A: Yes.
Q: Good, good. So, would you, could we begin, could you please begin by stating your name, your birth date, your age, where you were born, and that’s it.
A: You first.
Q: Excuse me?
A: You should tell me who you are first. That’s the polite way.
Q: Oh, okay, I suppose you’re correct. I’m Spencer Cox, born July 7, 2007, in Old Los Angeles. I’m forty-five years old. Okay? Is that okay?
A: Yes, that’s good. It’s nice to meet you.
Q: Yes, it’s my pleasure.
(ten seconds of silence)
Q: And?
A: And?
Q: Would you like to introduce yourself?
A: Yes.
(fifteen seconds of silence)
Q: Well, possibly you could do it now? If you please?
A: My name is Etta Joseph. I was born in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation on Christmas Day, 1934. I am one hundred and eighteen years old and I am the Last of the Spokane Indians.
Q: Really? I had no idea you were the last.
A: Well, actually, I’m not. There are thousands of us. But it sounds more romantic, enit?
Q: Yes, very amusing. Irony, a hallmark of the contemporary indigenous American. Good, good. Yes. So, perhaps we could officially begin by…
A: Spencer, what exactly is it you do?
Q: I’m a cultural anthropologist. An anthropologist is…
A: I know what an anthropologist is.
Q: Yes, yes, of course you do. As I was saying, I am a cultural anthropologist and the Owens Lecturer in Applied Indigenous Studies at Harvard University. I’m also the author of seventeen books, texts, focusing on mid- to late-twentieth-century Native American culture, most specifically the Interior Salish tribes of Washington State.
(twenty seconds of silence)
Q: So, Miss Joseph, can I call you Etta?
A: No.
Q: Oh, I see, okay. Formality. Yes, quite another hallmark of the indigenous. Ceremony and all. I understand. I’m honored to be included. So, Miss Joseph, perhaps we could begin, I mean, could I ask an introductory question? Yes. Well, let’s see, you have been a traditional powwow dancer for the last eighty years. In that time, how has the powwow changed? Of course, the contemporary powwow is not a sacred ceremony, not as we have come to understand it, but rather a series of pan-Indian ceremonies whose influences include many tribal cultures and popular American culture as well, but I was wondering how you…
A: Why are you really here?
Q: Well, I was trying to get into that. I wanted to talk about dance and the Indian…
A: You’re here about John Wayne, enit?
Q: Excuse me?
A: You came here to talk about John Wayne.
Q: Well, no, but the John Wayne mythology certainly plays an important role in the shaping of twentieth-century American and Native American culture, but…
A: Have you ever seen a John Wayne movie?
Q: Yes, yes, I have. Most of them, in fact. I was quite the little cowboy when I was a child. Had two Red Ryder six-shooter pistols. They shot these little silver pellets. I recall that I killed a squirrel. I was quite shocked. I had no idea the pellets were dangerous, but I suppose that’s beside the point. Now, back to dance…
A: I used to be an actress.
Q: Really? Well, let’s see here, I don’t recall reading about that in your file.
A: What are you doing?
Q: Well, I’m reading through the file, your profile here, the pre-interview, some excellent books regarding your tribe, and a few texts transcribed directly from the Spokane Tribe oral tradition, which I must say, are quite…
A: Just put those papers away. And those books. What is it with you white people and your books?
Q: I’m afraid I don’t understand.
A: How come you love books so much?
Q: As my mother used to say, they’re the keys to the locked doors of the house of wisdom.
A: Did your mother really say that?
Q: Well, no.
A: So, then, it’s a lie? You just told me a lie?
Q: Yes, yes, I suppose I did.
A: It’s a good lie. Charming even. Attributing one of your faintly amusing and fairly poetic lines to your own mother. You must love her quite a bit.
Q: Oh. Well, I don’t know how to respond to that.
A: Are you a liar?
Q: What do you mean?
A: Do you tell lies?
Q: Everybody tells lies. I mean, occasionally.
A: That’s not what I asked you.
