. Making my way through the crowd, saying “Excuse me, excuse me, thanks,” on either side, wa wi ta wi, I felt a strong tug on my back right hip and it wouldn’t let go. I looked back, a Charlie Brown cartoon face exhibiting disgust, but saw no one except male dancers in feathers idly smoking cigarettes. Feeling somewhat stupid, I turned around to resume my exit. In midstep I felt another, stronger tug drag me backward.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I cried, not wanting to turn completely around, for fear of tripping and being trampled by cowboy boots and cowbells.

  “Nine-Ball” seemed to chuckle at my goings-on; I could hear him snorting too close to the microphone from the speaker stand.

  “Look at him. Right here, ladies and gentlemen. Please. Say? . . . hey, let’s give him room, people. Hey!! Thanks. He-e-e-e’s come a lo-o-ong ways to be with us he-e-e-re on the Bla-a-a-ckfeet Reservation.”

  The male Indian dancers stopped chatting, turned around, and made way.

  In a state of near panic I reached backward to at least feel what caught me. The first cold touch sent a picture to my confused mind of a giant chicken, a r
ed rooster, that attacked for an ungodly reason. Wrong territory entered? What infraction? What’s OK?

  “Let’s gi-i-i-ve this person, the one who traveled the far-r-r-thest,” squealed “Nine-Ball,” “some generous applause. C’mon people!”

  When the sporadic ovation began, the ruffled feathers brushed my wrist as the creature’s large beak clamped down on my blue jeans in a vigorous, twisting motion.

  That was the same move employed by the female lunch-table leaders at the tribal elementary school—I reflected in horror—when they hooked their fingers through my belt loop, preventing my escape from a public depantsing.

  Jesus! Spell REE-VENN-GEE again?

  The mysterious assault triggered more thoughts on the red rooster’s victorious day: Near a gurgling creek one summer, to an appreciative audience of stationary dragonflies, jittery water spiders, snakes, and frogs, I laid on my stomach being pecked mercilessly about the neck and head by a rooster that had ambushed me near the outhouse. It jumped down from the intoxicating-berry trees and cackled a volley of Humphrey Bogart-sounding words, “OK, now. OK, now ...” That surprise, more than anything, buckled my knees, and so when the cantankerous rooster spurred the backs of my legs, delivering swift, effective kicks, I fell face-first on the sandy path according to plan.

  Wa ni kya ye keni-ni ba ki se na ke tti-se ma wa-na ina-ye ma-e bye ya ki. We had forgotten to release sacred tobacco when we got over there. E a sa mi-mi tta te na mo wa ki-me me tti ki-we tti-be ne ne te ma ki-no ma ke i. The fact that we were elated was probably why we momentarily lost our mental senses. Na i na-ke wi na yo-ke tti-ma kwa-e a ski-ne wa ke tti-ba ki se ni ye ka ke si. At that moment, back then, when we first saw the large bear, we should have released it. I ni wa-tt a-a be-i yo-na i-ne ne ke ne ta ma-a ni. “Ki sa ko tti-ba ne ne ta mo wa kwe ni” i no we ya be Luciano) Ke ma kwi so be na-ko tti-tta ta ki. That is why I would think about this event. “How greatly we must have forgotten,” Luciano used to say. “For we supposedly are Bear clan-named.” A si me i-a i te ne ta ma ke ni-ni pa wa i ya ki. Ke ke ne ta ka ke sa-ke wi na yo. We were too preoccupied with powwowing. We should have known then (what to do). Me te ne ta kwi-ke wi na-ki sa ko tti-be ki ni ke nwi-e tti ya ki-ka on i-e na ba ta ni ki-a ma ma kwa ki wi ki. It was obvious how great the difference was in the weather and the way the landscape was mountainous. Wa na to ka-ne ta bi-ki wa ba ta ha na-e ne tti ya ki wi. We simply went and looked at how great it was.