Tis Merely Temporally Temporary

The Old Barn

This was my grandpa's barn.  This photo is about the loneliest thing I have ever seen.

The house faced north, and this is looking east, down what was once the driveway. There was fencing on both sides of the barn. There was a stock tank and gates and horses, people and cattle. There was a well curb to the right in the foreground where my father planted a wild grapevine he found along the river. By the time I arrived on the planet it had overspread the trellis above the well, making a cool, fragrant place to sit in the shade. There is the haymow where my Uncle Superman had a mad scientist laboratory full of pickled snakes, frogs and all manner of gruesome creatures one year. It was the sanctuary where, as often as I possibly could, I would spend time brushing Lady, my father's horse, talking to her and hugging her big coppery neck. If I could not ride, I would climb onto her back and lay against her neck, content to be in the presence of a being I loved with all of my child's heart and soul.

In recently remembering my parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncles and the ordinary lives we shared here, a round of happy memories arose, coloring my dreams for several nights. The dearest times of our lives come and go, disappearing in the inexorable force of time. We understand no one lives forever but we have no way to change the impermanence of literally everything. Those days and most of those people have been washed far from me by time and life and death. I look back on those green and golden days with a full heart.

The farmstead was halfway up the hillside from a river bottom bend in the Little Walnut River. Atop the hill were the fading scars of buffalo wallows. There was a strong spring a bit further down the hill that ran fresh, cold water continually. And on the high bank of the river, my uncle found dozens of arrowheads and other stone tools, evidence that human beings had appreciated the fresh water spring for centuries before a single European ancestor set foot on the shores of Turtle Island. No one really knows who the first humans were to camp beside the river, or hunt the big game, or fish the water that even in my day still contained freshwater mussels twice as big as a man's hand - fresh water eels - perch and catfish. And, like me, how many hundreds of generations of children gratefully swam just above the shallows during the long, hot days of summer?

I do not know what tribes owned the area that became Butler County. One source mentions the Kansa. Another historical reference speaks of about twenty different Plains tribes gathering in the general vicinity for trade around the time the land was ceded. The final ceding of land came from the Osage, I believe. All I know for certain is that countless generations of people loved the bend of that river as much I did - as much as my whole family loved that place.

Reminiscing about my grandparent's farm, I considered the hours my grandfather poured into his crops and land - the maintenance of fences and pastures and ponds - the tending of his cattle. It was his life's work and the way he and Grandma provided for their family. Every human being alive upon this planet - from the early tribes who could not conceive of the concept of owning the land - to the poorest man struggling in the streets of any one of the enormous modern cities - intimately knows the landscape and all that moves on it. We love the place we call home, no matter how humble - no matter how grand - no matter how paved over it may be. The earth herself returns our love - our attention and our intention. And when the human beings depart, the heart goes out of well loved land.

The tribes who once loved that spring and the small unremarkable river lived from the bounty of the land, though that nomadic life was no easier than any other life. The immigrants who built the old house and barn and set the first fences around the bounty of the tall grass, breaking out the bottoms for corn, loved that place, too. The man who has that land now dug out the spring to make a moat around his house. It seems sacrilegious but someone before my family had built a concrete curb around the spring. The spring persists to this day and as yet has not been contaminated by fracking - though surely it is only a matter of time.

The immigrants, in just over a hundred years extirpated the buffalo, wolves, mountain lions, antelope and deer from Kansas. Now in the second century since white settlement, I would not swim nor eat fish caught in the river today. Each time I have returned to the Little Walnut, the water is a noxious brownish green, often with dirty foam. It is different than simply being muddy. It is poisoned.

The people who came before left arrowheads and boiling stones, Quivera knives and spear points in the soil of that river bottom. The new people have left fences and old stone foundations and a horrible mix of chemicals and abuse. Perhaps there will be a gradual balancing of the number of human beings then the burden on the earth will lessen. Nature will cover the scars, cleanse the water and soil. Our harmful marks upon the face of the planet will be swept away as surely as tall grass growing where this old barn once stood.  When I stop to consider it - the history and the sweep of time - I am once more struck by the indecipherable riddle of what exactly is the meaning and purpose of life on this planet - and will anyone ever solve it.

Oklahoma Where The Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain...