Q: Yes, I tell lies. But I hardly think of myself as a liar.
(twenty-seven seconds of silence)
Q: Okay, so perhaps I am a liar, but not all the time.
(thirty-two seconds of silence)
Q: Why exactly are you calling me a liar?
A: I haven’t called you anything.
Q: But you’ve accused me of lying.
A: No, I asked you if you were lying and you said yes. So I think that means you accused yourself of being a liar. Good observation, by the way.
Q: What’s the point of all this?
A: I’m having fun with you.
Q: Well, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m afraid I might have to move on. My time is valuable.
A: Having fun is very serious.
Q: I hardly think a few jokes are serious. I am currently working on a serious and profound study on the effect of classical European ballroom dancing on the indigenous powwow—a revolutionary text, by the way—so I don’t have time for a lonely woman’s jests and insults.
A: You have a lot to learn. You should listen more and talk less.
Q: Pardon me. I think I’ll leave now.
A: I’m not lonely. Have a good day.
(ten seconds of silence)
Q: Okay, wait, I think I understand. We were participating in a tribal dialogue, weren’t we? That sort of confrontational banter which solidifies familial and tribal ties, weren’t we? Oh, how fascinating, and I failed to recognize it.
A: What are you talking about?
Q: Well, confrontational banter has always been a cultural mainstay of indigenous cultures. In its African form, it becomes the tribal rite they call “doing the dozens.” You know, momma jokes? Like, your mother is so fat, when she broke her leg gravy poured out. It’s all part of the oral tradition. And here I was being insulted by you, and I didn’t recognize it as an integral and quite lovely component of the oral tradition. Of course you had to insult me. It’s your tradition.
A: Oh, stop it, just stop it. Don’t give me that oral tradition garbage. It’s so primitive. It makes it sound like Indians sit around naked and grunt stories at each other. Those books about Indians, those texts you love so much, where do you think they come from?
Q: Well, certainly, all written language has its roots in the oral tradition, but I fail…
A: No, no, no, those books started with somebody’s lie. Then some more lies were piled on top of that, until you had a whole book filled with lies, and then somebody slapped an Edward Curtis photograph on the cover, and called it good.
Q: These books of lies, as you call them, are the definitive texts on the Interior Salish.
A: No, there’s nothing definitive about them. They’re just your oral tradition. And they’re filled with the same lies, exaggerations, mistakes, and ignorance as our oral traditions.
Q: Have you even read these books?
A: I’ve read all of your books. You show me a book written by a white man about Indians and I’ve read it. You show me almost any book, any of your so-called Great Books, and I’ve read them. Hemingway, Faulkner, Conrad. Read them. Austen, Kakfa, James, read them. Whitman, Dickinson, Donne. Read them. We head over to this university or that college, to your Harvard, and grab their list of required reads, and I’ve read them. Hundreds of your books, your white-man books, thousands of them. I’ve read them all.
/> Q: And what is your point in telling me this?
A: I know so much more about you than you will ever know about me.
Q: Miss Joseph, I am a leading authority, no, I am the, the, the leading authority in the field…
A: Mr. Cox, Spencer. For the last one hundred and eighteen years, I have lived in your world, your white world. In order to survive, to thrive, I have to be white for fifty-seven minutes of every hour.
Q: How about the other three minutes?
A: That, sir, is when I get to be Indian, and you have no idea, no concept, no possible way of knowing what happens in those three minutes.
Q: Then tell me. That’s what I’m here for.
A: Oh, no, no, no. Those three minutes belong to us. They are very secret. You’ve colonized Indian land but I am not about to let you colonize my heart and mind.
Q: Tell me then. Why are you here? Why did you consent to this interview? What do you have to tell me that could possibly help me with my work? You, you are speaking political nonsense. Colonialism. That’s the tired mantra of liberals who’ve run out of intellectual imagination. I am here to engage in a free exchange of ideas, and you’re here, you want to inject politics into this. I will have no part of it.
A: I lost my virginity to John Wayne.
(forty-nine seconds of silence)
Q: You’re speaking metaphorically, of course.
