Growing Up Native American (4 page)

My writing in my late teens and early adulthood was fashioned after the American short stories and poetry taught in the high schools of the 1940s and 1950s, but by the 1960s, after I had gone to college and dropped out and served in the military, I began to develop topics and themes from my Indian back-ground. The experience in my village of Deetziyamah and Acoma Pueblo was readily accessible. I had grown up within the oral tradition of speech, social and religious ritual, elders' counsel and advice, countless and endless stories, everyday event, and the visual art that was symbolically representative of life all around. My mother was a potter of the well-known Acoma clayware, a traditional art form that had been passed to her from her mother and the generations of mothers before. My father carved figures from wood and did beadwork. This was not unusual, as Indian people know; there was always some kind of artistic endeavor that people set themselves to, although they did not necessarily articulate it as “Art” in the sense of Western civilization. One lived and expressed an artful life, whether it was in ceremonial singing and dancing, architecture, painting, speaking, or in the way one's social-cultural life was structured. When I turned my attention to my own heritage, I did so because this was my identity, the substance of who I was, and I wanted to write about what that meant. My desire was to write about the integrity and dignity of an Indian identity, and at the same time I wanted to look at what this was within the context of an America that had too often denied its Indian heritage.

To a great extent my writing has a natural political-cultural bent simply because I was nurtured intellectually and emotionally within an atmosphere of Indian resistance. Aacquu did not die in 1598 when it was burned and razed by European conquerors, nor did the people become hopeless when their children were taken away to U.S. schools far from home and new ways were imposed upon them. The Aaquumeh hano, despite losing much of their land and surrounded by a foreign civilization, have not lost sight of their native heritage. This is the factual
case with most other Indian peoples, and the clear explanation for this has been the fight-back we have found it necessary to wage. At times, in the past, it was outright armed struggle, like that of present-day Indians in Central and South America with whom we must identify; currently, it is often in the legal arena, and it is in the field of literature. In 1981, when I was invited to the White House for an event celebrating American poets and poetry, I did not immediately accept the invitation. I questioned myself about the possibility that I was merely being exploited as an Indian, and I hedged against accepting. But then I recalled the elders going among our people in the poor days of the 1950s, asking for donations—a dollar here and there, a sheep, perhaps a piece of pottery—in order to finance a trip to the nation's capital. They were to make another countless appeal on behalf of our people, to demand justice, to reclaim lost land even though there was only spare hope they would be successful. I went to the White House realizing that I was to do no less than they and those who had fought in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and I read my poems and sang songs that were later described as “guttural” by a Washington, D.C., newspaper. I suppose it is more or less understandable why such a view of Indian literature is held by many, and it is also clear why there should be a political stand taken in my writing and those of my sister and brother Indian writers.

 

The 1960s and afterward have been an invigorating and liberating period for Indian people. It has been only a little more than twenty years since Indian writers began to write and publish extensively, but we are writing and publishing more and more; we can only go forward. We come from an ageless, continuing oral tradition that informs us of our values, concepts, and notions as native people, and it is amazing how much of this tradition is ingrained so deeply in our contemporary writing, considering the brutal efforts of cultural repression that was not long ago outright U.S. policy. We were not to speak our languages, practice our spiritual beliefs, or accept the values of our past generations; and we were discouraged from pressing for our natural rights as Indian human beings. In spite of the
fact that there is to some extent the same repression today, we persist and insist in living, believing, hoping, loving, speaking, and writing as Indians. This is embodied in the language we know and share in our writing. We have always had this language, and it is the language, spoken and unspoken, that determines our existence, that brought our grandmothers and grandfathers and ourselves into being in order that there be a continuing life.

O
ne of the most acute difficulties for Native Americans today is trying to maintain a sense of balance and live with cultural integrity in a society that places a high value on assimilation and devalues tribal cultures
.

