The People

by Bernard Malamud

  “Who is she?” Jozip cautiously asked Indian Head.

  “She was raised in a missionary school and is interested in rape. Her name is Penelope. Her father was one of our best hunters. Her mother is a loudmouth.”

  “Do you think someone raped her?”

  “I am not a medicine man and you are the chief of our tribe.”

  Indian Head asked One Blossom, “Were you bothered by anyone? Touched?”

  “One fool tried to touch me but I hit my knee between his legs. He slapped my mouth but the other whites called him off.”

  “If I had seen that I would have killed him,” said Indian Head.

  “Why did they come here, these men?” Jozip asked.

  “Six of them appeared on their ponies,” One Blossom said, “and they told us we would have to leave our valley in thirty days. They said the valley belonged to them, and the tribe must leave. I told them they were liars, and they listened as if their tongues had turned to stone. Some of the women began to shout and cry. The Americans said they would come back after our hunters returned. What can we do?”

  “We have our papers that your father signed them,” Jozip said. “If we stay here and don’t make trouble for them, they should not make trouble for us.”

  “They are whites,” she said. “They don’t think as we do. And I don’t want to go to another valley. I have lived all my life here.”

  “Maybe we should get a lawyer?” Jozip asked Indian Head.

  “We have no rights in their thoughts,” he said. “When they get ready to drive us out they will try it. They have their Winchester rifles, and we only have bows and arrows and small voices.”

  “I will tulk to them,” Jozip said. “And I will say we will not move from here because this is our land. Maybe if we tulk to them soft, they will answer soft.”

  The Indians spoke among themselves and then disbanded.

  Jozip sat with his head full of difficult thoughts.

  The next day a crier called out the approach of twenty white men on horses.

  Jozip appeared instantly from his tepee, where he had been drinking tea brewed from valley plants he had discovered. He put on his war bonnet and, going out to the white men, asked them to state their business.

  “Who might you be?” asked a tall rider wearing a blue military cape. He had thin lips and a long jaw. His eyes were deep-socketed and he made no attempt to smile.

  “I am Jozip, who is now the chief of this tribe. We are the People. I did not ask for this honor but they gave it to me anyway, so I tulk to you like the chief.”

  “I am Colonel Gunther of Fort Boise,” said the visitor in a husky voice. He unbuttoned his cape and cleared his throat. “The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Horace Sedgewick in Washington, D.C., has ordered me to inform the people of your tribe that the Great White Father in Washington has lost patience with you for not obeying his orders. Now I will tell you this: The U.S. government has once more decided to extend your time of departure for thirty days beginning today, with no further extensions. I am here to say that if you haven’t left these surroundings within that stated thirty days, the cavalry at Fort Boise will round you up and deliver you to a reservation of our choice.”

  “So where is this reservation, tell us?” Jozip said. “We hear about such a reservation but nobody says to us where it is. Is it in the sky maybe? Who will move us there? Maybe twelve eagles that they come from the sky?”

  “I can’t provide you with any information any more specific than the message that I have just delivered,” replied Colonel Jacob Gunther. “But if I were you I would certainly make ready to leave this area pronto.”

  “Please, Mr. Cohnel, I will speak to you with soft words. This is the valley of our tribe. The Great White Father gave to us this valley and also our Chief Joseph signed the papers. For fifteen years our people lived here and also they have fished here in our big river, and we love this earth and bury in it our dead.”

  Jozip said that from the time of Quodish the valley had belonged to the red man. “If the Great White Father wants now to have the valley back, he must give us another place where we can live, and which is as good as this valley. We must have someplace to go and live there, otherwise we will be like animals.”

  “We have our papers,” said the colonel. “You are Indians and not citizens of our country. You are dealing with the President of the United States and you must yield to him. If you don’t want to make serious trouble for your tribe, you had better behave without further complaint or resistance, verbal or otherwise. No doubt we will lead you to another reservation. I have no further details of that matter in this moment. In the meantime, you are impeding the manifest destiny of a young and proud nation. We will give you just thirty days in which to prepare for a move in accordance with our plans for you.”

