When Winter Come (7 page)

an introduce me to manhood

something like the truth whispers parts

a all my tomorrows an tell me things

I learns to keeps mostly to myself.

Sometime it be my Mamma's voice

an sometime it sound like mine only wiser

warning me a danger

preparing me for a coming death

or reminding me that this body here just be a shell

that Massa might laugh at or work to death

but never know

that inside it be a buffalo

an inside the buffalo be a rock

an inside that rock be a mountain.

I does all I can

to help Capt. Clark

get it in his head

that I have had my fill

a our union.

When he raise his hand

to strike me

for the last time

he still have hope

he can make me mind

he believe what we had

is worth saving an that

a new pair a boots

will make it all better.

But he soon know

that he can not whip this man

into a boy again

when he stare me down

an see somebody new

in my eyes.

When he see me dressed

in my hunter's shirt

he make quick plans

to send me back to Kentucke

curse himself for his “weakness”

an vow to never speak my name

again.

We start as fools and become wise through
experience.

—African Proverb

I use to think it be the job a the man

to keep his woman in line with a open hand

I use to think there be such a thing

as a good massa and that freedom

be a ghost in a dream that I couldn't touch

I use to think I was too big to be knocked down

too old to learn something new

and too hard on the inside to shed a tear

I use to think that love was a word

that could only be used by white folks

I been wrong on all counts

an I gots plenty scars to prove it.

Lewis went into a terrible depression. In courting
a wife, his advances were rejected. Jefferson
appointed him Governor of Upper Louisiana, but he
proved utterly unsuited to politics. . . . His decline
eventually ended in suicide.

—Stephen E. Ambrose,
Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery

Why a fancy, educated man, who worked directly

with the president, traveled without harm to the ochian

returned as a hero, made chief a all the new territory

be given to such deep dark sadness, I can't say.

But something give Capt. Lewis cause to question alla

his success, something bigger than all them books

something heavy as a mountain burrowed deep inside

him like a groundhog an emptied out all his joy.

After watching how careful he conduct himself

'round the men an learning how much he frown

on lying with Indian women, I starts to think

'bout the things the men whispered 'round the fire.

I thinks not on if it true, but on how hard it must be

to live life like it not, to walk 'round under a mask

to ignore your own nature, to smile an laugh an dance

for the pleasure a others while crying all on the inside.

Maybe his sorrow was born from fear a his feelings

or maybe he be even more afraid a what others

might think or say. I knows well how a thing like death

seem welcome when you can't hold the ones you love.

Ol' York say, if ain't nothing in the barn but roosters

won't be no eggs for breakfast. But I ain't signifying

I'm just speculating on what ignorance an whiskey say

when they see how he carry hisself an how clean

an orderly he like his things. An it stand to reason

to ask if blue blood an education an manners can explain

all his odd ways or if he just seem a lil' less manly

standing next to a rugged man like Capt. Clark.

All I can rightfully say is he was rich an white an a man

in a land where them three things mean nothing but power.

Why else would he take his own life, unless one a those

things wasn't true, unless he too was a slave.

William Clark

Death will come, always out of season.

—Big Elk, Omaha Chief

When asked in '32 what ever happened to my boy York,

I spoke the truth as far as I know it and even shed a tear.

I ended the gossip and told them he failed in business

and died of the cholera in Tennessee while trying to return

to me and his position as my valued servant.

And why wouldn't he crawl back and apologize

for his foolish behavior over a woman

and for his poor conduct, instead of returning west to live

among the savages?

I was prepared to welcome him with open arms.

I would have history know

that I was not nor am I a severe master.

I understood the inferior nature of the slave.

His emotional and intellectual development

being what it was,

York couldn't forget all the nonsense put in his head

about his blackness

nor appreciate freedom

or understand the true place and value of women.

It was my idea to take him along to serve

on the great expedition.

It ruined a good slave. It ruined a great relationship.

And that kills me.