I had to travel to Oklahoma again so I took a scenic route. I drove to Ponca City, then through the Osage Reservation. Of all the tribes forced to Oklahoma, only the Osage have retained a reservation. In looking into the history of the Osage, I discovered that in March of this year, a court in Denver ruled that the Osage reservation had been dissolved over one hundred years ago, in 1906 at the time of Osage allotment. No one knew it, though - not until the court of appeals decided it was so in 2010. The Osage are fighting being taxed in their own country, but lost - this round.

"The tribe’s appeal was filed against members of the Oklahoma Tax Commission, but 12 groups supporting the commission as friends of the court included state and local farm bureaus and cattlemen’s associations, electric cooperatives, petroleum interests, wildlife and environmental associations, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce, and others." From Indian Country Today

The white man circled the legal wagons in grand fashion against the Osage this time. If you want to incite a riot of white folk, just hint that they might be paying more taxes than you, or let them get the idea that you have something they have not already stolen from you.

I do not understand the evil wind that blew the Mayflower's first immigrants to the eastern shores of this continent. It has never ceased its destructive and voracious howling to annihilate the Indians, even to this day. What if there had been some basic belief that the people already living on these lands had an inalienable right to exist? What if there had been some shred of wisdom in the invaders' collective heart that guided them toward respect, to value the wisdom these old cultures may have had to share? If there had been some meeting of the minds, some small willingness to share, what manner of country may have been built? Perhaps we would not be facing environmental extinction at this point. Clearly, that evil wind continues to blow.

The good news is that the Osage people are alive and well and still fighting.

Osage to check out the Osage web site.

Native American Rights Fund if you would feel so inclined as to donate to the Native American Rights legal fund.

Symphony in the Flint Hills

From Afar

On the wagon...

On the wagon...

Camelot

Two Cowgirls

The banners in the humidity and South wind

The music - all photos by Anda - except for the photo of Anda by Mom

Thanks to my daughter, I had the chance to attend "Symphony in the Flint Hills" last night. Our first time but the fifth year of the event. In a celebration of the most beautiful area of Kansas, a symphony orchestra sets up out on the prairie and several thousand people come to listen. It is quite an event, grows in fame each year, and tickets sell out immediately. I had never been able to get tickets.

People come to enjoy the tall grass prairie and the beauty of the hills beneath the infinite Kansas sky. They spend a most pleasant day with horses and cowboys and wagons about, and all is blessed with the ever-present Kansas wind. It is truly an original Kansas event.

Large white tents were placed atop a long ridge, and tall standards tethering long white flags were set all along the area. The tent tops reflected shimmering silver from a long distance. The graceful flags adorned the south wind. The site appeared almost as a mirage. At first glimpse, my daughter and I felt the same anticipation every human being has ever felt arriving at a special gathering in the wide open spaces of these prairies.

Gentle people attend. Beer and wine are sold, but no public drunkenness, no whooping Kansas red necks, no one spoiling for a fight, no race or socioeconomic clashes. The sun goes down behind the gently rolling western horizon and stars appear, or lightning and lightning bugs, or all three.

Well into the concert, about sixteen cowboys on genuine working cow ponies gathered a sizable herd of cattle and moved them in a long trail across the opposite hillside. The front of the herd wanted to bolt, but some cowboys ran their ponies ahead. Those horses turned to face the oncoming steers, matching them turn for turn, slowing the herd and making the cattle go in the direction the cowboys intended.

A cowboy on a red roan appaloosa pony simply could not resist a bit of showmanship, prancing and rearing his horse before the crowd. Most cowboys work cattle and do all their cowboying far out of the sight of any appreciative greenhorn eyes. They are quietly proud of their good, hardworking cow horses. A modest show of skill before an admiring crowd is understandable.

A few cowboys rode along the temporary fence surrounding the hillside where the crowd was seated. Children and people of all ages gravitated along the fence, petting the faces of the patient horses, taking pictures and talking to the cowboys. I saw one elderly man, his back painfully bent, make his slow way to the fence. I imagined he had been a young cowboy and wanted to feel the soft nose of a cow pony and hear the creak of damp leather again. (Of course that is pure imagination, but why else would an old, crippled man make his way down such a steep and rocky hillside?)

