I'll do a couple of Indian poems here.
The first one Indian graves at Jocko.
The Jocko area is now occupied by the Flathead
Indians up in Montana.
But they used to occupy the Bitterroot Valley,
very rich, fertile area.
And after the Civil War, Scandinavian settlers
came out and started to settle in the Bitterroot Valley
and wanted to get rid of the Indians.
So they formed a lobby and went back to Washington DC.
And they found a Senator, Garfield
who later became president.
And he drew up a treaty called the Treaty of 1869.
And under the terms of the treaty,
the Flathead Indians would give up the Bitterroot
and go up and occupy the Jocko area.
Well, Chief Charlo after two sub chiefs signed this treaty.
Chief Charlo refused to sign it, and some long litigations
followed.
And finally in desperation, Garfield told a general
to forge the chief's name on the document and the general did.
And that's how the Flathead Indians lost the Bitterroot
Valley on a forgery.
Now just recently there was a settlement about six,
seven years ago, there was a court case that was settled
and the government award had to pay the Indians $4 million,
which seems like a lot of money to you and me,
but it is 396 million short of the estimated property values.
They were screwed out of.
This is about a little Indian cemetery up in the Jocko area.
Indian graves at Bitterroot.
These dirt mounds make the dead seem fat.
Crude walls of rock that hold the dirt when rain rides wild
were placed with skill or luck.
No crucifix can make the drab boards of this chapel Catholic.
A mass across these stones becomes
whatever whale the wind decides is right.
They ask for got the black robe and the promised masses well
meant promises shabby third hand crosses.
This graveyard can expand, can crawl in all directions
to the mountains, climb the mountains
to the salmon, and a sun that toned the arrows when
animals were serious as meat.
The dead are really fat, the houses lean from lack of lawns,
the river runs a thin bed down the useless flat
where Flathead homes are spaced like friends.
The dead are strange jammed this familial,
a cheap fence separates the chapel from the graves.
A forlorn lot like this where snow
must crawl to find the tribal stones
is more than just a grim result of cheap Garfield's forgery,
some aimless trek of horses from the stolen Bitterroot.
Dead are buried here because the dead will always be obscure.
Wind, the one thing, whites will always give a chance.