A: Spencer, I am speaking of the vagina and the penis.
Q: As metaphors?
A: Do you know the movie The Searchers?
Q: The western? Directed by John Ford? Yes, yes, quite well, actually. Released in 1956, I believe.
A: 1952.
Q: No, no, I’m quite sure it was 1956.
A: You’re quite sure of a lot of things and you’re quite wrong about a lot of them, too.
(five seconds of silence)
Q: Well, I do know The Searchers. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, the ex-Confederate soldier who sets out to find his niece, played by Natalie Wood. She’s been captured by the Comanches who massacred Ethan’s family. Along with Jeffrey Hunter, who plays a half-breed Cherokee, of all things! Wayne will not surrender to hunger, thirst, snow, heat, or loneliness in his quest, his search. A quite brilliant film.
A: Enough with that academic crap. Listen to me. Listen carefully. In 1952, in Kayenta, Arizona, while John Wayne was playing Ethan Edwards, and I was playing a Navajo extra, we fell in love. Him, for the first and only time with an Indian. Me, for the first time with anybody.
“My real name is Marion,” said John Wayne as he slid the condom over his erect penis. His hands were shaking, making it nearly impossible for him to properly fit the condom, so Etta Joseph reached down, smoothed the rubber with the palm of her left hand—she was touching John Wayne—and then guided him inside of her. He made love carefully, with an unintentional tantric rhythm: three shallow thrusts followed by one deep thrust, repeat as necessary.
“Does it hurt?” asked John Wayne, with genuine concern, and not because he was arrogant about being her first lover.
“It’s okay,” said Etta, but it did hurt. It hurt a lot. She wondered why people were so crazy about this act. But still, she was making love to John Wayne.
“Oh, oh, John Wayne,” she moaned. She felt uncomfortable, silly, like a bad actress in a bad love scene.
“Call me Marion,” he said between thrusts. “My real name is Marion. Call me Marion.”
“Marion, Marion, Marion,” she whispered.
They laid together on a Pendleton blanket on the red sand of Navajo Monument Valley. All around them, the impossible mesas. Above them, the most stars either of them had ever seen.
“I love you, I love you,” he said as he kissed her face, neck, breasts. His lips were thin, his face rough with three days of beard.
“Oh,” she said, surprised by his words, even frightened. How could he be in love with her? He didn’t even know her. She was just an eighteen-year-old Spokane Indian woman—a girl—a thousand miles away from home, from her reservation. She was not in Navajo land by accident—she was an actress, after all—but she hadn’t planned on lying beneath John Wayne—Marion!—as he confessed his love, his impossible love for her.
Three days earlier, she’d been an extra in the Navajo camp when John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter traded blankets, hats, and secrets with the Navajo chief. Etta hadn’t had any lines. She’d only been set dressing, a pretty girl in a purple dress. But she’d been proud and she was sure to be on camera because John Ford told her so.
“Girl,” Ford had said. “You are as pretty as the mesa.”
For just a moment, Etta had wondered if Ford might cast her then and there for a speaking role, perhaps even give her the role of Look, the chubby daughter of the Navajo chief, and send that other Indian woman packing. Of course not! But Etta had wished for it, however briefly, and had chided herself for her ambition. She’d wished ill will on another Indian woman just because a white man had called her pretty. Desperate and shallow, of course, but Etta had not been able to help herself.
This was John Ford! He was not handsome, no, but he was a Hollywood director. He made dreams come true. He was the one who filled the movie screens with the movies! He was a magician! He was a feature-film director and she knew they were the kindest and most decent men in the world.