It was an entirely unexpected gift handed to my daughter when those tickets were placed in her hand yesterday. I was enjoying myself immensely. I anxiously searched out the field journals created specifically for the event because I definitely wanted to buy one. The journals were artistic and beautiful, and contained chapters on everything about the Flint Hills except for a single mention of the Indians, the people who were here first. I simply could not stop the feeling of outrage spreading from my belly. How can hundreds of decent human beings put on such a great party celebrating this beautiful, unique area but absolutely ignore the people from which this land was taken? I was greatly dismayed. The journal was celebrating the Flint Hills, the beauty, the ranch culture, the long colorful history of the area, but apparently history began a mere 150 years ago. Bison were included, but not Indians. It was as if cowboys had simply appeared by magic in this magnificent emerald land. I was almost sick to my stomach.

I felt bad for my daughter because she was having a great time until I began bitching and moaning over this tiny little oversight committed by all the white people in charge of Symphony in the Flint Hills. I tried hard to tone it down but I simply could not see the event in the same light as when we first arrived. When we set up our chairs on the hillside in anticipation of the music, I tried to let the green and graceful beauty of the place calm me, give me perspective.

Then, the governor of the great state of Kansas took the stage. He gave a rousing speech to kick off the evening's festivities. It was a speech all about cowboys, and Flint Hills, and every Kansas college and university except Haskell, the Indian university located in Lawrence, where Quantrill's Civil War raid left over 200 dead because Missouri wanted Kansas to be a slave state, which the Governor DID mention. It was a perfect politician's speech suited to the occasion, but once again, the history of the Flint Hills began 150 years ago, when apparently a Christian God dropped white people into an empty landscape.

I thought of my son, one quarter Potawatomi by the white man's blood quantum. Leonard McKinney once said to me, "Your son is op-toh-zi [half] but which half is Indin'?" I thought of my son's Potawatomi grandmother and his father, and aunts and uncles and cousins, and all the Potawatomi who were given this land by treaty after it was taken from the Kansa. The Kansa were herded like cattle on foot from their diminished reserve in Council Grove, south to Oklahoma. Their trail of tears quite likely passes not far from where the Governor was standing, rah-rahing for the white people on such a festive night.

I thought of Patti, and her sons, and all her relation. I thought of all the Indians I love, and it brought tears to my eyes. So, I put a pinch of tobacco on the earth and assured the spirits I still remembered them. I offered a prayer for all the Indians who are still alive and well right here in Kansas, including my son. (It is quite a shock for white people to discover a few Indians made it through the genocide.) And, I told myself, someone will eventually come along and rub out the white people, too. That made me feel much better and I was able to shake off the anger and sense of outrage. I was able to enjoy myself and be good company for my daughter the rest of the night.

After the concert, which was wonderful, my daughter and I chose to walk all the way back to the parking lot instead of standing in line for an hour or two for the shuttle. I was huffing and puffing and sweating in the 90% humidity and well, maybe I was complaining about the long walk. I said we had to just keep slogging through and we would make it, and my daughter said, "Just like the Indians."

http://www.symphonyintheflinthills.org/

Part Indian, Full Blood Cowboy

The world is missing one of its most original sons now. Ed Ketterman died last Tuesday when his big heart finally gave out. At the age of 75, not so old in these times, he made the decision he was tired and ready to move on. With his wife of fifty five years, and his loving family gathered around him, he took his leave the same way he lived his life - on his terms.

The day of the funeral, the main church was filled to capacity, with a large number of people relegated to the other side of the building where they could only hear the service. People of all ages came to say goodbye. It was no surprise to me that so many would come, but the preacher remarked on the unusually large funeral for someone Ed's age.

As I sat in the church with all those people who knew and loved Ed, I wondered who, in all of my life, was as honest and authentic as this good man. There was no one to compare.

Ed had a very quick mind, an excellent memory, and sized up any situation in an instant. He could not resist getting a person right where it stings, but it was never mean spirited. A darker man with the same attributes could have cut people to ribbons, but Ed's big heart and excellent humor saved all of us slower wits. There was always a twinkle in his eye.

