When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
Page 14
those who had slept with the handsome girls were never seen again.
—Ponca story
Sister—
Coyote’s just like any man,
hungry for the dark loaves
of a woman’s thighs.
You peel the skin of the tongue;
they complain it’s burnt, add Tabasco.
You boil the last of the turnips;
they whine, it goes down like gall stones.
Beauty’s just a bite
away from want.
I’ve seen fox chew
off her own limb
for just one more taste
of freedom. Mother set
the trap lines near beavers’
dens—hauled in more
than she could skin.
They moved farther
upriver next spring.
What west wind blew
those men into our house?
Who ransacked the curio
shelf, the burlap quilt and button jar?
Whose boots are these tracking
swamp rot through the kitchen?
Where’s yesterday’s bread
and which dolt didn’t cover the butter?
Tomorrow, I’m fixing to kill
the angel of this house.
These men that come through here—
shooting lead slugs through my green
bottles; water logging a season of straw;
taking liberties with my good hen.
Remember that one, those moons back,
who stepped out of the beets like a jackrabbit,
and ornery as a circle saw; that other, eyes
a sweet blue, but disposition salty as piss
and vinegar in the noon-day sun.
I say, Coyote’s same as any man.
Sister—
desire’s fixed to cut a tooth.
Sister—
I’m set to start grinding.
If he’s still here come morning,
lay out the linen and splash
on the toilet water; put the beans
on to soak, and bring up the choke-
cherries. Lend your voice
to some pretty hymn, occupy his ears
so he’s not to hear that clackety-clack
racket; that awful gnashing of teeth
going on down there; should he ask,
say how bitter an autumn we’ve had,
wouldn’t he like to keep you warm?
Then fasten your eye to his fly,
give his nether-regions a good scratch,
fall open to the place where the moon rides up—
north of the trap line, in a thicket of hairy frost.
Sister—
desire’s fixed to cut a tooth.
Sister—
get set to start grinding.
Night Caller
The mollusk inching toward my door,
its body a broad wet muscle of rain and ascent,
reminds me how all things are possible,
just as the rain foretells certainty
in a language of unquestionable voice.
I hear the night break, the moon
toss back her hair. I hear the hum
of contentment shuddering in the grass.
The mollusk seeks direction, drinks
in the door’s pool of light, charts
a course for warmth, its horns
pivots of radar, exclamation points,
exquisite attachments puzzling out the smell
of water and storms. In the last twenty-four hours
there’ve been slews of visitors to this porch:
half-drowned spiders, stinkbugs, furious horseflies.
We’ve discarded them tenderly, others
mercifully tended and killed, unnamed shadows,
unmarked graves, wings and songs put to rest,
lunacies of want laid down. You turn in sleep,
then wake and tell me about tropical weddings
and masked brides, guests who speak only
the warbled tongue of sparrows, and fall back again
dreaming your night stories, hosting the night visits—
each with its own small creature,
each with its own grand light.
LAYLI LONG SOLDIER (1973–), Oglala Lakota, received her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and her MFA with honors from Bard College. She published her chapbook, Chromosomory, in 2010, and her 2017 collection, Whereas, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2015, she was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. Long Soldier is also an installation artist.
38
Here, the sentence will be respected.
I will compose each sentence with care by minding what the rules of writing dictate.
For example, all sentences will begin with capital letters.
Likewise, the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one with appropriate punctuation such as a period or question mark, thus bringing the idea to (momentary) completion.
You may like to know, I do not consider this a “creative piece.”
I do not regard this as a poem of great imagination or a work of fiction.
Also, historical events will not be dramatized for an interesting read.
Therefore, I feel most responsible to the orderly sentence; conveyor of thought.
That said, I will begin.
You may or may not have heard about the Dakota 38.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of it, you might wonder, “What is the Dakota 38?”
The Dakota 38 refers to thirty-eight Dakota men who were executed by hanging, under orders from President Abraham Lincoln.
To date, this is the largest “legal” mass execution in U.S. history.
The hanging took place on December 26th, 1862—the day after Christmas.
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation.
In the preceding sentence, I italicize “same week” for emphasis.
