by Beth Piatote
The Beadworkers
Copyright © 2019 by Beth Piatote
First hardcover edition: 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
“Feast (Triptych)” was first published in The Kenyon Review Online, Jan/Feb 2019. “The News of the Day” was first published in Studies in American Indian Literatures 21.2 (2009). “Beading Lesson” was first published in Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women, ed. Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Lauren Stuart Muller, and Jana Sequoya Magdaleno (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Piatote, Beth H., 1966– author.
Title: The beadworkers / Beth Piatote.
Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017873 | ISBN 9781640092686
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Fiction. | Indians of North America—Social life and customs—Fiction. | Northwest, Pacific—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3616.I21255 .A6 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017873
Jacket design by Jenny Carrow
Book design by Jordan Koluch
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10987654321
In honor of my mother, Anne Eagle Hege
In memory of my father, Carl Henry Hege
Contents
wé·tes wax̣ waí·swit / land and life
Feast I
Feast II
Feast III
Indian Wars
The News of the Day
Fish Wars
ʔiná·tx̣aksa / I tell my story / I conjure my powers / I make a wish
Beading Lesson
wIndin!
Rootless
Falling Crows
Katydid
netí·telwit / human beings
Antíkoni
Acknowledgments
Notes
wé·tes wax̣ waí·swit land and life
Feast I
kú·s
first taste of life
not air but water, carried
by our mothers, we taste water
rising from earth, turning in salt waters where
you nasóʔx̣ travel
through ocean waves and
darkness gaining power
in those far away salt
currents of sea and labor
to return again
to the cold river of your origin
upriver to give life
where wewúkiye bugle
in fog-mantled mornings of our
land awakening we step
toward ʔímes each foot
fall a quiet petition to be worthy of your
gift, we bring you in, carry you
adorned in beadwork and beauty
as drums beat
through heart and women sing
łiá·n
songs return to
earth, belong
to the land, gathered by
hand thick bitter taste of
green hills qées cradled
in your hand, rooting
you to this place, songs
flow from our throats a
fine rain, the water cycle
gives qá·ws in spring
first feast of our green
returning
sun grows long branches
reach to sky, hungry birds
share tíms offering
hard seeds to roll on our tongues
with succulent sound of our
ni·mi·pu·tímt
we sing cemí·tx mountains
in new dresses with baskets woven
by grandmothers’ hands and songs
we carry, we are carried
to return again, give thanks again, return these songs
give breath and good words, ring, lift hands
to sky release heart thoughts, we
are borne in
kú·s
Feast II
kú·s
I had a dream not long after I started. Some people say that when you start dreaming in a language, that is when you know it has become fluent to you, but I know this can’t possibly be so. I think I maybe knew twenty or thirty words at the time, mostly nouns and greetings and a few verbs. But I had this dream, and it was beautiful. In the dream I saw the longhouse at Nespelem, and on the side of the longhouse I saw clearly this word: PÁ·YN. Arrival. I woke just then, suddenly, and as I woke I heard my own voice say: pá·yca. I am coming, I am arriving. The shock of hearing my voice impressed upon me the feeling of the dream. That dream helped me persevere when I felt small, when I was alone, when I looked at the enormity of it all. There were times I was discouraged, when I faced the entire ocean of words and I feared the undertow would pull me under, like an eagle who is dragged into the current of a river, talons locked on the back of a salmon. Later I would learn another word, and I would hold it just as close, say it to myself, to the sky, say it to Phil and those who spoke: pá·yca pá·ytoqsa. I am coming. I am coming back.
nasóʔx̣
He was from a Salmon Tribe over that way, over to the coast.
And his tribe got terminated.
I don’t know why, but the folks around there stopped. Maybe it was a dark time for them. But they gave up the Salmon Ceremony, all them. Except this one guy.
That’s not something to do with just one person, but he did. Not even his family came. Some of his own people got on him. Went hard on him for doin’ that. And maybe it wasn’t right, to do it that way, just he alone. I know that man. He’s stubborn! He don’t care. Eight, maybe ten years like that, he kept it up, all alone.
After that people started coming back.
Now you go over there to Salmon Ceremony with them, and there’s hundreds of people there. Not even all them know this story, but it’s true.
wewúkiye
The animals help us. We know this from the old stories from when the world was coming to be, and the animal people offered themselves to us, each in their way, each one in order. And still they offer themselves to us. A few years ago, I saw a photograph in the newspaper of a ship in the Pacific Ocean, headed north. The ship was bearing the ancestors and belongings of the Haida Gwaii people. The ship was carrying them back home, bringing them home from a museum. So there was the ship, headed north. And in front of the ship, leading the procession, was a bald eagle flying in the sky. And swimming alongside the ship, cresting with the waves, was a pod of killer whales. They traveled that way all along the Pacific Coast, all the way home.