Anna Lee Walters's thoughtful short story, “The Warriors,” chronicles the struggle of Uncle Ralph, a contemporary cultural warrior, as he strives to keep beauty alive in a world that seems to have ceased believing in it. His love and steadfast instruction in the traditions of the Pawnee people inspire his two nieces to carry on, giving them the strength and courage they need to make a way for themselves in contemporary America
.

Anna Lee Walters (Pawnee-Otoe-Missouria), is the director of the Navajo Community College Press in Tsaile, Arizona. She is the author of
The Sun Is Not Merciful,
a collection of short stories
, Ghost Singer,
a novel, and the co-author of
The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life.

 

I
N OUR YOUTH, WE SAW HOBOS COME AND GO, SLIDING BY OUR
faded white house like wary cats who did not want us too close. Sister and I waved at the strange procession of passing men and women hobos. Just between ourselves, Sister and I talked of that hobo parade. We guessed at and imagined the places and towns we thought the hobos might have come from or had been. Mostly they were White or Black people. But there were
Indian hobos too. It never occurred to Sister and me that this would be Uncle Ralph's end.

Sister and I were little and Uncle Ralph came to visit us. He lifted us over his head and shook us around him like gourd rattles. He was Momma's younger brother and he could have disciplined us if he so desired. That was part of our custom. But he never did. Instead, he taught us Pawnee words. “
Pari
' is Pawnee and
pita
is man,” he said. Between the words, he tapped out drumbeats with his fingers on the table top, ghost dance and round dance songs that he suddenly remembered and sang. His melodic voice lilted over us and hung around the corners of the house for days. His stories of life and death were fierce and gentle. Warriors dangled in delicate balance.

He told us his version of the story of
Pahukatawa
, a Skidi Pawnee warrior. He was killed by the Sioux but the animals, feeling compassion for him, brought
Pahukatawa
to life again. “The Evening Star and the Morning Star bore children and some people say that these offspring are who we are,” he often said. At times he pointed to those stars and greeted them by their Pawnee names. He liked to pray. He prayed for Sister and me and for everyone and every tiny thing in the world, but we never heard him ask for anything for himself from
Atius
, the Father.

“For beauty is why we live,” Uncle Ralph said when he talked of precious things only the Pawnees know. “We die for it too.” He called himself an ancient Pawnee warrior when he was quite young. He told us that warriors must brave all storms and odds and stand their ground. He knew intimate details of every battle the Pawnees ever fought since Pawnee time began, and Sister and I knew even then that Uncle Ralph had a great battlefield of his own.

As a child I thought that Uncle Ralph had been born into the wrong time. The Pawnees had been ravaged so often by then. The tribe of several thousand at its peak over a century before were then a few hundred people who had been closely confined for over a century. The warrior life was gone. Uncle Ralph was trapped in a transparent bubble of a new time. The bubble bound him tight as it blew around us.

Uncle Ralph talked obsessively of warriors, painted proud warriors who shrieked poignant battle cries at the top of their lungs and died with honor. Sister and I were very little then, lost from him in the world of children who saw everything with children's eyes. And though we saw with wide eyes the painted warriors that he fantasized and heard their fierce and haunting battle cries, we did not hear his. Now that we are old and Uncle Ralph has been gone for a long time, Sister and I know that when he died, he was tired and alone. But he was a warrior.

The hobos were always around in our youth. Sister and I were curious about them and this curiosity claimed much of our time. They crept by the house at all hours of the day and night, dressed in rags and odd clothing. They wandered to us from the railroad tracks where they had leaped from slow-moving box cars onto the flatland. They hid in high clumps of weeds and brush that ran along the fence near the tracks. The hobos usually travelled alone, but Sister and I saw them come together, like poor families, to share a tin of beans or sardines they ate with sticks or twigs. Uncle Ralph watched them from a distance too.