There was a movie titled Lincoln about the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
The signing of The Emancipation Proclamation was included in the film Lincoln; the hanging of the Dakota 38 was not.
In any case, you might be asking, “Why were thirty-eight Dakota men hung?”
As a side note, the past tense of hang is hung, but when referring to the capital punishment of hanging, the correct tense is hanged.
So it’s possible that you’re asking, “Why were thirty-eight Dakota men hanged?”
They were hanged for The Sioux Uprising.
I want to tell you about The Sioux Uprising, but I don’t know where to begin.
I may jump around and details will not unfold in chronological order.
Keep in mind, I am not a historian.
So I will recount facts as best as I can, given limited resources and understanding.
Before Minnesota was a state, the Minnesota region, generally speaking, was the traditional homeland for Dakota, Anishinaabeg and Ho-Chunk people.
During the 1800s, when the U.S. expanded territory, they “purchased” land from the Dakota people as well as the other tribes.
But another way to understand that sort of “purchase” is: Dakota leaders ceded land to the U.S. Government in exchange for money and goods, but most importantly, the safety of their people.
Some say that Dakota leaders did not understand the terms they were entering, or they never would have agreed.
Even others call the entire negotiation, “trickery.”
But to make whatever-it-was official and binding, the U.S. Government drew up an initial treaty.
This treaty was later replaced by another (more convenient) treaty, and then another.
I’ve had difficulty unraveling the terms of these treat
ies, given the legal speak and congressional language.
As treaties were abrogated (broken) and new treaties were drafted, one after another, the new treaties often referenced old defunct treaties and it is a muddy, switchback trail to follow.
Although I often feel lost on this trail, I know I am not alone.
However, as best as I can put the facts together, in 1851, Dakota territory was contained to a twelve-mile by one-hundred-fifty-mile-long strip along the Minnesota river.
But just seven years later, in 1858, the northern portion was ceded (taken) and the southern portion was (conveniently) allotted, which reduced Dakota land to a stark ten-mile tract.
These amended and broken treaties are often referred to as The Minnesota Treaties.
The word Minnesota comes from mni which means water; sota which means turbid.
Synonyms for turbid include muddy, unclear, cloudy, confused and smoky.
Everything is in the language we use.
For example, a treaty is, essentially, a contract between two sovereign nations.
The U.S. treaties with the Dakota Nation were legal contracts that promised money.
It could be said, this money was payment for the land the Dakota ceded; for living within assigned boundaries (a reservation); and for relinquishing rights to their vast hunting territory which, in turn, made Dakota people dependent on other means to survive: money.
The previous sentence is circular, which is akin to so many aspects of history.
As you may have guessed by now, the money promised in the turbid treaties did not make it into the hands of Dakota people.
In addition, local government traders would not offer credit to “Indians” to purchase food or goods.
Without money, store credit or rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of land, Dakota people began to starve.
The Dakota people were starving.
The Dakota people starved.
In the preceding sentence, the word “starved” does not need italics for emphasis.
One should read, “The Dakota people starved,” as a straightforward and plainly stated fact.
As a result—and without other options but to continue to starve—Dakota people retaliated.
Dakota warriors organized, struck out and killed settlers and traders.
This revolt is called The Sioux Uprising.
Eventually, the U.S. Cavalry came to Mnisota to confront the Uprising.
More than one thousand Dakota people were sent to prison.
As already mentioned, thirty-eight Dakota men were subsequently hanged.
After the hanging, those one thousand Dakota prisoners were released.
However, as further consequence, what remained of Dakota territory in Mnisota was dissolved (stolen).
The Dakota people had no land to return to.
This means they were exiled.
Homeless, the Dakota people of Mnisota were relocated (forced) onto reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.
Now, every year, a group called The Dakota 38 + 2 Riders conduct a memorial horse ride from Lower Brule, South Dakota to Mankato, Mnisota.
The Memorial Riders travel 325 miles on horseback for eighteen days, sometimes through sub-zero blizzards.
They conclude their journey on December 26th, the day of the hanging.
Memorials help focus our memory on particular people or events.
Often, memorials come in the forms of plaques, statues or gravestones.
The memorial for the Dakota 38 is not an object inscribed with words, but an act.
