Long Walk Home

— A Work in Progress —

Home is where an old man sits in an ancient stone chair in the spray of Powerhouse Falls, watching the first spring salmon swimming up the Rogue River. Weeks before, he had seen their shadows leaping the falls, and he knew they were coming.

Home is the great animal that is the world, from its head at Boundary Springs to its tail at Gold Beach. The river is the animal's lifeblood, the wind her breath. The old man feels the breeze made by the power of the falls. The world is still alive.

Home is the Dragonfly brothers traveling up the river from the coast, preparing the countryside for the coming of the Human People. They arrive at the Table Rocks, the ribs of the great animal, and settle in for centuries. Across the valley is the cave where Children Maker, the creator, has lived even longer.

Home is Mother Landscape sharing her memories. With each telling, the sounds of old time words are as natural as the drumming of the falls ... Tilomikh, Gelam, the Daldal brothers, Hapkemnas, Gwent'agabok'danda, Dat'gayawada, Dit'agay'yuk!umada....

Home is where the old man listens to the memories of the ancestors in his dreams. He steps outside the outrages of history and lives in a time that makes sense. The creator is his neighbor. Mother Landscape is the village storyteller. Every year, the Salmon People stop by for a visit.

Home is where the stories live.

* * * * *

On a spring morning, Coyote and I board the Greyhound bus in Gold Hill, a small town along the Rogue River in southern Oregon. Sunlight touches the hills and ridges above the river. The bus jerks into motion, crawls onto Main Street and rumbles downriver along Highway 99.

"Remind me again why we're riding this bus to Siletz?" I ask.

"So we can walk back."

"That's what I thought. It's a few hundred miles, you know."

"That's right. But you might find walking with us mythic folks is a little different. We cover a lot of distance in less time than you humans, and we see more along the way. Reality is so boring. Remember you promised to trust me on this one?"

"I remember. So, Mister Magical Mythtime, can you get this Greyhound to trot a little faster?"

"I don't mess with domestic dogs. Besides, Grandmother is patient. She'll wait for us to get there."

"Of course. So tell me about your grandmother. You've never mentioned her."

"I've always had a grandmother. Grandmother Coyote. Don't you listen to the stories you tell?"

"Sometimes I forget that you claim to be all of the coyotes in the stories ... Mister Coyote, Coyote Old Man, Sleuth Hound Coyote, Troublemaker Coyote, Harebrained Coyote...."

"Don't you forget it!"

"It seems that your many incarnations never do. And now your grandmother wants to walk from the reservation to her homeland. A sort of reverse replay of the Trail of Tears? Think she can make it? How old is she?"

"She's as old as I am. We coyotes never age or get feeble. We simply endure."

"Being a storyteller, I suppose I have myself to thank for that."

"Right again. Wow, you're like this bus."

"How so?"

"You're slow, but you're on a roll!"

This is enough banter for me. I turn and gaze out the window.

I notice that the river flows faster as we travel downstream. The landscape whirs by at highway speeds, even though the bus gets tired and has to rest at every doughnut shop in every small town. At the mouth of the river, the bus turns right and heads up the Pacific coast. I imagine the ocean just a few feet away. I feel a sense of floating north as the waves caress the edge of the highway, sometimes leaping inland and lapping the wheels of the bus.

Coyote watches me. He knows the shape of my eyes as I slip into a daydream.

"Just wait," says Coyote. "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Hours later, hungry, dog-tired, ears numb from the whine of the bus engine and noses and throats stinging with diesel fumes, we arrive at Siletz.

* * * * *

At first the place seems empty. There are no cars in the parking lot. The tribal center is locked. I bang on the door. No answer. No one is around. We wander down the hill and find crowds of folks walking toward the dance house.

Inside, a hundred people crowd onto benches to listen to Coyote's grandmother tell a story. In firelight, native-brown eyes gleam like the eyes of the ancestors. The fire blazes. The smell of smoke lives in the cedar planks. Coyote and I settle into the audience and the weariness of the long bus trip is soon forgotten.

Grandmother Coyote puts on the mask of the creator and balances the mood of the place ... the malenes of the fire, the traditional memory of the femaleness of the house, owned and run by women for longer than any man might want to remember, the female face behind the male mask, the womanly grace of movement and nurturing words as she describes the journey of Hapkemnas through the world he has created.

"First I dig into Mother Landscape, into the rich soil of the earth. This releases the myths. Now every home will be filled with stories. Then I put a post at each corner of the house pit, connect them with rafters, and balance a ridge pole over the top."