Ed knew who he was and did not care who you may have thought you were. Marty Shottenheimer, head coach of Kansas City Chiefs, came through one day where Ed worked. The Chiefs had made the playoffs but lost in the first round. When Marty came by glad-handing everyone, Ed gave him the needle for bumbling the team's chances. Knowing Ed, he had distilled the entire failure of the game down to the pivotal point, and with his talent for truth, shot the arrow right into Marty's self important ego. Marty just walked on. Though I was not there, I can guarantee there was delight in Ed's eyes.

You never had to guess where you stood with Ed Ketterman. He would tell you straight out what he thought. It was never in an overbearing, heavy handed way. It was just plain words, simple spoke. And he had a great sense of humor.

For quite some time he had to have a mechanical apparatus that regulated his heart beat. It was something more complicated than just a pace maker, as I understand it. Last year he needed to go in for an adjustment to this technology, which required some surgery. When they asked him to remove his boots, he refused. Knowing Ed, he was just checking to see what he could get away with. Ed had the surgery with his boots on, like any good cowboy.

Ed on the right.

Ed was a cowboy, a roper, a horse trainer. He was a hunter. He had a passion for sports - from his granddaughter's softball to all major league professional sports. He was a husband and a family man. A good neighbor. A grandfather and great grandfather. His obituary read, in part: "10 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and the many children that called him Dad and Grandpa". Some of those "children" who called him Dad are well into middle age. He was my father's best friend, so I have known and loved Ed from the day I was born. When my father died unexpectedly in my childhood, it was Ed's big heart that offered what shelter there was for my broken one.

Some years ago, a cousin in Ed's family traced the family tree and discovered they were descendants of Red Cloud's people, the Oglala Lakota. It did not surprise me in the least that Ed was Lakota.

There is no way to capture the man here, or do his life justice, or convey the grief his family feels at his passing. No way to fully honor this good man and what he meant to so many people. No way to explain who he was to me. It is a great sorrow that in this lifetime I will never again hear his voice, never see this man I loved as much as my own father.

It was a cold winter day when the hearse took Ed to his final resting place in a tiny township cemetery, not five miles from the front door of the house where he lived for the last fifty years. Four horses came galloping to the fence as the hearse drove slowly by. They took off to the west, bucking and cavorting in the cold air, celebrating the passing of an honorable Oglala son - a genuine cowboy - the best man I have ever known.

People of the South Wind - the Kansa

The state of Kansas takes its name from the Kansa people, the People of the South Wind. The Kansas River, is also known as the Kaw - also a pronunciation of the name of the original owners of the Flint Hills. William Least Heat Moon lists 140 different spellings of the Kansa name in his book "PrairyErth". Kansas, Kansa, Konza, Kaw all refer to the People of the South Wind.

"The (Konza) band before us were all finely formed men; for with the exception of the Osage Indians of the Arkansaw, they are considered the most noble of the tribes which yet roam within the neighborhood of the settlements."

"The Konzas had a proud, noble air, and their white blankets as they hung in loose and graceful folds around them, had the effect of classic drapery." John Treat Irving, traveler (1833)

"In the evening the principal Kanzas chief paid us a visit in our tent. He is a young man about twenty five years of age, straight as a poplar and with a noble countenance and bearing. ...Our chief is a very lively, laughing, and rather playful personage ...perhaps he may put on his dignity, like a glove, when it suits him." John Kirk Townsend, touring physician and naturalist (1834)

"The Kansa were quite tall and very well shaped. Their physiognomy...was quite virile. Their abrupt, guttural language was remarkable for its long and sharp accentuation of inflection.

To their strength, shrewdness, and courage, they added good common sense. Among their chiefs were some men of true distinction. The best-known of them... was White Plume." Nicolas Point, traveler and Jesuit missionary (1840)

"I believe my people will soon be impoverished. This I do not want to see. This is the darkest period in our history. The whites have made attempts to buy my lands, but I have never yet asserted that I wished to sell my lands." Chief Ahlegawaho (1871)

"...The government forcing several land-cession treaties onto the Kansa over the years when they were still on their ancestral grounds up along the Kaw River. First, Congress made them cede twenty million acres - that's the size of South Carolina - in return for two million acres and annuities from the sale of their lands. Then, in a later treaty, the government took that reservation away and handed them roughly a quarter of a million acres here along the Neosho, and then reduced that to the Diminished Reserve before finally forcing them into Oklahoma, where the Kansa had to buy land from the Osage." Joe Hickey, anthropologist (1991)

