WEBVTT

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I'll do a couple of
Indian poems here.

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The first one Indian
graves at Jocko.

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The Jocko area is now
occupied by the Flathead

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Indians up in Montana.

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But they used to occupy
the Bitterroot Valley,

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very rich, fertile area.

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And after the Civil War,
Scandinavian settlers

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came out and started to settle
in the Bitterroot Valley

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and wanted to get
rid of the Indians.

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So they formed a lobby and
went back to Washington DC.

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And they found a
Senator, Garfield

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who later became president.

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And he drew up a treaty
called the Treaty of 1869.

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And under the terms
of the treaty,

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the Flathead Indians would
give up the Bitterroot

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and go up and occupy
the Jocko area.

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Well, Chief Charlo after two
sub chiefs signed this treaty.

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Chief Charlo refused to sign
it, and some long litigations

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followed.

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And finally in desperation,
Garfield told a general

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to forge the chief's name on the
document and the general did.

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And that's how the Flathead
Indians lost the Bitterroot

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Valley on a forgery.

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Now just recently there
was a settlement about six,

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seven years ago, there was a
court case that was settled

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and the government award had
to pay the Indians $4 million,

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which seems like a lot
of money to you and me,

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but it is 396 million short of
the estimated property values.

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They were screwed out of.

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This is about a little Indian
cemetery up in the Jocko area.

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Indian graves at Bitterroot.

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These dirt mounds make
the dead seem fat.

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Crude walls of rock that hold
the dirt when rain rides wild

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were placed with skill or luck.

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No crucifix can make the drab
boards of this chapel Catholic.

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A mass across these
stones becomes

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whatever whale the
wind decides is right.

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They ask for got the black robe
and the promised masses well

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meant promises shabby
third hand crosses.

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This graveyard can expand,
can crawl in all directions

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to the mountains,
climb the mountains

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to the salmon, and a sun
that toned the arrows when

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animals were serious as meat.

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The dead are really fat, the
houses lean from lack of lawns,

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the river runs a thin
bed down the useless flat

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where Flathead homes
are spaced like friends.

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The dead are strange
jammed this familial,

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a cheap fence separates
the chapel from the graves.

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A forlorn lot like
this where snow

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must crawl to find
the tribal stones

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is more than just a grim result
of cheap Garfield's forgery,

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some aimless trek of horses
from the stolen Bitterroot.

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Dead are buried here because
the dead will always be obscure.

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Wind, the one thing, whites
will always give a chance.

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