There be a voice inside that speak

only when I feels guilty

for something ugly

that come on my heart or 'cross my mind

an even louder when I acts on it

an say or do a thing I later regrets.

I remembers that Ol' York say

a piece a God live in every good man

an be what some calls a soul

then I look at alla wrong

I done an wonder how bad it scar

my soul to know a devil in there too.

But how easy some men must sleep

them having no guilt

an little soul.

Our people will be herded like buffalo

and walked backward from their own lands

until they fall off a great cliff.

Coyote will pretend to fall with them

and offer firewater and guns and beads

in exchange for their tongues and wisdom.

Young warriors will trade their best ponies

for white man clothes and iron horses.

Many will forget the hunt and the sweat.

Our storytellers will stop the winter count.

The rivers will turn to stone.

The white man will write down our truths.

But when they gather in great numbers

to celebrate their long trip to the ocean and back

many tribes will open their eyes and speak as one.

Before our feet touch the ground

we will grow eagle wings and buffalo horns

fly back to our homelands and rescue our stories.

The mountains will see us coming and weep.

The rivers will see us coming and sing.

The salmon will see us coming and dance with joy.

Ol' York say Africans believe a person can only die

when the people no longer speak they name.

I give you these words to hold, not so you remembers mine

but so you know the truth an keeps it alive as well.

He say there be times in every man's life when he have to

choose to hunt to feed himself or to hunt to feed his people

but only once can he choose to hunt no more forever.

He say when it all said an done there be nothing left 'cept
God.

In my dream I am standing in a deep deep hole

surrounded by a herd a wooly-headed buffalo

an hands as big as mine

are throwing dirt on my body.

At the edge a the hole

a old white man wrapped in a flag

is standing with his back turned away

an writing in a book with a long gold quill.

High above me in the clouds

an eagle is flying in circles.

When she folds her wings and starts to dive

I feel my body begin to float toward the surface

Her screeches are loud and piercing

They vibrate everything above and below the water.

She screeches one final time just before she plucks me

out of the river and carries me away, dancing like a fish.

is how the party was treated

when we returned

even me, back in the quarters

truth is

we ran out a food an supplies

before we even reached the ochian

we stole horses an anything else we could use

we pried the legs a women an girls open

let them think we had something special

something powerful to leave

with the trail a half-breeds

an sores an sickness

drunk with power an arrogance

we killed some young Blackfeet boys

then hung a peace medal 'round they neck

truth is

Indians was better people than us

instead a killing us all

they give us comfort an food

when we was starving

guides an directions

when we was lost

they traded their horses an women

for our survival an pleasure

watched us stumble all the way

to the ochian an back

we got better than we deserved from them

they got a whole lot worse

After an evening reading at Summer Fishtrap, a writing conference held every year in Nez Perce country at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains, just outside Joseph, Oregon, I stepped outside of a wooden cabin nestled near the opposite end of beautiful Wallowa Lake and the grave site of legendary Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph. There I met Diana Mallickan, a park ranger stationed in Spalding, Idaho, on the Lapwai reservation, and Allen Pinkham, an important Nez Perce elder and former chair of the tribe's governing body. I was holding my breath in anticipation of a critique of my book of poems entitled
Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004).

I had already survived criticism from Lewis and Clark enthusiasts and history scholars, but the audience I feared the most, representative voices of people most absent in the telling of the Lewis and Clark saga, now stood before me in the dark. I braced myself for the worst but breathed a sigh of relief when Pinkham held out a hardback copy of
Buffalo Dance
for me to sign.

The private and warm exchange that began that night continued over several years and grew to include a public reading at the University of Idaho, in Moscow, and an invitation to visit and read from the York manuscript at Lapwai High School, a Native American secondary school on the reservation. The initial meeting at Fishtrap also led to an opportunity to present my poems during the signature event of the National Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commemoration at Lewis and Clark College and again in St. Louis for the commemoration's final event, called Currents of Change.