"We have not seen the dusky forms of the noble red man of the Kaw persuasion about our streets in the last two or three days. Doubtless those sweet-scented ones that were encamped near here have gone back to their reservation. When we consider how efficient they were in "gobbling up" the putrescent animal and vegetable matter about the city, we almost regret their departure." (Topeka) Daily Kansas State Record (June, 1868)

all quotes from the book "PrairyErth" by William Least Heat Moon copyright 1991


The Kansa ancestral lands include the property where I now live. I sometimes think the melancholy that wells up in my heart, the ache that arises from the thrumming of those high lonesome winds, is the memory of those who lived here first. Maybe the Kansa are recalling the beauty and abundance of the Flint Hills before Indian and land alike had fallen to starvation and disease and the greed, Christianity and government of the white man. Perhaps they are reminding me to love this land while I have the chance.

As I was writing this tonight, a white streak of light appeared right out of the east window. Before that happened, I was thinking of going out into the night to say prayers in memory of the Kansa. Now I am afraid of ghosts. Patti is likely laughing at me, wherever in this universe she is, but I am still not brave enough to face ghosts the way she was. I will wait until daylight.

Reading current reader comments posted to daily on-line articles published in the Topeka Capital Journal, I see that the mean, ignorant spirit of the goodly citizens of Topeka has not changed at all since 1868.

Another Kansas Character You Should Meet

All things Kansas!

Though my good friend Ken is a world traveler, he has adopted Kansas as his home for the last twenty-five years. He is an excellent artist, making Native American flutes and drums, and has published a CD of his own flute music. Follow this link to hear "Coyotes in the Orchard"

http://cdbaby.com/cd/coyotesito

(This is information taken directly from the CDBABY web site about "Coyotes in the Orchard"):

Native American Ken Lopez crafts the traditional flutes he plays. An artist and musician, Ken is a world traveler and Vietnam Veteran. He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, and at the University of Hawaii in a cultural exchange with Hawaiians and Maori, among others. He performs across the country and in Central and South America helping to promote cultural exchange between other tribal peoples.

Ruston Slager is an extraordinary improvisational musician, a surfer and an artist. He has the rare gift of creating spontaneous music. Already a stand alone artist making his own music when Ken and Ruston met, it was clear that creating music was something they were going to do together, and it turned into a great first CD.

Songs of Spring - Leonard McKinney

Our friend and elder, Mr. Leonard McKinney penned this poem.

***

My son and Leonard are Prairie Band Potawatomi. Leonard told my son "We are hard headed. Prairie Band Potawatomi are hard headed. That is why we are still here."

**** Published at the request of Mokasha ****

Pendleton Blanket

My adopted sister, Patti died unexpectedly a few years ago. She was taken in the prime of life. Poisoned and tortured by modern medical treatments, she fought valiantly to live. All of us who loved her were devastated by the cruel swiftness of the cancer, the brutality of modern medicine, and the way she was ripped from our lives.

Patti was a pejutawin, a medicine woman. Many who came to her for healing, some with the same forms of cancer that took her life, are alive today. Long before she was ever ill, she told me many times she knew she would be one to help from the other side after she died. I have no doubt that she knew what she was talking about.

Patti was a tall woman, with thick brown hair to her waist. She laughed freely and easily and was generally a gentle person, but, no one dared to mess with her. She was fearless in everything. She met prejudice against Indians head on, and woe to anyone who crossed her children. I admired her courage and the strength of her character. She was a warrior in every way.

Patti and her youngest son came to visit us right after we moved to Spirit Creek farm. She was sleeping on the sofa and I had just turned out the light and settled on the cot across the room. I have no idea what happened, but the cot simply collapsed beneath me, dumping me head first onto the floor. We could not stop laughing. It was as if we were teenagers at a slumber party. It was as if we had always been sisters.

Something she took great delight in, something that made her belly laugh, was my fear of ghosts. While I think I am fairly courageous, things have happened that were deeply frightening because they are not supposed to be possible. While she laughed long and hard at me, there was always a note of sympathy in her laughter. She was simply my best friend.