One early morning, Sister and I crossed the tracks on our way to school and collided with a tall haggard whiteman. He wore a very old-fashioned pin-striped black jacket covered with lint and soot. There was fright in his eyes when they met ours. He scurried around us, quickening his pace. The pole over his shoulder where his possessions hung in a bundle at the end bounced as he nearly ran from us.

“Looks just like a scared jackrabbit,” Sister said as she watched him dart away.

That evening we told Momma about the scared man. She warned us about the dangers of hobos as our father threw us a stern look. Uncle Ralph was visiting but he didn't say anything. He stayed the night and Sister asked him, “Hey, Uncle Ralph, why do you suppose they's hobos?”

Uncle Ralph was a large man. He took Sister and put her on one knee. “You see, Sister,” he said, “hobos are a different kind. They see things in a different way. Them hobos are kind
of like us. We're not like other people in some ways and yet we are. It has to do with what you see and feel when you look at this old world.”

His answer satisfied Sister for a while and he taught us some more Pawnee words that night.

Not long after Uncle Ralph's explanation, Sister and I surprised a Black man with white whiskers and fuzzy hair. He was climbing through the barbed wire fence that marked our property line. He wore faded blue over-alls with pockets stuffed full of handkerchiefs. He wiped sweat from his face and when it dried he looked up and saw us. I remembered what Uncle Ralph had said and wondered what the Black man saw when he looked at us standing there.

“We might scare him,” Sister said softly to me, remembering the whiteman who had scampered away.

Sister whispered, “Hi,” to the Black man. Her voice was barely audible.

“Boy, it's shore hot,” he said. His voice was big and he smiled.

“Where are you going?” Sister asked.

“Me? Nowheres, I guess,” he muttered.

“Then what you doing here?” Sister went on. She was bold for a seven-year-old kid. I was a year older but I was also more quiet. “This here place is ours,” she said.

He looked around and saw our house with its flowering mimosa trees and rich green, mowed lawn stretching out before him. Other houses sat around ours.

“I reckon I'm lost,” he said.

Sister pointed to the weeds and brush further up the road. “That's where you want to go. That's where they all go, the hobos.”

I tried to quiet Sister but she didn't hush. “The hobos stay up there,” she said. “You a hobo?”

He ignored her question and asked his own, “Say, what is you all? You not Black, you not White. What is you all?

Sister looked at me. She put one hand on her chest and the other hand on me, “We Indians!” Sister said.

He stared at us and smiled again. “Is that a fact?” he said.

“Know what kind of Indians we are?” Sister asked him.

He shook his fuzzy head. “Indians is Indians, I guess,” he said.

Sister wrinkled her forehead and retorted, “Not us! We not like others. We see things different. We're Pawnees. We're warriors!”

I pushed my elbow into Sister's side. She quieted.

The man was looking down the road and he shuffled his feet. “I'd best go,” he said.

Sister pointed to the brush and weeds one more time. “That way,” she said.

He climbed back through the fence and brush as Sister yelled, “Bye now!” She waved a damp handkerchief.

Sister and I didn't tell Momma and Dad about the Black man. But much later Sister told Uncle Ralph every word that had been exchanged with the Black man. Uncle Ralph listened and smiled.

Months later when the warm weather had cooled and Uncle Ralph came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, Sister and I went to the hobo place. We had planned it for a long time. That afternoon when we pushed away the weeds, not a hobo was in sight.

The ground was packed down tight in the clearing among the high weeds. We walked around the encircling brush and found folded cardboards stacked together. Burned cans in assorted sizes were stashed under the cardboards and there were remains of old fires. Rags were tied to the brush, snapping in the hard wind.

Sister said, “Maybe they're all in the box cars now. It's starting to get cold.”

She was right. The November wind had a bite to it and the cold stung our hands and froze our breaths as we spoke.

“You want to go over to them box cars?” she asked. We looked at the Railroad Crossing sign where the box cars stood.

I was prepared to answer when a voice roared from somewhere behind us.

“Now, you young ones, you git on home! Go on! Git!”

