“But I guess it was a lot like their church. It was only important on some days. The rest of the time it didn’t matter.”
Dan cradled the pipe bundle on his lap like a baby.
“Listen, Nerburn. I’m not trying to say bad things about you and your people. I’m just trying to tell you how it was for us. I hope you don’t get mad.” He seemed to have completely forgotten his concern with my veracity.
“No, Dan,” I said. “I’m not mad. I’m just listening. You’ve got every right in the world to be mad.”
“You’re a good boy,” he said. “That’s the trouble. Our whole people were ruined by your whole people. But there are good people in the middle. There always have been. We used to help settlers. They would help us. We thought we could all live together. But we were so different.”
A hint of melancholy had crept into the old man’s voice. He fingered the bundle on his lap and began staring past me as he talked.
“When I make a promise, I see my grandfathers looking over my shoulder. If I break my word I disgrace them. Do you see what I mean? How could I do that? They’re in the spirit world. It’s up to me to act for them here. That’s why I want to speak now. That’s why you’re here.
“I want to try to say things right. I know it’s hard for you to figure out, how one minute I can be bullshitting with Grover, then do spirit talk. It’s because, with Grover, I’m just talking for me. When I say these other things, I’m talking for my grandfathers. I’m talking in the way they passed down to me.”
I sat quietly, waiting for a sense of what the old man wanted next. I wanted to honor his words and accord them their proper respect. He stared blankly into the ground. He seemed to be falling asleep. I wondered whether I should take the pipe to keep it from falling. Suddenly he jerked his head up and cocked his ear, as if listening.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “You got gas?”
“Sure,” I answered.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he responded. He was already up and shuffling toward the truck.
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
“Bring that tape recorder of yours. You’ll see.”
I helped him into my truck and started to back down the path. Fatback had scuttled out from beneath the junk car and was limping alongside and whining.
“Put her in the back,” Dan said. The old dog was wagging her tail feverishly.
“Come on, Fatback,” I said, hoisting her into the pickup bed. She licked my face with her wet, fetid tongue and took her place against the tailgate.
“That’s a good dog, that Fatback,” Dan said as I climbed back into the cab.
“She should brush her teeth a little more often,” I said.
Dan let forth a happy cackle and settled back into his seat. Something had changed in him. The pensive, melancholy drift had been replaced with a sense of purpose.
“Go down this road here,” he said. The “road” was nothing more than two tire ruts through an old wash and up over a hill. A few bumpy miles later the trail met up with another set of ruts that snaked their way up a ridge.
“Take a left,” Dan said. He held the pipe bundle tightly on his lap.
My truck was a four-wheel drive. But I had mainly gotten it to deal with northern Minnesota snows. I wasn’t much for off-road driving. Dan started laughing. “You’re on a reservation highway, Nerburn,” he said. “We want to give the cows a fair shake.”
We bumped and juddered our way up the ridge. The truck’s suspension was groaning from the unfamiliar jostling. “White boy’s truck,” Dan offered. “My car likes these roads.”
I thought back to the old automobile carcass sitting up on blocks in front of his house. “Your car’s a little short of wheels,” I said.
Dan chuckled. “Yeah, that’s why I made it into Fatback’s house.”
I ground the truck down into its lowest gear. We inched our way up the final rise. It was steeper than anything I had ever driven on before. Yet the ruts were well traveled and the prairie grass was crushed down from frequent use.
“Stop here,” Dan said.
I pulled to a halt on the top of the ridge. The wind buffeted the truck and whipped the antenna back and forth with its force. Beyond us to the west, the ridge dropped off into a panorama of undulating hills and draws. The prairie grasses bent and moved in the distance like waves on the sea.
Dan stepped out and walked to the front of the truck. He took out a small buckskin pouch of tobacco and started sprinkling it in all four directions. I could hear him singing a low, melancholy song. The words were in his language, but the heart of the song was universal. It sent a shudder through me. When he was finished, he squatted down on his haunches and stared out to the west. He somehow seemed younger, more alive, more at home.
Fatback made her way over the tailgate of the pickup and ambled up to Dan’s side. The old man idly stroked the old dog’s ears. I stood behind, uncertain if I was part of this or if I was intruding upon a private moment. Finally, the old man spoke. “Nerburn, come here. It’s time for you to learn something.”
I approached him tentatively. “Sit down,” he ordered. It was a gentle command, but firm.
I sat down quietly.
“Turn on that tape recorder,” he said. Then he began to speak.
“Let me tell you how we lost the land. Let me tell you the real story.
“The white people surprised us when they came. Those of us out west had heard about them. Some of our elders had told prophecies about them. But still they surprised us.
“We had seen other strangers before. But they were just other people like us — other Indians — from different tribes. They would come and ask us to pass through our land. If we wanted them to, we would let them. Otherwise they couldn’t.
“But, you see, it wasn’t our land like we owned it. It was the land where we hunted or where our ancestors were buried. It was land that the Creator had given us.
“It was the land where our sacred stories took place. It had sacred places on it. Our ceremonies were here. We knew the animals. They knew us. We had watched the seasons pass on this land. It was alive, like our grandparents. It gave us life for our bodies and the life for our spirits. We were part of it.
“So we would let people pass through it if they needed to, because it was our land and they knew it. We did not wish them to hunt or to disturb our sacred places. But they could come to our land if they needed to.
“You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn’t even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother. You can’t own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?
“So when the first of your people came, they just wanted to go through. They were strange to us. They wore strange clothes. They smelled different. But they had many powers we had never seen. They were part of the Creator’s plan, we thought. It was not our place to deny them, because it was not our right to control them. We were just living our lives.
“They promised they would not do any damage. They were like a new kind of warrior with guns and different weapons. They were strange because they were always searching. We thought they would just come and go. We let them come among us, and we fed them and helped them. They were like raindrops that fell out of the sky, then stopped and were gone.
“But soon other strangers came. This time they were like a stream.