“Stand here,” Ford had directed Etta. “Right here, so the audience can see your lovely face in the background here. Right between Jeffrey and the Duke.” She had not been able to contain her excitement. Five feet away, John Wayne was smoking a cigarette. John Wayne! But more than that, it had been Jeffrey Hunter who’d captured her imagination. He was a beautiful boy, with dark hair, brown skin, and those blue, blue eyes. John Wayne might have been a movie star—and a relatively homely one at that—but Jeffrey Hunter was simply the most gorgeous white man on the planet. But here he was playing an Indian, a half-breed Cherokee, so perhaps Jeffrey himself was part Indian. After all, Etta had thought, why would they cast a white man as an Indian if he didn’t have some Indian blood himself? Otherwise, the movie would have been a lie, and John Wayne didn’t lie. And judging by the kindness in his eyes, by the graceful turn of his spine, by the way he waved his sensuous hands when he talked, Jeffrey Hunter was no liar either.
Anyway, they’d filmed the scene, a funny one where Jeffrey Hunter had inadvertently traded a hat for a Navajo wife, for Look—how positively amusing!—and all the while, Etta had looked on and wished that Jeffrey Hunter had traded for her. Not Jeffrey Hunter the actor in the scene, but Jeffrey Hunter the blue-eyed man.
“Mr. Hunter, you were wonderful,” she’d said when she’d approached him after the scene.
Without a word to her, he’d turned and walked away. She’d admired his silence, his commitment to his craft. He hadn’t wanted to be distracted by the shallow attentions of some Indian girl other than Look. Still. Her feelings had been hurt and there might have been a tear in her eye when John Wayne sidled up close to her—yes, sidled—and shook his head.
“I don’t understand actors,” the Duke had said. “It’s the audience that matters, and yet, so often, we shun them.”
“What does shun mean?” she asked.
“Exactly. I mean, how can we, as actors, get close to the soul, to our hearts, if we don’t look deeply into the souls and hearts of others? In the end, how can we fragile human beings possibly be sympathetic actors if we don’t refuse to show sympathy for other people’s emotions? How can we realistically project love, hope, and faith if we are not loving, hopeful, and faithful ourselves?”
“That’s beautiful.”
“Yes, yes. If we don’t feel it in here, in our chest, then the audience will never feel it in their hearts.”
“That’s why I act,” she said.
“Hello, my name is John Wayne.”
“I’m Etta Joseph.”
Now, three days after Jeffrey Hunter had walked away from her, Etta was naked with John Wayne.
“I love you, I l
ove you,” he whispered to her. He was gentle with her, of course, but he was strong as well. He rolled onto his back and lifted her, then lowered her down onto him. His penis was huge! It was a movie star’s penis, for sure. Etta had never really thought about John Wayne’s penis before. She’d never really thought about any man’s or actor’s penis before. Sure, she’d felt strong desires for men, sexual desires, but they’d always taken the form of vague shapes and sizes inside of her body. She’d never imagined what John Wayne would look like naked, but there he was! Strong arms, long legs, a pot belly. As he lay beneath her, as he closed his eyes, Etta wondered what she should do with her hands. Nobody had ever taught her how to do this, how to make love to a man. And it was John Wayne, so he must have made love to a thousand different women in his life. Other movie stars! He must have made love to Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, maybe even Judy Garland. All those perfect women. Etta felt small and terrified in the presence of John Wayne.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m afraid.”
“If you get pregnant, I’ll take care of it.”
In the rush, she’d never even thought about pregnancy. How stupid! She was only eighteen years old, unmarried, a thousand miles away from home. What would she do with a baby? And what did he mean by taking care of it? Did he want to marry her, be the husband of an Indian woman and the father of an Indian child, or did he want her to have an abortion? God, she’d heard about abortions, how they reached inside of you with a metal hook and scraped out all of your woman parts. In terror, she rolled away from John Wayne and ran naked through the desert, toward the lights of the distant set, where John Ford and Jeffrey Hunter were sure to have the answers to all of her questions.
“Wait, wait, wait,” cried John Wayne as he chased after her. He was not a young man. He wondered if he could possibly catch her. But she was a child of the river and pine tree, of wild grass and mountain. She understood gravity in a different way and, therefore, tripped in the rough sands of the desert. She fell face first into the red dirt and waited for John Wayne to catch and hurt her. Isn’t that what he had always done? Wasn’t he the man who killed Indians?
The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories Page 18