  “Please, Mr. Cohnel, we ask for more time and also a little more consideration. We are men with the worries and troubles of men. We got to have justice. If somebody takes away from you your house and your garden but he doesn’t pay you for it, is this justice?”

  “Yah,” said three of the Indians. The others stoically shook their heads.

  The colonel yanked his horse’s bridle as he signaled his men.

  “There are ways to listen,” he said to Jozip. “One is with deaf ears, which is what you do. The other is with intelligent awareness of the possibility of change for the better, which is what you are avoiding doing. We must therefore affirm our right to this land in the name of our nation, and our inalienable right to direct your next move within this country. If you disregard us we will exercise the right of eminent domain and do with our land what we have to do to fulfill our destiny.”

  “So what is eminent domain?” Jozip whispered to Indian Head.

  “The strong man does what he wants. The weak man listens.”

  “Will they make a war against us?”

  “We will fight back.”

  “I am a man of peace.”

  “You are chief of this tribe.”

  “If you will speak to us the truth, we are not afraid of your words,” Jozip replied to the colonel.

  “We don’t need any lessons in ethics, my good man,” said the colonel. “And preachment won’t put any pork in your pot.”

  “From pork I am not interested,” said Jozip, speaking for himself.

  The colonel said “Giddap” to his horse and the soldiers began to ride off the reservation.

  One of them, puzzled by Jozip’s eloquence, said aloud, “Who the hell is he? He don’t sound like no Indian to me. Who the hell are you?” he said to Jozip.

  “Let’s get on along,” said the colonel to the soldier.

  “I am Jozip,” said Jozip.

  “That means Joseph,” said Indian Head. “He is a man of peace. We do not want war with the white people.”

  Jozip nodded. He had not spoken as well as he would like, yet he heard dignity in the words he had said. “If you speak with your heart,” he told himself, “the words fix themselves together in the right way. They will say what you want them to say.”

  “Sounds like Jew talk to me,” said the colonel in the capacious cape. “Nobody can trust these goddamn Indians in any way at all.”

  “That’s as true as anything,” said the cavalry soldier.

  NINE

  The Settler

  ONE NIGHT three young braves beheld a white settler wandering in their woods. He was carrying an empty kerosene lamp, and every forty feet or so he sat down in the snow and tried to light the lamp. The wind blew out his sulphur matchsticks. The settler shook out the dead matchsticks and one by one flipped them over his shoulder into the bushes.

  “He is in our woods,” whispered Small Horse. “He moves as if he is drunk.”

  “He must be looking for a place to piss,” said Windy Voice.

  “He’s spying on us,” Foxglove said. “We are fifty miles from the white fort. The big-ass colonel has sent him to spy on us to see if the tribe is getting ready
to leave the valley.”

  The three braves gravely observed the white settler sitting in the snow watching the rising half-moon.

  “Let us show ourselves,” Small Horse whispered. “We will say we are ghosts. He will jump out of his shoes.”

  “If we had brought a feathered bonnet with us,” Windy Voice said, “I would do a war dance around him.”

  “I say he’s a spy,” said Foxglove. “He has no business being on this land. Let’s find his horse and take it with us. He’ll freeze to death trying to find his way out of the woods.”

  The three Indians approached the white settler. He was a sturdy man of sixty, half asleep, still staring at the half-moon.

  Then the settler rose and wheeled around. After an instant of fright he casually studied their Indian faces and laughed. They could smell his whiskey breath.

  “Welcome, friends,” said the white man. “I have strayed off the beaten path and have to ask you to point me in the right direction. I left my horse in the woods and can’t find him. I tried to figger out where I was by studying the moon, but all I can figger is it’s rising in the east. This is for your trouble.” He handed Foxglove a half-empty whiskey bottle.

