And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
By Martha Ture
When I took home the arrowheads I found in Sligo Creek, Montgomery County,
Maryland, I asked my parents to tell me about the history of the people who
lived there the longest. Sligo Creek was named for a county in Ireland.
Montgomery was the name of a Maryland family. Maryland was named for a
Catholic British queen. What other people named this creek in what lingo,
not Sligo?
My folks didn't know. They were first generation born in this country, and
transplants from the midwest. But Dad took me to the Smithsonian, and we had
tea with an archaeologist who studied the area. He ultimately received my
entire haul of arrowheads and in exchange told me what he knew about the
people who had lived there before the people who named the creek Sligo.
But he didn't know the level of history I knew about the people who came
after. I knew the name of the man who named the town Silver Spring, and I
had been to the silver spring, then enshrined under an acorn-shaped cupola
next to the town library. I knew the names of Montgomery, Charles, Carroll,
Howard, Baltimore, Taliaferro, and what they had done. But the archaeologist
didn't know the names or deeds of the pre-Euro residents whose deeds and
names are now permanently lost.
How the hell could anyone feel at home in a place whose human history is cut
off like a rope? The damned rope's still bleeding. At both ends.
Miles and years have come and gone; I live now next to a creek named Cascade,
in a town named Fairfax, county of Marin, state of California. I don't know
what the creek's before name was, nor any of its branches, nor the names of
the women who ground acorns and grains in these stone mortars up and down the
creeks. The Sais family were the Mexicans who owned the land before selling
it to Charley Snowden, the amiable Virginia drunk who named it Fairfax after
his family's title in England and the family estate in Virginia. The Saises
and the Fairfaxes were pals and used the local people to drive game off this
mountain on Sundays. Black bear, grizz, wolf, coyote, elk, pronghorn, deer -
nothing left now but deer and coyotes and a panther or two.
I don't know what the people called the creek, nor the animals, nor the
plants. Marin was the people's leader who stole grain for them during the
last days of the Missions; when the missions collapsed he led them to
Nicasio, meaning hidden valley in their lingo. After Fairfax- Snowden left,
somehow the property got into old man Elliott's hands, and he used it for a
gravel pit, turned it into a cash cow, and then bequeathed it to the town.
There are people here who remember old man Elliott running them off with a
ten gauge when they were kids.
I have read that the people who lived here called themselves Hookooeekoo. I
dont know if it's true. I dont know how that's pronounced but I suspect it's
the call of the local quail (also extirpated now). I have read one extensive
monograph, the interviews of Tom Smith and Maria Copa by one anthropology
student of Kroeber's; her name was Isabel Kelly. Tom and Maria lived out on
the coast, not here, and made it clear that there were at least two different
people inbetween. But I dont know when nor how different. I dont know if
the words, and names, and songs Tom and Maria told Isabel were applicable to
here. They didnt name this creek. I dont know what their non anglo names
were. Tom Smith's grandson still lives near here and leads dances, but he
isnt telling and I certainly wouldnt ask.
But one thing they told was that the Hookooeekoo people had a sorority - my
term - of women called the Gopher Breasted Women, whose business it was to
gently depose a superannuated leader. If that man refused to be retired,
they poisoned him to death with the roots of the native ground iris, which
still does live here.
I dont know if any of that is true.
But how the hell can anyone feel home here without knowing the names, the
history, the people?
Some of you know I've been fighting a large group of despoilers about this
canyon. It's not unlike the miners coming into the Black Hills with the
tacit approval of the government, against the will of the locals. Our
beloved hills have been scoured, slumped, cut, balded, trees chainsawed,
ground iris patches mowed down, hills compacted and denuded, soil run into
the streams, all by the locusts of the earth, the new miners, mountain
bikers. Sara has had hordes of bikers run through her property and defy her
to her face, threaten her with arson, throw a bike at her son; she's had the
District Attorney refuse to prosecute and the town cops refuse to enforce,
she's had fences and signs torn down, her trees roots' exposed, her hillside
rowelled and compacted, and the county board of supervisors refuse to help
because they are in the pockets of the mountain bikers.
Bikers have cut trails of their own through public lands and challenged the
board of supervisors to stop them - dared them. In response, two board
members and a staffer have gone to Holland with the bikers on an all expenses
paid trip. The hills started sliding into the creek called Cascade.
Therese has fought the board of supervisors. I sued them. Therese went to
the state legislature. I got in a couple of fist fights with a couple of
bikers. I filed a couple of sheriff's reports. I am going to the IRS, and
to the state legislature, and the FBI, and a few other places, and we are
going to depose these corrupt bastards and get these bikes off these hills.
We recently had a series of victories. The town refused to put mountain
bikers from other towns on the transportation committee. The county settled
a lawsuit with me requiring them to restore damaged hills and enforce the law
against bikers. The county admitted that there is no right of way through
Sara's land.
Endangered spotted owls and steelhead have appeared and been seen in the
canyon. The lion is back, and wild turkeys have moved in. The grey foxen
and coons have recovered from distemper and I heard the foxes in the night,
cough-barking. A coon sleeps in one of my trees daytimes, and the coyotes
and rattlesnakes are out in force.
I've told these women that we are the new gopher-breasted women. I go out in
the meadow, to a bend in the creek, where a side stream comes down from the
north and turns east. I sit on the west side and listen to all that running
water power and I hear - well, I don't know what name. I don't know what
language. But I hear.
That is so far as I know the only way open to me to reconnect the bleeding
rope.
Martha
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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