Yet, I started this piece because I was interested in writing about grasses.
So, there is one other event to include, although it’s not in chronological order and we must backtrack a little.
When the Dakota people were starving, as you may remember, government traders would not extend store credit to “Indians.”
One trader named Andrew Myrick is famous for his refusal to provide credit to Dakotas by saying, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.”
There are variations of Myrick’s words, but they are all something to that effect.
When settlers and traders were killed during the Sioux Uprising, one of the first to be executed by the Dakota was Andrew Myrick.
When Myrick’s body was found,
his mouth was stuffed with grass.
I am inclined to call this act by the Dakota warriors a poem.
There’s irony in their poem.
There was no text.
“Real” poems do not “really” require words.
I have italicized the previous sentence to indicate inner dialogue, a revealing moment.
But, on second thought, the particular words “Let them eat grass” click the gears of the poem into place.
So, we could also say, language and word choice are crucial to the poem’s work.
Things are circling back again.
Sometimes, when in a circle, if I wish to exit, I must leap.
And let the body swing.
From the platform.
Out
to the grasses.
Dilate
I.
Placed
on my chest warm fragile
as the skin of nightfall she was heavier than imagined her eyes
untied from northern poles from hard unseen winter months
she arrived safely mid-spring she scrunched her brow
an up-look to her father. There’s a turning as pupils dilate
as black vernal suns slip into equinox. This was
we never forget her
first act.
II.
All is experienced
throu
g
h
the
body
somebody told me.
III.
Though I did not feel it
when the midwife invited when he cut the tie
the clean umbilical sever when I smiled I did not feel it
as they took her to wash and weigh when I said you should go with her.
Both of them gone father and baby
in a supple empty orange light I listened from behind a clock on the wall
my own face heavy plate glass though all experience
is through the body I did not feel
my hands pull white sheets my legs shake when two nurses cooed
lean back honey you are bleeding more than expected.
SY HOAHWAH (1973–), Yapaituka Comanche and Southern Arapaho, received an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2013. He received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. He published the poetry collection Velroy and the Madischie Mafia in 2009 and the chapbook Night Cradle in 2011.
Family Tree or Comanches and Cars Don’t Mix
Spanish captive, Hoahwah, married twin sisters.
The one wife called Double
turned into a snake
after eating a nest of glossy eggs.
Snake Woman still lives on Mt. Scott,
sleeps facing west.
The sun a white skull itself
bathes her on the cedar breaks.
In rectangular dreams
she calls the young men grandson.
The other sister Tsi-yee, named after a war deed
(her father charged a cavalry officer
knocked him off his horse then lanced him to the prairie)
bore three children: Tabe titah, Namnetse, and Sam Hoahwah.
Lena, Sam Hoahwah’s favorite daughter
ran off with an Arapaho from Canton.
Sam sent his men after her
on horseback, their ranch-hand-shadows
overcast the Cheyenne and Arapaho Rez.
Lena said: I ain’t comin back.
She bled to death on a mattress after a miscarriage.
Mother couldn’t remember Lena
just the car ride to Post Oak Cemetery
and watching wind in the pinwheels.
Mother died the same ag
e, fish-tailing
into Comanche history
in a Chevy Z-28 without car insurance.
Great grandfather Sam Hoahwah
first Indian in southwest Oklahoma to own a car
got run over with his own Model-T.
His Mexican cowboy-chauffeur
forgot to take it out of gear
when Sam crank-started the car.
Not far from his own car, Uncle Fredrick
was found dead in the weeds of Cache Road,
keys missing.
He sang gospels in Comanche,
and backup on Robbie Robertson’s
Contact from the Underworld of RedBoy.
(Uncle liked Levon Helm better.)
Frederick Jr. caught ghost sickness
bicycling across Post Oak Cemetery at night.
He looked past his shoulder
it twisted his face.
The moon mocks him now.
After the incident, his girlfriend fell
in love with his cousin Rusty
nicknamed Rabbit
who loves fried baloney
and calls it Indian Steak.
Rabbit’s younger brother
paints abstract horse murals
in empty swimming pools,
and images of a 20 foot long red talking snake
who calls him grandson in his dreams.
Typhoni
This is the deepest part of the world.