  Foxglove then handed the settler an almost empty whiskey bottle. The settler shook that bottle to see if the stuff fizzed. It didn’t, so he took a half pull and held up the bottle to see how much was left. It was empty so he tossed it into the snow.

  Small Horse took a long pull of the new bottle and handed it back to the settler; he took another pull, wiped his wet chin with his coat sleeve, and passed the whiskey to Foxglove.

  “I am feeling no pain,” the elderly man said to the three Indians. “You gents are my friends—right?” He said he was on his way back to the fort and had got lost.

  None of them spoke.

  “No speak?” he said. “When we make powwow?”

  The settler resumed sitting on the snowy ground. After a while each of the three Indians sat with him, first Small Horse, then Foxglove, then Windy Voice holding his ankles.

  “What should we do with him?” Windy Voice asked in the tongue of the People.

  “Are you talking about me?” asked the settler.

  “No,” said Windy Voice. “We talk about your firewater. Where you get it? It steals my breath away.”

  The settler said, “I hoped you wasn’t talking about me.”

  The Indians said nothing. Their faces were motionless.

  “He must be the one who tried to rape Penelope,” said Foxglove. “He also touched One Blossom in the crotch. Indian Head said he would kill him on sight if he ever came across the white bastard who had done that.”

  Small Horse pulled out a short pipe and lit it with sparks from two pieces of flint. The settler also had a corncob, which he lit with a spark from Small Horse’s pipe.

  They smoked.

  “What will we do with this white bastard?” Windy Voice asked in their tribal tongue.

  “Where you want to go?” he asked the white man.

  “Home,” said the settler, “if I knew where it was. I thought I came from the east, but my head is spinnin’ so it feels like east, west, and north. Still and all, what I want to do most is take a hot piss and go back to the fort. My horse is waitin’ somewhere t’other side of them pines.”

  “We take you back,” said Windy Voice, imitating a white man.

  “Will you? Thanks, old chum. You boys are the nicest fucking Indians I do believe I have ever met.”

  Even Foxglove laughed at the man’s expression.

  A brave came galloping into camp one morning as Jozip was sensing spring on its way. The brave ran to Jozip’s tepee, tossed open the tent flap, and proclaimed trouble. “Chief Jozip, we have found a dead settler in the woods. He is a bald-headed man who was scalped.”

  “What do you mean, scolped?” said Jozip. “This tribe does not do such terrible things. We don’t teach our braves to scolp strangers. This we don’t do. My God, where did they leave the body? First we must bury it. No. First call for me Indian Head. Tell him to come fast.”

  Indian Head came on the run. Jozip asked the brave to repeat his story. The brave said he had been in the woods and had found a dead white man lying in the bloody snow. He swore he had never seen him before.

  Jozip told Indian Head the man had been scalped. “Is this possible?”

  Indian Head said it was. “It is not possible until it happens.”

  “Who would do such a terrible thing?”

  “Some stupid fool. Maybe somebody who wants to make trouble between us and the Indian agent at Fort Boise, or the fat-ass colonel. What will you do?” he asked Jozip.

  “Maybe I will ride to the fort and talk to Cohnel Gunther. Also I will tell him our braves did not kill this man. I say that this man who got killed was lost on our land. If he got lost this is no crime, but we did not kill him. We are a lawful people. I will say this to the cohnel.”

  “Maybe you ought to call a council meeting.”

  “I will call this meeting after I talk to the white man.”

  “Do you want me to ride with you to the fort?”

  “No, I will go alone. One Indian makes them suspicious. If they see two it’s already an attack. This way they will see that I come in peace.”

  Jozip rode off to the fort. Bessie had lost weight and traveled swiftly and lightly.

  It took Jozip a while to get into the colonel’s office; and once inside he wasn’t sure he should have come. The aide-de-camp searched Jozip’s pockets, ran his hands over his buckskin pants, then reluctantly admitted him into the office. Jozip did not like being searched.

