I want tell you a little story, because this came from Wyoming.
And I began to have visions last night,
because I've driven through Wyoming many times.
And I live in Indian country, part of the year.
And it's in Minnesota.
And the county is Kandiyohi County.
There was an incident, which took place in 1862, which
I want to tell you about, because it tied me,
inextricably, to a kind of union.
It started me thinking very deeply about things.
And I wonder if you know poem by James Wright, called
"A Centenary Ode To Little Crow," which is a great poem.
If you don't know that poem, it's
in the Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
It's a great poem.
If I had it, I'd read it.
There's an incident which took place, which I think
might be of interest to you.
At the same day, on the same day with the same pen that Abraham
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation,
which was in late December 1862, he also
signed the death warrant of 62 Indians, Sioux,
were to be hung in a place called Mankato, Minnesota.
He signed this, their execution.
And they were to be hung on Christmas Eve.
But the townspeople who had provoked these Sioux
to respond, by riding through their various villages,
slaughtering their wives, children.
They decided they didn't want their Christmas fouled up.
So they postponed the execution until the December 26th.
And I've always had great difficulty,
particularly when I was in Illinois, dealing with Lincoln.
Not so much that I didn't think he made some major decisions,
changed the nature of things, but because he was so
schizophrenic in his behavior.
And that tendency has carried on.
And I want to read this poem, because before I
knew about that incident, I'd written
about this particular problem without being very specific.
And this is called, "History as Bandages:
Polka Dots and Moonbeams."
"One is an igloo of whalebone and oil and a poisonous gas.
One is a canoe underwater, laden with wild rice,
grubs, and Indian arrows.
One is a banjo, packed with thin dirt
in Richmond, Virginia, Gabriel, 1800.
One is a round bubble of mustard rock,
broken on an Indian squaw.
One is a print of a buffalo, bearded, masked,
made musty skinned hair.
The white rectangular patchwork covers
all these national wounds kept secretly bound at night,
absorbing color and blood and bones
of all shapes and disguises."
The reason why I mentioned Wyoming before
was because there's a fine book written by a woman
named Sandoz called, Cheyenne Autumn.
And I wasn't very far from Cheyenne.
And I'd written a poem about Colorado,
about some men who had come to Colorado, who
went to Alaska to go on a hunt.
And I won't read that poem.
It's too long.
But I want to read you the epigraph to this section, which
are interesting, because they come
from various Indian utterances.
And then I want to talk a bit about this,
because I think that there are some things which
ought to be said.
This is from a poem called, "Love Letters, the Caribou
Hills of the Moose Range."
And--