A man crawled out of the weeds and looked angrily at us. His eyes were red and his face was unshaven. He wore a red plaid shirt with striped gray and black pants too large for him. His face was swollen and bruised. An old woolen pink scarf hid
some of the bruise marks around his neck and his top coat was splattered with mud.

Sister looked at him. She stood close to me and told him defiantly, “You can't tell us what to do! You don't know us!”

He didn't answer Sister but tried to stand. He couldn't. Sister ran to him and took his arm and pulled on it. “You need help?” she questioned.

He frowned at her but let us help him. He was tall. He seemed to be embarrassed by our help.

“You Indian, ain't you?” I dared to ask him.

He didn't answer me but looked at his feet as if they could talk so he wouldn't have to. His feet were in big brown overshoes.

“Who's your people?” Sister asked. He looked to be about Uncle Ralph's age when he finally lifted his face and met mine. He didn't respond for a minute. Then he sighed. “I ain't got no people,” he told us as he tenderly stroked his swollen jaw.

“Sure you got people. Our folks says a man's always got people,” I said softly. The wind blew our clothes and covered the words.

But he heard. He exploded like a firecracker. “Well, I don't! I ain't got no people! I ain't got nobody!”

“What you doing out here anyway?” Sister asked. “You hurt? You want to come over to our house?”

“Naw,” he said. “Now you little ones, go on home. Don't be walking round out here. Didn't nobody tell you little girls ain't supposed to be going round by themselves. You might git hurt.”

“We just wanted to talk to hobos,” Sister said.

“Naw, you don't. Just go on home. Your folks is probably looking for you and worrying bout you.”

I took Sister's arm and told her we were going home. Then we said “Bye” to the man. But Sister couldn't resist a few last words, “You Indian, ain't you?”

He nodded his head like it was a painful thing to do. “Yeah, I'm Indian.”

“You ought to go on home yourself,” Sister said. “Your folks probably looking for you and worrying bout you.”

His voice rose again as Sister and I walked away from him.

“I told you kids, I don't have any people!” There was exasperation in his voice.

Sister would not be outdone. She turned and yelled, “Oh yeah? You Indian, ain't you? Ain't you?” she screamed, “We your people!”

His top-coat and pink scarf flapped in the wind as we turned away from him.

We went home to Momma and Dad and Uncle Ralph then. Uncle Ralph met us at the front door. “Where you all been?” he asked and looked toward the railroad tracks. Momma and Dad were talking in the kitchen.

“Just playing, Uncle,” Sister and I said simultaneously.

Uncle Ralph grabbed both Sister and I by our hands and yanked us out the door. “
Awkuh
!” he said, using the Pawnee expression to show his dissatisfaction.

Outside, we sat on the cement porch. Uncle Ralph was quiet for a long time and neither Sister or I knew what to expect.

“I want to tell you all a story,” he finally said. “Once, there were these two rats who ran around everywhere and got into everything all the time. Everything they were told not to do, well, they went right out and did. They'd get into one mess and then another. It seems that they never could learn.”

At that point Uncle Ralph cleared his throat. He looked at me and said, “Sister, do you understand this story? Is it too hard for you? You're older.”

I nodded my head up and down and said, “I understand.”

Then Uncle Ralph looked at Sister. He said to her, “Sister, do I need to go on with this story?”

Sister shook her head from side to side. “Naw, Uncle Ralph,” she said.

“So you both know how this story ends?” he said gruffly. Sister and I bobbed our heads up and down again.

We followed at his heels the rest of the day. When he tightened the loose hide on top of his drum, we watched him and held it in place as he laced the wet hide down. He got his drumsticks down from the top shelf of the closet and began to pound the drum slowly.

“Where you going, Uncle Ralph?” I asked. Sister and I knew
that when he took his drum out, he was always gone shortly after.

“I have to be a drummer at some doings tomorrow,” he said.

“You a good singer, Uncle Ralph,” Sister said. “You know all them old songs.”