  The colonel appeared when he heard an Indian had come to see him.

  They recognized each other.

  “Good morning, Chief,” said the colonel. “I have to request that you tell me quickly the reason for your visit to this office. I have a painful toothache. I hope you’ve come to tell me that your tribe is getting ready for its move.”

  “Excuse me that I come when you have such a bad toothache,” said Jozip, “but since I bring now some bad news I will tulk fast.”

  “The faster the better.”

  “Cohnel, I am very sorry that we found on our reservation this morning a dead white gentleman that he was scolped and died there in the woods. I came to ask you what we should do with the body.”

  “A dead settler?” The colonel brooded. “Was his name Ezra Pence? His wife reported him missin’ last night.”

  Jozip was sorry he did not know the man’s name.

  “But you found him scalped by your Indians? This happens to be a very drastic offense, Chief Josephs.”

  “Cohnel Gunther, I wish to mention to you that I came here on my free will to explain you what hoppened.”

  The colonel went to the door and called his aide.

  “Mr. Carpenter,” he said when the man entered, “this is Chief Josephs. At least that’s what he calls himself. They have found a dead settler on the reservation ground that may be the man we are missin’. Lock him up in the hoosegow until I get a dentist to pull my goddamn tooth in the morning. After that we will assemble fifty men to accompany us to the reservation. I want to get to the bottom of this scalpin’ incident. A mean thing like that could start off a war.”

  Jozip said in astonishment, “You wish to arrest me and put me in jail? Mr. Cohnel, I don’t think my tribe will like this.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Chief. I am locking you up because I think it might be the best thing under the circumstances. Now don’t make any more trouble or you will get your ass broke.”

  Jozip, disliking the man, said nothing. He wondered what Indian Head would do if he did not return before nightfall. Then he decided to let the colonel get away with the arrest though it humiliated him. Tomorrow he would be free, and when he got back to the reservation he would call a meeting of the tribe’s council. Too much was happening too fast. He needed the council’s advice.

  The aide led Jozip to a small cell i
n the interior of the fort. Jozip spent half an hour reading the filthy inscriptions on the wall and decided the white race did not know what to do with itself. He was glad he had become an Indian.

  That night he dreamed a woman had got into the cell and was beating him with the handle of her umbrella. He woke in pain. A woman with an umbrella was beating him in the dark. He shouted at her, “Stop, stop, you bitch, go home!” He tried to grab the umbrella but she was strong and fought him for it. Jozip struggled for breath, vigor, enlightenment.

  “You bastard murderer!” she screamed. “You have killed my husband!”

  He caught the umbrella handle in the dark but she clawed his face. Jozip cried out.

  Two men appeared then in the dimly lit cell. Jozip shouted for help but there was none. The men beat him brutally. One man held him down while the other hit him until his face was wet with blood. The second man kicked him in the head. He could not recall what had happened after that.

  Jozip fainted and lay on the cold planks until the colonel’s aide came for him in the morning. He was allowed to wash his swollen face before appearing in the colonel’s office.

  “Chief,” said the colonel, looking at him with distaste, “I am sure distressed to hear about your unhappy adventure last night. I had a toothache and took a slug of gin before I went to sleep. I owe you an apology, but this revenge against you was done behind my back. You have to believe that one of your assailants was the wife of Ezra Pence, the settler who was killed by Indians of your tribe. The other was his brother, and with him came a dear friend of Ezra’s. We had all we could do to prevent the brother and Ezra’s friend from cuttin’ your throat and scalpin’ you. I always said that bad leads to worse. I assure you I was dismayed by this incident and am releasin’ you at once. I would have done it sooner but I had my toothache to attend to.”

  The colonel permitted Jozip to wash his face in a bucket of water in the toilet. He looked at the mirror and shrank from the sight of his battered head.

  “This serves me right,” he said to himself, “because I went to the fort and first I did not tell the tribe. This was wrong, to go without a friend.”