The animals help us. We know this from the old stories, from family stories, from court stories. I know a story that is happening right now, about a man who called on an elk to help him, and the elk came to his aid, and now the man is in court. But listen. This is a good story. You see, the man is Sinixt from north of here. Many years ago, the Sinixt people were suffering from smallpox. They were weakened, and the Canadian miners and settlers hunted those people down, drove them out of their homeland. The survivors cam
e to us for refuge. We took them in, and now they are strong again. Here we call them the Lakes people. But they never stopped wanting to go back, or going back, in fact, to visit their homelands and hunt. Canada, in the meantime, decided the Sinixt were extinct and extinguished their rights. But the Sinixt people are still alive and so are their rights.
A few years ago one of these unextinct Sinixt men killed an elk in his homelands. Then he called the game officials in Canada and turned himself in. They took the bait. When the province pressed charges against him for taking big game without a license, he pleaded not guilty. He cited his aboriginal rights to hunt in his own territory. And now that case is in court, and Canada will have to look at that man, standing in the middle of the room, and all his people around him, and Canada will have to admit that the Sinixt are not extinct. The Sinixt man is very brave. And so is the elk who gave himself. That man and that elk knew each other from long ago; they met in dreams and sweat, blood and forest. The man needed the elk; the people need the elk. Without the elk, there would be no case, no path home, no court for the man to present himself to the State and say: we are alive.
ʔímes
From the Colville Confederated Tribes TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Survey:
•What are the responsibilities of a father?
•What are the responsibilities of an uncle?
•Should a deer be considered acceptable payment in lieu of cash?
łiá·n
And this one, you need to remember this. This root is good for nursing mothers.
qées
After World War II, advances in astrophysics allowed humans to see their planet from space. In 1972, the Apollo 17 took the most famous photograph of Earth, the blue planet. It might be fair to say that since the mid-twentieth century, humans have seen things that were never within their visual grasp before. But do we have better dreams? Have we seen better things? I think I would give up my fridge magnet of Planet Earth, every glimpse of snowy mountain folds from the window of a plane, the glittering view of Paris from the Eiffel Tower on New Year’s Eve—I would give up all of these things to see what our ancestors saw, to dream their vivid dreams, to come over a mountain with my mothers and sisters and suddenly see, in the wide open, an enormous blue meadow of blooming camas, an endless, unbroken field of periwinkle, lake, and lapis that today you could barely imagine, a land breathing and rolling with blue, a land so beautiful that you would wonder how to find your voice, find your offering, draw out a song on your breath and press the strength of your body to the earth, into the earth, into the deep wild blue.
qá·ws
From the Treaty of 1855:
Article III
The exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams where running through or bordering said reservation is further secured to said Indians: as also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with citizens of the territory, and of erecting temporary buildings for curing, together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses and cattle upon open and unclaimed land.
tíms
We had been camping for several days, and then we packed up to go home. It was August. Hot. And we were going down a dry, dusty mountain road when we saw these big bushes loaded with chokecherries, right beside a little stream. We stopped there and picked until we filled two big buckets, which took a long time, and I have to admit we were not the most agreeable children at that time. We were tired and sweaty and wanted to go home. But my parents simply could not drive past those trees aflame with ripeness. We picked, we complained, we spit out the bright red ones—too bitter to eat raw, but filled with pectin and good to keep. Our parents did not scold us. The next day my mother and I cooked the fruit down, strained it through cheesecloth, and made jelly. We poured the jelly into a mismatched collection of jars and small glasses, and sealed them with paraffin wax. We laughed at how long it took to pick those buckets and how much fruit it took to make each little jar, which, when held to the light of the late-afternoon sun, cast a rosy glow on the kitchen table.
cemí·tx
. . . ʔiceyé·ye hiʔsé·pte kamó·twalc pá·x̣at, ka· papícqi ka· ʔáps ʔá·likaʔs. capáypa ixíxne luúpluúp pé·kuya ka hé·nee pá·tyoxna, “ʔilcwé····cix! kíye pí·wetemeyleksix.” koní·x wáqoʔ pé·tqexne íxix hilú·pluu·pce ka hihíne, “wéye ʔi·m nisé·eylu, kawó’ ʔí·nano’c mú·xsnim, wetemeylékim.” wáqo’ ka· ʔiceyé·yenm péhinewye ka· ʔinekí·u’ o’ tiwíwtiwíw ʔilcwe·cix hikó·qana. koná ʔiceyé·yenm pé·ne, “kawó’ ʔí·ne weteméylekim—wáqo’ ʔóykalana titó·qana ʔekú·s ʔé·. kawó’ ʔí·nenu’, ké·n····ex tillá·pno’.” kuʔús pesisimnúye. ka· wáqo’ pétemeyleke ʔilcwé·cisnim. kála konmá pé·ʔnehneme ʔiceyé·yene koná páʔnixqawna titlúqawsna ka· titlúcemitexne ka· titlúkikeyene, “kíne titó·qanm pá·ʔya·x̣cano’ ka· hipalló·yno’. kí·mtemcime hiwéhyem netí·telwit.” . . .
