The Indians in the Movies Say "Ugh!"

The Indians in the movies say "Ugh!"

The Indians in the novels say "Me Chief Thundercloud. Me

kill white man"

The Indians on the reservations say "Okay, so I owe you the

two bucks"

But the Indians in the movies aren't real and the Indians in the

novels aren't real and the Indians on the reservations aren't

real either anymore

I wonder what the Indians really did say? How did they act?

What did they do with their hands?

Hey there, Big Chiefs, what was it like to be an Indian?

Powhatan? The British crowned me King of Virginia

Little Turtle? I caught that elegant white man's disease-gout

Seattle? They named a city for me and by the laws of my

religion I must writhe in death each time the name is

spoken

Tecumseh? I was elevated in rank from Chief of the Shaw-

nees to Brigadier-General in the British Army

Black Hawk? They dug me up and put my head on exhibition

Crazy Horse? I remember only a bayonet in the belly

Sitting Bull? They say I was a graduate of West Point and

the author of French and Latin poems, I don't know,

maybe I was

Keokuk? My declining years were spent dead drunk

Geronimo? I joined the Dutch Reformed Church and paraded

at Teddy Roosevelt's first inauguration

Hm-m-m ... Had we better call in a white man? What about

Kit Carson? He saw more redskins than any man who

ever lived, he ought to know. Hey there, Kit, what were

the Indians like?

There was an Arapaho girl named Grass Singing

and she was young and clean and high-breasted

Alice, I called her

And there was a Cheyenne girl, Making-Out-The-Road

and she burned bright and slow, like a pine-knot

They were good girls, those two

but I don't know how I felt about the Indians

Once at a camp above the Sacramento

the Tlamaths came war-whooping down at night

and leading them in was a frail old chief

When our bullets struck he fell at our feet

and the arrows in the fancy quiver on his back

rattled out across his shoulders

and his feathered bonnet fluttered to earth

like a bird dying

After we drove the Tlamaths back to the woods

I laid a blanket over their dead chief

At dawn I woke up, carefully removed the blanket

and with a hand-axe beat that brown old head

until the brains splashed out

and the blood spilled over the tangled feathers

I don't know how I felt about the Indians

Thank you, Kit. Goodnight. You must be tired, you once had

a country on your hands

But wasn't there someone somewhere who knew a plain ordinary

Indian-no chief, no mystic, no warrior? Wasn't there a

Blackfoot or a Cherokee who married the fat little girl from

a neighboring tribe and built her a wigwam by the river?

Weren't there cold winters when deer were scarce and buffalo

moved their range and the hungry papooses wailed on the

sled? Wasn't there sickness? Good days and bad? Didn't

this Indian like the smell of pinewoods after rain? Didn't

he maybe grow old and live in the lodge of his tall sons?

Didn't he maybe die a gentle death, remembering moun-

tains, the feel of bearskins, fires at night?

Hey back there . . . Who knows? Who'll step forward and

tell us now?