Her story travels the length of the river, from Daldal's house at the mouth to the home of old time spirits at Boundary Springs. Each house along the river's path has a story, and the people who live there are eager to share.

Her story of Hapkemnas travels the night. At the first glimmer of morning light, as the fire glows in its bed of orange coals, she removes the mask. Her face and the mask have the same deep creases as if they share the hills and valleys of the landscape. Perhaps they were both present at creation. No native storyteller who knows the old time myths would argue which was older: Hapkemnas stories or Coyote stories. The fashioning of the homeland and the trickster-inspired resculpting of that landscape have common beginnings and speak as strongly to native people today as they did to their ancestors centuries ago.

"You have heard enough of this story. Too many words and your ears will grow long from too much listening. Now it's time for you people who come from the creator to go out and greet the morning and live in the wide world. Gweldi. Baybit leplap. This story is finished."

Grandmother Coyote notices Coyote and I at the back of the lodge. She glances toward the door and whispers to herself, "It's time to go on a journey."

* * * * *

The three of us walk. Before mythtime, before dreamtime, what is here is the land. Like a camera lens focusing on the main image for a film, Mother Landscape comes into focus. Each hill, each rock, each bend in each river, has an ancient story that is told in sight and sound ... in the reddish blush of the first sunrise and the silver rising of the first moon, the flash of each star blinking on, the gurgling of springs in the mountains, the swish and swoosh of rapids and riffles, the stretching sound of roots as they push the first plants and trees into meadows along rivers and creeks. On this morning, a breeze rattles spring leaves. Fields are lush with new grass, tinted blue with blooming camas. Before Human People, before the Daldal brothers, before Hapkemnas, many of the old time stories were already here. Mother Landscape, the oldest storyteller, is always ready for an audience who is willing to watch and to listen.

As we walk through the film of our story, history looms in the fuzzy background and around the blurred edges. We get glimpses of fences and ranches, villages and towns, wagon roads and highways, people arriving and people leaving. Each night, in the light of our campfire, the background and edges of the film crowd closer into the center of what is seen and heard, images shape-shifting, stepping through shadows, in and out of flickering firelight, sounds of stories as words arrive one by one and join themselves into narratives. There are moments when the stories of this place, in all their wonder and their terror, become complete, when each image is fully in focus, when all of the characters have arrived and are ready to speak.

* * * * *

As we crest a hill and turn inland, I look back for a last glimpse of the ocean.

At the mouth of the Siletz River I see islands in the bay, stumps and logs carved by harsh coastal weather. From this distance, the islands rise through fog and hauntingly resemble old time Indian burials. I see the thousands of native people, shipped and force-marched hundreds of miles to a skeletal cluster of shacks and shelters that is the Siletz Indian Reservation of 1856. Government troops execute those who refuse to leave their homeland. They are shot in front of friends and relations to graphically illustrate that the U.S. Government is serious about relocating natives.

Leaving their homes of thousands of years behind them, with only a basket of food each and the clothes on their backs, the trip to the reservation is long and sad. Captain Ord writes in his journal: "It almost makes me shed tears to listen to their wailing as they totter along." Many die along the way of various diseases, and many more die during the first winter from starvation, exposure and sadness.

Housing is nearly nonexistent. New arrivals are sick from food unsuited to their usual diets. Many are fed flour normally sold as cattle feed, swept from the floors of Willamette Valley mills. Nightly bed checks keep track of who is where. Forts are built along the boundaries to prevent escapes. Family members are located in different areas. Indeed, early reservation life resembles life in a prison rather than in a community. Within a few years, an alarming number of native people will die from a depression of spirits. Ten years later, the dying will hardly slow. In the words of a Shasta elder: "Many of my people have died since they came here. Many are still dying. There will soon be none left of us. We are sick at heart. We are sad when we look on the graves of our families."

On this morning, the coastal weather continues shaping the islands at the mouth of the river. I step through fog and walk along the beach. Just offshore, I hear a mixture of shouting and crying. I squint and see the faint outline of an old steamship heading north. I read the name, "Columbia" on its side. The morning is cold. The ship is crowded with native people being hauled to the reservation. I hear soldiers singing:

"Columbia's sons and adopted daughters
Shriek aloud o'er land and waters.
The Indians have come to quarters."

I shake my head and try to free myself from the vision. I turn and see Grandmother Coyote watching me. "I know where you've been," she says. The three of us walk in silence into the town of Dayton. We pass the old Fort Yamhill blockhouse and jail. Dark eyes stare out through the bars and follow our every step. We walk out of town, south through the Willamette Valley, toward home.

To be continued....