. . . Coyote carried on his back five agate knives and pure fir pitch and flint for making a fire. After some time, he made the grasses sway and again Coyote shouted to the monster, “ʔilcwéeeecix! Let’s inhale each other!” At that point, Monster suddenly saw the grasses moving and he said, “Now, then, you little Nisé·eylu, you first inhale me!” Then Coyote tried, and he made Monster stagger a little bit. Coyote said to him, “Now me you inhale—now that everyone, all the titó·qana you have just eaten. Take me, too, lesssst I become lonely.” Thus he insisted. And now the monster inhaled him. Just that way Monster took Coyote in, and as he went flying through the air, Coyote placed each one along the way, the titlú-roots and titlú-huckleberries and titlú-service berries, saying: Here the Indian People will find them, and they will be happy. In only a short time away, the human beings are coming . . .
Rain came in abundance after years of drought in California, and we had no desire to complain about the gift of water. We wore our boots and beaded medicine bags and assembled on the steps, held our soggy banners aloft. Some of us had been to the camp, some not. We each did what we could. I marched with thousands in DC, also in the rain, and later sent money and supplies. I followed the stories of tribal delegations and ordinary activists to Oceti Sakowin, protests in Spokane, Seattle, the Capitol. We shouted, we marched, we wrote, we prayed, we drummed and sang and rang bells. We lifted our hands with eagle feathers and banners and holy anger, the anger of Jesus storming the temple, the holy fire of Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Martin Luther King. I saw my kin lean against the bitter winter with hand-lettered signs that said KÚ·S HÍ·WES WÁ·IS. Water is life. Water is alive. All life begins and ends with water: our mothers, the rivers, the rain. From the beginning of time to the end of time, the word we carry on our breath, the taste of this world on our tongues and our tears, is alive, is life, is kú·s
Feast III
Water coughed from the mouth of the hand pump, smacking the floor of the metal bucket, which tipped suddenly from the force. With one hand, Mae reached to steady the pail, whose handle was looped on the neck of the pump, and with the other she pushed the arm of the pump to weaken its stream. The water flowed smoothly then, filling the bucket quickly, and Mae cranked down again to stop it. Mae knew that the water would be frigid, but nonetheless she dipped her hand, cupped, to break its surface, and slurped the drawn coldness from her palm. Emptied, her hand retained the shock of iciness, feeling to her like another substance, not at all her own body, but weighty, slick, and cold as the underside of a salmon just pulled from the river.
She wiped her hand quickly on her dungarees and unhitched the pail, then filled a second one. It was easier to carry two than one, and less likely to spill. She anchored herself and lifted both buckets, striding evenly toward the camp. As she walked, she took in the sounds: the low rumble of mourning doves in the barn, a blackbird’s hail, the swish of grass against her leg. Without warning she flashed upon a memory of herself as a child, losing control of a washbucket and mop in the h
allway of the girls’ dormitory at Carlisle. Miss Lunsford had barked angrily at her, accusing Mae of carelessness and sloth, and the sudden fury had caused such tension, as Mae and all the girls froze in place, that Mae was overcome with the impulse to laugh. She had fought hard against it as the urge tugged at the corners of her mouth. She tried to breathe evenly and stare at the floor, but the pressure was too much. Just as the water had liberated itself from the washbucket, the laugh escaped her mouth. The girls stared, wide-eyed, as Miss Lunsford seized Mae by the arm and dragged her to the supply closet, shutting her in the dark with only her thoughts and the stinging smell of lye to surround her. Her eyes and lungs burned. None of the other girls had laughed. But later, retelling the story outside under a tree, with Mae their returned hero and Miss Lunsford’s reaction on vivid replay, they laughed until their stomachs ached. Mae smiled then, remembering her school chums.
She set the buckets down beside the stove and used a dipper to fill the enamel coffee pot and toss in some grounds. The stove was the central fixture of the camp kitchen, which was really no more than a stove and a table on a platform under a pitched roof. The kitchen and the outhouse were the only structures with any permanence in the camp. At the worktable, Annie was cutting flour with lard for biscuits. Mae could hear others in the camp stirring. Faintly she heard a man singing “When You’re Smiling,” the sound muffled by a canvas tipi wall. Its source was the far side of the encampment, near the farmer’s house. She remembered Jim getting dressed in the morning and singing to himself, then pushed the image out of her mind. She missed his voice. His hands. His gentle nature. Mornings were always the worst; grief like fog only lifted as the day wore on. Still, these mornings had been a bit easier. While for some of them, the labor camp was a departure from life’s ordinary comforts—a wooden door, a soft chair, a reliable icebox—for Mae it was a welcome escape from the thunderous stillness of the small, stick-built house that she had once shared with Jim and their daughter, Jeannette.