The Monday after her funeral I was back at work. I was the last person to leave the building. I was trying to accept that she was gone, still trying to cope with the loss. Finished for the day, my mind was free to turn fully toward the sad new reality of a world without Patti in it. I was deeply missing her as I stepped out the door.

The fall weather had turned cold, with a biting north wind even though the sunlight was still strong, gracing the downtown buildings with a golden glow. What I thought was a white-haired Indian woman wrapped in a beautiful turquoise Pendleton blanket immediately caught my attention. She was looking directly at me as she came down the sidewalk. It was such an unexpected sight that I doubted it was a real person and stared intently as I got in my truck. Instantly, I thought of Patti's laughter if I could tell her I saw a ghost in broad daylight in downtown Topeka!

It was not a ghost but a real person, and I had been rudely staring. It was an Indian man and he came right up to the truck window. He was wearing shorts and a thin shirt, so it was good he had the blanket.

"Look here. Look at this." he said, indicating the blanket. It was a beautiful blanket and I admired it.

He told me he was Kickapoo and lived on a reservation north of town. He was not expecting me to know about the reservations. He asked for money and I gave him what I had, which was not much. We chatted for a little bit but it was so cold, I asked if he was warm enough. He answered by indicating the blanket again with a grin, which made me laugh. Anyone would be fine with a blanket like that. I offered him a ride but he was "just going a ways up the road". It was too cold to be walking so I assured him it would be no problem to give him a lift wherever he needed to go. He did not want or need a ride. As he was turning to leave, he reached through the window and patted my arm. "You take care of yourself, Sister."

He walked off toward the south and I pulled away toward home. A flood of emotion washed over me. It felt as if I had just received a message from Patti, delivered by an old man in a turquoise Pendleton blanket.

I Wonder What The Indians Think

I went into the truck stop on I-70 last night and saw a whole new selection of Kansas kitsch for sale. There were typical Wizard of Oz joke shirts, hats and gee gaws next to the fundamental tornado/sunflower postcards. There was the eternal KU/KSU memorabilia, and folksy flotsam anywhere you looked. That is alright by me. It is Kansas after all. People traveling on I-70 might need a souvenir commemorating their drive through. It was the new Indian kitsch prominently displayed that stood out.

All across the store were large black and blue "medicine shields" with wolves and lightning and cool stuff like that airbrushed on them. They were decorated with chicken feathers and yarn. To me, the most offensive thing about Indian kitsch is the famous painting of a plains warrior on horseback, his head down in defeat. Every time I see "The End of the Trail" I want to tear it down. Maybe white people see it as a symbol and a tribute to America's "glorious" Old West. To me, it is an affront to every living Indian, and an insult to the memory of every warrior who died fighting for his family and way of life, in the past or in modern times.

An entire race of people are carelessly dismissed by America-at-large and the proud traditions of nations turned into Indian kitsch. It always hits me in the heart and I want to shout out the names of the Indian people I love. I could name a long list and not a single Indian named possesses a defeated spirit like that painting "The End of the Trail".

One of the dearest people in my life was Mr. Leonard McKinney. He was a full blood Prairie Band Potawatomi, WWII and Korean veteran, gourd dancer, fluent speaker of Potawatomi, and examples of his extraordinary beadwork are in the Smithsonian. After he and I knew each other well, I was telling him about a commercial aired on the local radio station for a certain pharmacy. Even though there are three Indian reservations in the broadcast area, the pharmacy was advertising with Tonto and the Lone Ranger characters! Of course, Tonto spoke in pidgin English and was the butt of the joke. I was angry at the ignorance of the people at the pharmacy and the radio station! I wrote a letter of protest to the pharmacy but received no reply. I also never heard the commercial again, but I honestly do not know if it was taken off the air. I doubt it.

Leonard, being a much older and wiser human being, and having seen far worse prejudice in his long life, told me simply that Indians did not consider prejudice against them as their problem. His quiet dignity calmed my heart. As the years go by, the more deeply that lesson illuminates my life. That old warrior, that story teller, elder and artist, that dear old white haired man knew his worth, and neither Tonto nor "The End of the Trail" had power over him. I hope that is what all the Indians think.

Pama mine, Nekon.